Be Transfigured Ministries

When the storms of life seem unbearable and you feel the waves crashing over your head, you might feel like your sinking and that you may never make it out of the storm. At just that moment, remember the love and presence of God in your life, and remember the lesson of Peter walking on the water as told in Matthew 14.22-34. So long as Peter remained focused on Christ, he was able to stay above the waves. When he focused on the severe storm, fear took over and he began to sink because he took his eyes off Christ. Stay focused and stay afloat.

We have all experienced that moment when we asked God why He didn’t help us. It could have been when someone we loved was very sick, or as has been the case too often lately, yet another mindless mass-shooting in our society. We continue to pray that God would “do something” but it often seems like He chooses rather to sit back. Our experience seems to be in direct conflict with what we hear in the Gospel, when it seems that at every turn God heals and ‘makes everything ok’ for those hurting. Why didn’t God help us? God said, “According to your faith, let it be done to you.” Does that mean our faith, or lack of faith, is to blame?

We’ve all heard them; those pious commandments from our grandmothers (yiayias) about how we are supposed to live our Orthodoxy. Sometimes our yiayias are spot on, while at other times they’re not quite right. Either way, we are always blessed when we follow the advice of yiayia. They are the unknown saints of our day, faithfully praying for us. Thank you yiayias. In this episode, we answer questions about timing for baby blessings, female prohibitions, and godparents traditions.

In the Gospel, shortly before He ascended the Holy Cross, we hear how Christ promised the Holy Spirit would come and guide the Disciples “into all truth.” (John 16.13) As Christ ascended His Throne 40 days after His Resurrection, He urged the Church to wait for the Holy Spirit. For the past two thousand years, the Church has protected the truth of God, as revealed to the Holy Disciples by the Holy Spirit. You learn about God by reading the Holy Scriptures and hearing the witness of those who knew Him personally, but there is only one way to truly know God. We can only know God intimately through Holy Communion. If you want to know the true God, come and be in communion with Him.

When God reveals Himself to us, as He did in the story of the healing of the man born blind in the Gospel of John, He allows us to use our free will to believe Him or not to believe Him. Then it is up to us to put that belief into action. Some “say” they believe, as the ancient Jews, but don’t follow that with action. When we see God revealed, will we believe and act?

We eventually learn in life that our bodies don’t always want what we offer them. Any casual trip to the refrigerator will prove that point. The same can be said about our soul. We go through life, searching and buying and never being satisfied. That is because out soul doesn’t want material things. Our soul craves God, and only when we offer our soul what it truly craves, will it ever be satisfied.

Eight days after Pascha, the Church continues with the story of Christ’s resurrection that it began to tell us during AGAPE Vespers of Pascha. The story in the Gospel tells how Thomas had missed the first report of Christ’s resurrection, and would not believe the news until he saw Christ for himself. For St Thomas, seeing was believing, but Christ says, “Because you have seen Me you believe? Blessed are those who have not seen and yet believe.” We have not seen Christ’s resurrected body, but still we believe. God will always give us what we need in order to believe.

As the Church celebrates the victorious entrance of Christ into Jerusalem on Palm Sunday, we are forced to rethink how we think of kings. Unlike the secular kings of the world, our King is a different King. Unlike the modern examples of kings and other political leaders, our King is a different King. Our King leads His people to heaven, rather than dictating and oppressing them.

When Jesus sees the faith of four friends, who bring to Him their paralyzed friend, the Scriptures tell us “Seeing their faith,” that Jesus forgave sins and healed the man. Friends matter, and as The Church, we have the power to help each other, and to bring others to Christ for healing. We are all bound to each other. It is because of Church that we are able to help each other.

On the first Sunday of Great Lent, known as the Sunday of Orthodoxy, the Church commemorates the truth of Christ’s incarnation. We hear the story in the Gospel of John of Philip’s great joy as he ran to Nathaniel crying “We have seen the Lord!” This invitation for us to come and see for ourselves is rooted in this truth of God’s incarnation for our salvation. We have seen the Light, and it is now our turn to run to our friends, neighbors and family, “We have seen the Lord. Come and see Him for yourself!”