In the Parable of the Great Banquet (Luke 14.16.24) our Lord compares the Kingdom of Heaven to a great banquet to which we have all been invited. As in the parable many of us make excuses as to why we or our family cannot attend. As servants we are commanded to go out and invite others who have also been invited so that God’s House is filled. We don’t know when God will call us to Heaven, but we must be prepared to answer the call without excuses and enter into Heaven with our Lord. No more excuses. We have been given another opportunity to answer the call without excuses. Through the life of the Church we can be prepared to enter into Heaven. No more excuses. We can still be loyal and faithful servants.

When Jesus healed a woman on the Sabbath, those who were watching complained because He “worked” on the Sabbath. They had forgotten there was an actual purpose for the Sabbath. In the same way, many of us look at the Church rules as just rules to follow. We spend so much time worrying about following the rules; we forget that the rules have an actual benefit for our lives. The weeks leading up to Christmas present a great opportunity to refocus our attention on what really matters.  If only we could trust the Church enough to understand the meaning behind the rules, we could arrive at the Feast of Christmas with peace rather than a panic about making sure everything is in order for the dinner. There’s always time for cranberry sauce. This year, let’s get our soul ready for Christmas.

It is tempting to think that our success has everything to do with our hard work. It is even more tempting to think that the fruit of our success are meant for our pleasure. Neither is true. In fact no matter what our vocation, whether we are fishermen or farmers, our only part in our success is a bit of hard work. Everything else is a gift from God and that gift has a purpose. When we were married the priest asked God to bless us so that we could help others. Thanksgiving is a wonderful opportunity to thank God for the blessings He has given to us by reaching out and helping other this year.

Learning from Each Other

“I grow old always being taught.” This ancient Greek saying

expresses a truth about life that leads to heaven. It is only in a relationship

that we can be taught and learn from each other. With the Church as our mother

and teacher we learn to live together in humility, faith, patience and love

waiting for God’s blessings. It is together that we experience joy and sorrow,

anxiety and peace. We won’t always get what we want, when we want, how we want

it, but through humility, patience and love as expressed by Jairus and the

woman with the flow of blood in the Gospel, we learn to give glory to God.

When we hear about demon possession in the Holy Scriptures

many of us don’t consider that we have anything to benefit. Many of us either

do not believe in demons, or we accept that we aren’t ourselves possessed by

demons. The truth is, we all have demons that take control over our life. Our

demons may not be the spiritual demons that we read about in the Holy

Scriptures, but we all have struggles that control us with no less power to

cripple our lives. The Good News is that God is able and willing to heal us

from our demons, no matter what that demon may be, and we can be freed from the

struggle to follow Him and be a witness of the great things God has done for

us. 

When it comes to our soul many of us live as if everything

we learned in Sunday School was enough to get us through the daily struggles of

life. Some even leaven their soul unattended, or worse allow bad seed to make

its way in. As the Lord explains in the Parable of the Sower, our soul is at

times hard, rocky, filled with weeds, or even rich fertile soil, but it doesn’t

happen by itself. It requires work to improve the condition of our soul to

receive the Word of God, and it requires work to maintain a healthy soul. Luck

for us we have the Church and the way of life of Orthodox Christianity to work

our soul to prepare it for the Good Seed, the Word of God.

Sometimes we just need a bit of a reminder that, even though

life has its challenges, the hope of the Gospel isn’t about this life. The hope

of the Gospel is in the life that God has planned for us, living with Him in heaven.

Saint Paul knew this. He knew the true struggle of every Christian especially

in a world that at the time was much less tolerant of Christians that today’s

world. Eve depended on her understanding of the benefit of eating the apple

rather than on God, and we know what happened to Eve? Saint Paul is trying to

remind us, “The transcendent power belongs to God and not to us.” The Church,

through the entire life it presents to us, is trying to help us depend upon God

rather than ourselves, and that takes endurance. It won’t be easy. That much we

know, but it is worth the struggle.

Every now and then there comes a time in our life when God

calls us to reach out of our comfort zone and trust that He knows our abilities

and has our best interest in His mind. At those moments, it doesn’t do us any

benefit to look back at our failures but ahead to God’s glory and promise for a

blessed future. Too often our fears and lack of confidence take control and we

refuse to trust that God indeed knows what He is doing.

Jesus Christ invites every human being to follow Him to

heaven with the challenge to “deny himself, take up his cross and follow.” Ever

since Adam and Eve in the Garden, we have struggled with following our own will

or the will of God. But if we desire to follow Christ to heaven, the first

thing we must do is deny ourselves. Problem is.....most of us don’t do well

with the denial part of following Christ.

When it comes to ‘being saved’ the Orthodox Church teaches a

different understanding of our relationship with God than other Christians.

What makes the issue more complicated is that we often use the same terms, like

saved, to discuss quite different concepts. So when an Orthodox Christian is

asked the question, “Are you saved?” our answer should be, “I was saved, I am

saved, and I am being saved.” We do not pinpoint our salvation to an exact

moment in time as do many Protestants. For us, the concept is different.