If we are honest, I think we struggle sometimes to believe that we will ever overcome our core besetting sins or be released from our addictions. This is for, at least, two reasons. Perhaps we do not see and behold God clearly for Who He is and what union with Him affords us. And, we do not understand with clarity the Divine Grace of God that saves all who are in Christ Jesus. Today, we set our thoughts on the Divine Grace of God; for it is the very power of God that He shares with us so that we may be delivered, healed, and raised up to a new life.

We need the growing faith of Simon Peter, as seen in the Gospel of St. Luke 5. As Jesus comes to Capernaum, Simon Peter has a growing experience with Christ our God. Jesus heals Peter's mother-in-law from a dangerously high fever; Peter sits in his boat at the feet of Jesus as the Word of God reveals the Kingdom of God to a multitude; and then Peter experiences the miraculous catch of fish. His growing mustard seed of faith was enough to follow the command of Christ for Peter to take his boat into deeper waters and let down his net. Peter, Andrew, James, and John had fished all night and caught nothing the night before. And while Peter did not understand how fishing again that day could be productive, his response to Christ was, "At Your word, I will." That is when the miracle happened. Jesus invited Peter to cooperate with a great work of Christ; one that Christ had already prepared to be successful by having the fish He had created ready to be caught. Jesus is always going before us, preparing the way. We have the joy of being invited into the salvation works of Christ. Will we say, "At your word, I will"?

In this sermon, Fr. James Rooney reflects on the story of the golden calf and God's call - we must abandon the false gods we create in our own image, and instead, learn to follow the living God on His terms. Rather than allowing culture, personal preferences, or worldly values to shape our understanding of God, we are called to encounter Him through worship, Scripture, and faithful obedience. As we surrender our preconceived notions and follow Christ along the narrow path, He grants us the grace to grow deeper into His mystery, continually transforming us and drawing us closer to Himself.

When we hear the term repentance, what comes to mind? A lifestyle of true Christian repentance is filled with joy and wonder. It causes hope to spring up within us and keeps hope before us. Too often, we are deceived by an enemy wanting us to believe that repentance is self-loathing; that repentance is some form of unhealthy groveling before God. When we live from that lie, repentance over our sinfulness and fallenness leads to despair, despondency, and even hiding from God. But this is not true Christian repentance. Today, we seek to have this lie undone. Repentance is the path back home to God. It is the path that brings us to what Christ our God has always wanted to offer us: His healing, a new life, the joy of experiencing His mercy; a very real coming home to Him.

In Luke 14, Jesus tells the Parable of the Great Banquet. In this parable we have the Nature of God behind the gift of this important banquet revealed to us. The Nature of God is to gather the broken to Himself that they might be made whole again. The Nature of God is to provide precisely what every soul needs to be raised up from the condition the fall of man left us in. As Jesus said when He instituted the Lord's Supper, "It is with fervent desire that I have longed to eat this Passover with you." In this parable we see the weight of importance God puts upon this heavenly meal. The banquet is the Eucharist. Our God avails Himself to be present among us. He invites us to come and receive life. Our response, "Lord, we come. Here we are. Heal us, redeem us, and have mercy upon us."

We are now in the liturgical season of Trinitytide, also known as Ordinary Time. But this Ordinary Time is far from mundane or common as our culture understands ordinary. It speaks to the "ordinary" life of those living in the realized and manifest Kingdom of God on earth as it is in Heaven. It is in Trinitytide that our Lord disciples us as to how we should live in His Kingdom for our salvation and the salvation of the world. On this first week of Trinitytide, we are taught that we are to become love by our encounters with Christ our God and become the expression of that same love to one another and to the world.

Eternal life, mercy, forgiveness of sins, covenant meal that keeps us in Christ and He in us. These are but a few of the very real benefits Christ our God bestows upon us through bread and wine that He has made His Body and Blood for us. Jesus teaches us this directly in the Gospel of John and chapter 6. The very generation following the Apostles testify to the experience of all of these benefits in this blessed Sacrament. And, the Church passes on the ministry of Christ to His people through the Eucharist even today. The Feast of Corpus Christi is the remembrance of the eternal benefits Christ has wrought for us in the Sacrament of Holy Eucharist. And, this Feast is our opportunity to offer great thanksgiving to Christ this great gift, the gift of Himself.

On Trinity Sunday, the Church enters the long season of Trinitytide, often called Ordinary Time—not because it is plain or unimportant, but because it is the ordered season in which Christians learn to live out the faith revealed in the great mysteries of Christ’s life, death, resurrection, ascension, and the sending of the Holy Spirit. As living temples of the Holy Trinity, believers are called to contemplate the mystery of the one God in three Persons, a truth revealed throughout Scripture and faithfully confessed by the Church. Though God remains beyond full human comprehension, He has revealed Himself as both Trinity and Love. The eternal communion of self-giving love shared by the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit becomes the pattern for Christian life. Throughout Trinitytide, the faithful are invited to grow in this Trinitarian love toward God, neighbor, and self, learning to hear Christ’s voice and follow His will in the daily journey toward salvation.

Christ our God, having Ascended, has opened the gates of Paradise to mankind for the first time since the Fall of man. He forged the path for us to ascend in Him to be with Him forever. Today, on the Day of Pentecost, we are given everything we need to be with Him forever. Today God sends Himself in the Person of the Holy Spirit and He is poured into us. Today, the age of the healing of the souls of mankind and the redemption of all Creation has dawned. We have Living Water poured into us that we might be made whole again. And, this Living Water overflows out of us with the fruit and wondrous continuing ministry of Jesus Christ for the healing of all around us.

In this sermon for Ascensiontide, the faithful are reminded that Christ’s Ascension is not His departure from humanity but the exaltation of human nature itself, as Jesus ascends bodily to the right hand of the Father and prepares His Church for the coming of the Holy Spirit. Drawing from Scripture and the teachings of St. John Chrysostom and St. Seraphim of Sarov, the sermon presents Pentecost as the fulfillment of Christ’s promise to baptize His people with the Holy Spirit and fire, establishing the Church as the living Body of Christ. Through Chrismation, every Christian experiences a personal Pentecost and is called to pursue “the acquisition of the Holy Spirit” through prayer, fasting, almsgiving, and every good work done purely for Christ’s sake. Rejecting mere moralism and worldly recognition, the sermon calls believers to live in communion with God despite misunderstanding or opposition from the world, preparing their hearts during Ascensiontide to receive the Spirit of Jesus Christ, who has overcome the world and invites His people to reign with Him in the age to come.