Meditation by Very Rev. Dr. David Petras

“Behold, Christ comes among his own. We are made his through grace and holy virtues. (Troparion, Ode 6, Canon of December 22)” “You wishes to bear the robe of a slave in order to snatch me from slavery to evil, O Word coeternal to the Father. (Troparion, Ode 3, Canon of December 23)

St. Gregory the Theologian begins his homily for the Feast of Lights by saying, “Christ is on earth, let us welcome him.” His loving-kindness is to turn us from sin to virtue, but only through the power of his grace. Sin is a spiritual death, in Jesus, the living God, who comes into physical life today, frees us from sin and makes us God-like. His coming into human nature is compared to slavery, and we must welcome him as slaves. This is really what we are saying when we receive Holy Communion, when we welcome Christ into our bodies, making them temples of the Spirit: “The servant (that is, the slave) of God receives the Holy Body and Precious Blood.” We become God’s own, but it must be according to his will. Do we not pray, “Thy will be done, (now) on earth as it is in heaven.” How do we receive Christmas, however, is it on our terms or on God’s terms. It is clear what motive is life-bearing, but this is not done to keep us in slavery, for in his last discourse in the Gospel of John, he calls us friends (John 15:15), and so we are able to sing, if we are willing, “I sing of your love: glory to your work of salvation.” (Troparion, Ode 3, Canon of December 23)

Meditation by the Very Rev. Dr. David Petras

As we move toward Christmas, the Sunday before the great feast of the Lord’s Incarnation is day when we read the gospel giving us the genealogy of Jesus.

The Gospel this Sunday presents us with an abundance of names, all those who were the ancestors of Christ. By this we see that on this feast, the Son and Word of God becomes a part of the human family and a part of human history. In this Gospel Jesus is also given a name, the final verse tells us that the child will be known as Jesus – Savior. In verse 22, though, he is given the name “Immanuel,” “God with us.” This gives us the theological meaning of the feast, the incarnation signifies our deification. We all have names, but for the ancients, names had meanings, they did not simply give us an identification tag, but told us something of who we were. In that sense, we do not name ourselves, but we are given a name, we are all “called by name” by God, and so we enter into the ancestry of Jesus. The names are the forefathers of Jesus, but also the foremothers are mentioned: Tamar, who bore a son by trickery of Judah; Ruth, the grandmother of David, who left her people to follow Naomi; the unnamed wife of David, Bathsheba, who David married by arranging for the death of Uriah. We see, then, that even trough questionable and evil actions, as well as by faithfulness, Jesus becomes “the son given to us.” The greatest of the woman in his genealogy is, of course, Mary, his mother, who by her obedience cancelled the curse of Eve, and united God with humanity in her womb. Today, we celebrate the Son of Abraham, according to the Law, and the Son of David, the everlasting King, to whom even David bowed, and even the Son of exile, for we are all citizens of the spiritual, not the earthly, Jerusalem. Today we must be named as a follower of Christ.

Meditation by Very Rev. Dr. David Pertras
Colossians 3:4: “When Christ who is our life appears, then you also will appear with him in glory.”

This first phrase from today’s Epistle as the Church begins it’s celebration of the birth of our Lord really tells us what Christmas is all about. This is the announcement of the feast. The Word of God, appearing in our world, is the glory of the believer. He appears in humble surroundings, but invites all to the feast! The gospel (Luke 14:16-24) tells us that those who are well off refuse the invitation, but it is “the poor and the maimed and the lame and the blind,” who come, it is those in “the highways and hedges” who are “compelled to come.” Mary probably realized this when she prophesied, “He has put down the mighty from their thrones, and exalted the lowly.” (Luke 1:52) The angels appear to the shepherds in the fields, and they are invited to the house of the Lord. The glory of the Lord is his humility, and our glory is our humility. For all that, everyone is invited to the banquet, and the wise and the rich from Persia come with expensive gifts, though they too are outsiders, and the epistle tells us “there is neither Greek nor Jew, circumcised nor uncircumcised, barbarian, Scythian, slave nor free, but Christ is all and in all.” (Colossians 3:11) Those who welcome Christ will put aside “anger, wrath, malice …. ” (Colossians 3:8) The first sticheron at Christmas chants, “let us proclaim the present mystery by which the partition has been broken and the flaming sword withheld. Now the Cherubim shall let us all come to the Tree of Life.” This is putting Christ back into Christmas!

Meditation by Very Rev. Dr. David Petras
Colossians 3:12-16; Luke 17:12-19

The American culture joins together the Feast of Thanksgiving and Christmas. If we are materialistic, we might say it is the sell gifts. However, there is a spiritual meaning to the joining of these feasts, because Thanksgiving asks the question: “To whom do we give thanks?” The answer of a non-believer is to ourselves and another, for as rational human beings, it is up to us the give meaning to our existence and to produce the goods that we need or simply want. The gospel tells us that we must give thanks to God, who alone brought us into being and who alone can give us salvation. Jesus tells us today that this is difficult, because it requires humility and an open heart. Thus only one of the ten lepers gives thanks, and the least expected, the foreigner. It is on Christmas that God gives us his greatest gift, the gift of himself. This gift requires the greatest thanksgiving, the eucharist (Greek for “thanksgiving”) in which God gives himself to us in Holy Communion. That is why it is so important to make that effort to seek the Lord in his church. There is where we receive “heartfelt compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness, and patience, bearing with one another and forgiving one another … and over all these put on love. (Colossians 3:12-14)” There we can imitate the leper who returned gratitude to the Lord, “Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly, as in all wisdom you teach and admonish one another, singing psalms, hymns, and spiritual songs with gratitude in your hearts to God. (Colossians 3:16)” There the priest invites us, “Let us give thanks to the Lord.”

Today is the feast day of St Andrew.

It is a legend, but also a symbol, that St. Andrew evangelized the town of Byzantium before it would become a great city. The symbol, therefore, is that Rome, the West, and Constantinople (Byzantium), the East are united in the fraternity of the two apostles, Peter and Paul. In our broken world, the Church is hampered in preaching the gospel by internal divisions. The Catholic and Orthodox Churches are heroically trying to re-unite to preach the one true Gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ. They are hampered by narrow-minded people in both Churches, who cannot see Christ living in the eucharist of these Churches. There is only one Christ in Holy Communion, and we do not partake of one Christ, and the other another Christ. There is only one Christ born of Mary in Bethlehem, whose Body we cannot divide. Now is the proper time for the one Church to proclaim the one Lord and Savior in the one holy Gospel. We must pray for unity this Christmas that we are not too late.

Very Rev. Dr. David Petras

Meditation by Very Rev. David Petras Colossians 1:12-18

The epistle this Sunday tells us who Jesus truly is. He is the very center of our being. “He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation. For in him were created all things in heaven and on earth, …. He is before all things, and in him all things hold together. He is the head of the body, the church. He is the beginning, the firstborn from the dead.” St. John tells us the same thing, “All things came to be through him, and without him nothing came to be. What came to be through him was life, and this life was the light of the human race. (John 1:3-4)” We have the saying, “Put Christ back into Christmas,” but we must take this a step further, “We must put Christ into everything that we are, and in all creation.” Our whole lives must be oriented to Christ, “God greatly exalted him and bestowed on him the name that is above every name, that at the name of Jesus every knee should bend, of those in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father. (Philippians 2:9-11)” This worship is not complete until we imitate the Lord in his love for all who have come to be in his loving-kindness.