St Peters Orthodox Church

On the Feast of the Motherhood of the Blessed Virgin Mary, we celebrate not only the dignity of motherhood but also the profound mystery of the Incarnation: that the eternal Son of God humbled Himself to become the Son of Mary. Defended by the Council of Ephesus in 431, the title Theotokos, or Mother of God, safeguards the truth that Jesus Christ is both fully God and fully man. Through Our Lady’s motherhood, God sanctified the seemingly ordinary sacrifices of family life and revealed a greatness that the modern world so often overlooks. Yet St. Mary’s greatest glory lies not merely in bearing Christ in her womb, but in first receiving Him through faith and humble obedience. Her example calls every Christian, regardless of vocation or station in life, to make room for Christ, nurture His presence within the soul, and bring Him into the world through lives of charity, sacrifice, and faithful obedience. To truly honor the Mother of God is to imitate her devotion to her Son and heed her enduring instruction: “Whatever he says to you, do it.” (John 2:5)

In both our Gospel reading from Luke 14 and our Epistle reading from Ephesians 4, we receive the teaching of the foundational virtues that foster and protect the unity among all who are in Christ. We were created for community and, therefore, experience Christ and His salvation through community. Today we look at how love, humility, and mercy are the fabric that knits together this Divine experience in Christ's Holy Church.

In the raising of the widow of Nain’s only son, Christ reveals both the depth of God’s compassion for human suffering and His divine authority over death itself. Confronted with a widow facing not only the loss of her child but also destitution and abandonment, Jesus is moved with a visceral compassion that does not remain at a distance but enters directly into her grief. His command, “Weep not,” is no empty consolation, for He immediately removes the very cause of her sorrow. Unlike the prophets who prayed for God to restore the dead, Christ touches the bier and commands the young man to rise by His own authority. In doing so, He demonstrates that death and uncleanness cannot overcome Him; rather, when death encounters the Source of Life, death itself is driven away. As St. Cyril of Alexandria teaches, the life-giving power of Christ’s divinity is inseparably united to the humanity He assumed from the Blessed Virgin Mary, so that the hand touching the bier and the voice calling the dead to life are truly the hand and voice of God. The crowd therefore speaks more profoundly than it realizes when it declares, “God has visited His people.”

Jesus says in the Gospel of Matthew chapter 6, "Seek first (above all other things) the Kingdom of God and His righteousness, and all these things shall be added unto you." There is a theme that runs throughout Holy Scripture about seeking after God, longing for Him, and pursuing Him. Today we look at this theme of seeking Christ, that He may move our hearts toward a greater longing for Him, that He alone becomes the treasure of our soul.

This sermon contrasts the Christian way of the Holy Cross with the comfortable pseudo-faith of Moralistic Therapeutic Deism, which reduces God to a distant helper whose purpose is to make life pleasant and secure. Christ, however, does not descend from the Cross to save Himself but willingly embraces suffering to save humanity, revealing the Cross as “the power of God and the wisdom of God.” Like the two thieves crucified beside Christ, every person must decide how to respond to suffering: either with bitterness and rejection or with repentance, faith, and union with the suffering Savior. Christians therefore honor the Cross not because suffering is good in itself, but because God can transform betrayal, pain, and even death into sacrificial love, joy, and abundant life. The Cross challenges our desire for comfort and smallness, calling us instead to the greatness for which God created us—a greatness found only by taking up our own cross and following Christ.