St. Peter’s needs your support!

Summer is hard for all parishes, but it is especially difficult for start-ups like St. Peters.

In the spring contributions matched expenses. We were making it month to month. Now we we won’t make it through the end of this month unless we come up with more funding.

How much does it cost to run St. Peter’s? Around $8,000 a month.

What do we need to raise? We would like to have pledges in hand for six months of operating expenses, around $50,000.

This will get us through the lean times and enable us to build a reserve.

How should I think about supporting my Church?

The Church is not a charity. It is the place where we meet Christ and are strengthened in Him. If we are serious about Christ, then we will be serious about supporting our Church.

It works from the other direction too. If we are not serious about supporting our Church, then we are not really serious about Christ.

And we support the Church in three ways: time, talent, and treasure. We must offer all three. One does not cancel out the other.

All of us give according to our ability, our circumstances in life, and other factors. Time and talent are easy to figure out. Treasure is more difficult.

According to the Bible, we must tithe. This means we must offer a certain percentage of our income to God’s work in the Church. Why does the Bible say this? Because the wealth that we have actually comes from God. We are just the stewards – the caretakers – of what rightfully belongs to Him.

What should the tithe be? The Bible says 10%. That is a high number and most people would not be able to reach it at first, especially without extensive planning. But giving in terms of the tithe is a way we need to start thinking about our obligation to God and His church.

In the next few days I will provide more information on tithing on the St. Peter website. I will also post a pledge card you can fill in and mail.

What can I do now?

St. Peter needs your immediate gift to keep operating. We need to get through the lean months. Please bring your gift to St. Peter this Sunday or mail it to us on the address given on the website.

Yours in Christ,

Fr. Hans

St. Peter Orthodox Church featured in newspaper and website

The following article appeared on the web a few days ago. It will be published in the Estero/Bonita section of the Ft. Meyers News-Press newspaper on Friday, June 26, 2009.

Orthodox Christian church starts in San Carlos Park

BY CHRISTINA CEPERO • ccepero@news-press.com • June 11, 2009

Father Hans Jacobse welcomes all to his startup church, St. Peter Orthodox Mission, in San Carlos Park.

“Our vision is just to reach out to anybody who is interested in Orthodox Christianity,” he said. “We’re reaching out to Christians who want a more substantial and deeper faith.”

Jacobse gave the first service in mid-May. About 50 to 60 parishioners meet at 9:30 every Sunday morning at the Holiday Inn at Alico Road and Interstate 75.

He chose the central location to draw people from all over Lee County.

Orthodox Christianity dates back to the first century. It is the original church, the church that Jesus Christ’s apostles founded. It had five centers: Jerusalem, Antioch, Rome, Alexandria and Constantinople. The Roman church split from it in 1054 and became the Catholic church, and in the 1500s, Protestant churches began forming.

Orthodox Christians in the United States have primarily identified themselves by their ethnicity, including Greek, Russian and Middle Eastern, although they all belong to the same church.

Jacobse seeks to unite Orthodox Christians.

St. Peter is the second Antiochian Orthodox church in Southwest Florida. The first, St. Paul Antiochian Orthodox Church in Naples, was founded a decade ago.

[...]

Read the entire article on the Fort Myers News-Tribune website.

St. Paul Orthodox Church invites all St. Peter friends and family to their summer barbecue!

When? Sunday, July 5 starting at noon.

Where? St. Paul Antiochian Orthodox Church (Google map) (St. Paul website).

Cost: Free!

What do you need to do?

Let St. Paul’s know that you plan to attend before June 26. They need a count to know how many goodies to prepare.

RSVP to St. Paul’s at: (239) 348-0828 or send them an email at: stpaulaoc@embarqmail.com

See you there!

St. Peter Epistle — June 6, 2009

Saturday, June 6, 2009

Tomorrow we celebrate Pentecost. Pentecost (or "fifty days") was when the Holy Spirit descended upon the Apostles. This was the fulfillment of Christ's promise that he would send them a "Comforter" who "knows all things" and would "lead them into all truth."

The icon of Pentecost shows fire above the heads of the Apostles. This image draws from scripture which says that the Holy Spirit descended on the Apostles like "tongues of fire." St. Luke writes:

 

When the Day of Pentecost had fully come, they were all with one accord in one place. And suddenly there came a sound from heaven, as of a rushing mighty wind, and it filled the whole house where they were sitting. Then there appeared to them divided tongues, as of fire, and one sat upon each of them. And they were all filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak with other tongues, as the Spirit gave them utterance (Act 2:1-4).

 

Immediately the Apostles were filled with great boldness and began to preach to the people that Jesus Christ had come to forgive sin and lead people back to God.

Remember the context. A great cosmic battle had just been fought between God and the forces of evil. Satan — the devil, the father of lies — thought he had defeated God by killing Jesus the Son of God. When Jesus rose from the dead, satan was defeated. His only power is to destroy, and by defeating death, Christ overcame satan's power and overthrew him.

The Disciples (they were disciples until Pentecost where they graduated into their apostleship — apostolos — one sent forth), were dejected at first until they met the resurrected Christ. Even after meeting Him however, they still remained fearful. It was clear to them that the elites who conspired and assented to the death of Jesus still ruled the people. The disciples were afraid.

Pentecost changed all that. Upon receiving the Holy Spirit, the Disciples became Apostles. They boldly proclaimed that Christ had risen from the dead and that the power of satan had been overthrown. They worked miracles too, and their miracles confirmed their word was indeed true. We call this word the Gospel of Jesus Christ.

We too have been given this same Holy Spirit. It comes to us in baptism. The problem is that for many of us the Holy Spirit does not burn like the flame of fire we saw with the Apostles, but only as a dying ember. An ember needs to be fanned to burst into a flame, and we fan that ember through prayer, worship, and most important obedience to the commandments of God.

But once fanned, life changes. We grow closer to God. The effects of life in Christ begins to manifest themselves in concrete ways. St. Paul (also an apostle) calls this the "fruit of the Spirit" and lists them for us:

 

But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, longsuffering, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control. Against such there is no law. And those who are Christ’s have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires. If we live in the Spirit, let us also walk in the Spirit. Let us not become conceited, provoking one another, envying one another (Galatians 5:22-26).

 

 

The Holy Spirit is the power of God. We are meant to experience and live in this power. It enables us to walk with Christ and bring His light into the world.

 

May God bless you all.

Christianity Without Pentecost

What happens when Orthodox Christian experience Ascension, but not Pentecost?

by: Fr. Josiah Trenham

The last ten days in the Church have been unusual. In some sense we have been living between two realities. On the leave-taking of Pascha we ceased the sustained celebration of the Holy Resurrection of the Lord as well as our saying, “Christ is risen. Truly He is risen.” The next day we celebrated the Glorious Ascension of our Savior into the heavens to sit at the right hand of the Father. For these days between Ascension and Pentecost we have been in a waiting mode. We, like the Apostles of old, have been heeding our Lord’s ascension instructions to “wait in Jerusalem to be clothed with power from on high” (St. Lk. 24:49). We have been waiting for the Holy Spirit to come.

Why were the Apostles waiting?

The obvious answer to this question is that they were waiting because the Lord Jesus commanded them to tarry until Pentecost. There is, however, much more to this waiting than that. We must understand very clearly the difference between the apostles before Pentecost and after Pentecost. Something dramatic happened to them that changed them personally. They were transformed. Fear turned into martyric boldness; fishermen became the world’s teachers; doubt was replaced by mountain-moving faith. All because of Pentecost.

The Necessity of Pentecost

Some of us do not understand the necessity of Pentecost. Pentecost is many things, and we have spoken about these realities before. Pentecost is revelation of the Holy Trinity to the world. This is why this Feast is also called “Trinity Day” in the Church. The Apostles knew the Father. They had become the disciples of the Son. And now they were filled with the Holy Spirit. Pentecost is also the birthday of the New Testament Church. It is the democratization of the Spirit of God to all believers. It is the unification of all mankind, and the definitive beginning to the reversal of the chaos of the Tower of Babel. All of these things we have previously discussed, but today I wish to point out that Holy Pentecost is the evidence that Christianity is not a man-made or earthly religion. It is not a set of ethical standards. It is not for moral guidance. Christianity is a miraculous and divine communion between God and man. Christianity is the spiritualization or divination of man.

If Christianity were simply a man-made religion, even if it were the best and most beautiful man-made religion, there would be no need for the disciples to tarry in Jerusalem these days awaiting Pentecost. Why would they need to? They had for years lived in close contact with Christ, and had been His most intimate students. They could have simply begun to write and teach and pass on what they had learned. They had been fully trained, and so it is time to start training. This is how it is with every other of the world’s religions. Not so with Christianity. Christianity is not about ideas, moral guidance, ethical norms, social structures, etc.. Christianity, of course, is not free from these things, but this is not what Holy Orthodoxy is about. Holy Orthodoxy is about the coming of the Holy Spirit into man. It is about human transformation and deification, not ideas. There is no Christianity without Pentecost. Orthodoxy without the Holy Spirit is not Orthodoxy.

Many Christians tragically live between Ascension and Pentecost

With that said is it not tragic how often we live with our Orthodoxy as a set of ideas. We think we are Orthodox because we believe certain things in our heads and were born or converted to a certain family or at a certain time. If the Apostles had remained in the state they were in between Ascension and Pentecost they would never have brought the Gospel to the world. They would never have become the great saints they did. They would never have crushed the demons like they did. They did all of these things because they were living in union with the Holy Spirit of God.

Sometimes we Orthodox evidence little proof that we are living post-Pentecost. Our faith is weak. We are bound by sins. We have little Christian joy. We read or listen to the Acts of the Apostles and think that the Apostles were living a different way of life. We pick up and read a book on the life of a particular saint and the saint’s mode of being appears to us to be foreign and almost unintelligible. Why? Because we are not living in the Holy Spirit. We are more like the fearful and doubting disciples prior to Pentecost. Others around us seem to be radiant. They endure trials with joy. They don’t worry. Why? Because they are in a dynamic relationship with the Holy Spirit. They are sincerely praying the Prayer to the Holy Spirit, “O Heavenly King, O Comforter, the Spirit of Truth, Who art in all places and filleth all things, the Treasury of Good Things and Giver of Life, come and abide in us, and cleanse us from every stain, and save our souls O Good One.” The Holy Spirit is in these ones abiding in them, cleanses them, and saving them!

Christianity without Pentecost is Empty Form!

If our Orthodox life is not permeated with the presence of the Holy Spirit it is all in vain! Consider first that the Holy Sacraments or Mysteries of the Church are all dependent completely upon the Holy Spirit. Baptism saves us because we are not born of the water alone, but of water and the Spirit (St. Jn. 3:3-5). Chrismation itself is an individual’s personal Pentecost. The seal of the gift of the Holy Spirit. Ordination is the special bequeathal of the Holy Spirit to men, and the substance of the priesthood is that priests bear the Holy Spirit in the community. This is why our Lord gathered the twelve together and breathed upon them and said, “Receive the Holy Spirit. Whoever’s sins you remit are remitted. Whoever’s sins you retain are retained” (St. John 20:23). Marriage is simply temporal and earthly if it is not consecrated by the Holy Spirit and bound together in His love. Holy Unction without the Holy Spirit is simply a complex skin treatment! It is the Holy Spirit in the sacred oil healing our souls and bodies! Confession is insincere and pointless unless it is a Spirit-inspired compunction and a Spirit-empowered absolution. And think of the Mystery of Mysteries and the Sacrament of Sacraments: the Holy Eucharist. The existence of the Holy Eucharist is completely dependent upon the Holy Spirit. It is the Holy Spirit Whom the priest calls down upon the Holy Table in the epiklesis: “changing them by Thy Holy Spirit.”

This liturgical reality is beautifully evidenced in many different saints’ lives, especially those saints who were bishops or priests responsible for the celebration of the eucharist. The story is told of St. Basil the Great that he had hanging over his altar a beautiful oil lamp made in the form of a golden dove. Always at the time of the transformation of the gifts the dove would begin to swing. A similar story is told about our Holy Father John of San Francisco and Shanghai. St. John would see the Holy Spirit descend as fire into the holy chalice at the epiklesis as he served liturgy. On one occasion the liturgy was delayed because St. John would not go on since he saw no fire. Wondering why he turned to his deacon and saw his face was covered over in a black cloud. Asking the deacon what was wrong the deacon confessed that he had not prepared for the liturgy properly. Once the deacon divested and left the altar the fire came and liturgy could continue.

All of the Holy Mysteries are empty forms without the Holy Spirit, and this may be said about all matters of our faith and practice. Fasting is simply dieting if it is not an attempt to acquire the Holy Spirit. It is not a coincidence that our Lord went into the desert to fast for forty days “led by the Holy Spirit” (St. Lk. 4:1). Sin is not overcome except by the Holy Spirit. He is One Who enables us to “mortify the deeds of the body” (Rom. 8:13). We could go on and on. There is no prayer without the Holy Spirit praying in us. There is no church without the Holy Spirit. There is no Church Temple without the Holy Spirit. This is why when we erect a true church temple the bishop chrismates the altar and the temple itself. The Temple has its own Pentecost for it truly becomes not simply a functional gathering place, but the House of God and Temple of the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit lives there. If He does not then the Temple become a Temple of Satan (Rev. 2:9).

Our Goal is to Acquire the Holy Spirit

In the light of truth we see then that St. Seraphim was correct when he was asked by someone, “What is the purpose of this life?”, and he answered, “The acquisition of the Holy Spirit.” “If a son shall ask bread of any of you that is a father, will he give him a stone? Or if he ask a fish, will he for a fish give him a serpent? Or if he shall ask an egg, will he offer him a scorpion? If ye then, being evil, know how to give good gifts unto your children: how much more shall your heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to them that ask him?” (St.Lk. 11:11-13). All of our Christian effort and spiritual struggle is guided toward this one thing: obtaining an increase of the Holy Spirit. This is what it means to become spiritual. This is the goal of Christianity: the union of man with God by the Holy Spirit. Let us not betray the true nature of our religion by living as though Orthodoxy was about ideas, morals, etc.. Nonsense. Christianity is about becoming one with the True God: by grace becoming what He is. Now some of you may be thinking, “But how do we experience Pentecost? What do I do if I feel stuck between Ascension and Pentecost?” An answer to these questions will be given in next Sunday’s homily.

Now to God the Father, and to the Ascended Lord Jesus Christ, and to the Holy Spirit poured forth today be all glory. Amen.

Fr. Josiah Trenham is the pastor of St. Andrew Orthodox Church in Riverside, CA.