Follow Jesus!

Happy St. Peter and St. Paul Day!

We celebrate two key founders of the Apostolic Church, St. Peter and St. Paul. They are essential in understanding the original Church of Jesus Christ. They provide an example of how we should function as the Apostolic Church today. Jesus gave Peter the message, and Peter and Paul followed it until they were martyred. Our Gospel Portion for today is St. John 21:15:19, and we will meditate on,

Jesus said to him, “Feed my sheep.” St. John 21:17

It is a simple message, yet the world complicates it. It led to the Crucifixion and death of our Lord and the martyrdom of Saints Peter and Paul, the many martyrs of the early Church, and is present in our world today in the recent Martyrdoms of the Christians who attended the Divine Liturgy in Syria.

Feeding the Sheep is a problem for those who refuse to follow the Love Jesus taught and still teaches through those who are faithful to Him!

Sadly, through the two thousand years of this message, there is still so much hate. But we celebrate the faithfulness of our ancestors in the faith. We know that many faced cruel deaths, but they are still alive and are interceding for us today!

Love never dies!

My friends, keep “feeding the Sheep”!

Feed the sheep with food, feed the sheep with the Word of God, and feed the sheep with actions of Divine Love!

Be Jesus today!

Happy Feast of St. Peter and St. Paul!

Pax. The Hermit of Peace.

Be At One With Jesus!

Be at one with everyone!

Happy Sunday in Ascensiontide (the time between Ascension Thursday and Pentecost Sunday). This Sunday is Jesus’ prayers for us. Our Gospel Portion is St. John 17:20-26. We will concentrate on the following,

“Holy Father, I pray not only for them but also for those who will believe in Me through their word, so that they may all be one, as You, Father, are in Me and I in You, that they also may be in Us, that the world may believe that You sent Me.”

St. John 17:20-21

We are in this in-between time from Ascension Thursday, 40 days after the Resurrection of Our Lord Jesús Christ and the great Feast of Pentecost. This allows us to prepare our hearts to receive God’s Spirit in a new and powerful way.

We need God’s Spirit because the spirit of the world, the spirit of evil seems to be overwhelming. We need the Gifts of the Spirit and we need the Attributes of the Spirit to rise above the spirit of the world. For example, we and the world need kindness, which comes from God, rather than meanness which is so common in the world.

Please use this time to remind us of how God wants us to treat ourselves and others. People are suffering and we may be suffering ourselves, we and the world need God’s Ways to be lived out in us!

May God’s Spirit, the Holy Spirit, come alive in us and make our world a better place!

Pax. The Hermit of Peace.

https://gofund.me/1ad6a4aa

Jesus Rose and He Takes Us With Him!

Alleluia Amen!

A glorious day to be alive!

Jesus, who died on the Cross, on the third day rose from the dead and spent 40 days working with His Disciples and then Ascended to the Father to reign until He returns, at the end of the ages, is our marvelous reality!

Let us look at a section of one of the Resurrection accounts,

While they were perplexed about this, behold, two men stood by them in dazzling apparel;

And as they were frightened and bowed their faces to the ground, the men said to them, “Why do you seek the living among the dead? He is not here but has risen.” Luke 24:4-5

Jesus is Risen!

The impossible happened! A very dead person rises from the dead and He takes us with Him!

Jesus was not born for Himself! He did not grow up to adulthood for Himself! He did not teach us for Himself! He did not suffer for Himself! He did not die on the Cross for Himself! And He did not rise from the dead for Himself! Jesus did it all for us!

What will we do for Him? We have fifty days to celebrate His resurrection. What will we do to change our lives as a gift in response to the radical love that Jesus reveals in His 33 years of His earthly life?

Make this Eastertide 2025 awesome!

Pax. The Hermit of Peace.

https://gofund.me/033e2079

Let Jesus Come In!

Happy Palm Sunday!

Today we celebrate Jesus’ grand entrance into Jerusalem as He enters His Passion and death. Many received Him in jubilation, but in a few days would be swayed to support His execution. Our Gospel Portion today is St. Luke 19: 28-40. We will concentrate on,

As He rode along, people kept spreading their cloaks in the road. As He was now approaching the path down from the Mount of Olives, the whole multitude of the disciples began to praise God joyfully with loud voices for all the deeds of power that they had seen, saying,

“Blessed is the King who comes in the name of the Lord!”

Luke 19: 36-38

Holy Week is very important. It is a time to get closer to Jesus. It is crucial get as much as possible from this week. However, life gets in the way. At this time in our world, there are many distractions, therefore, it is our responsibility to open our hearts and let Jesus come in.

Jesus has healing for us! But we must close our hearts from the distractions so that we can receive Jesus’ Peace in our hearts.

Let the love of this week permeate us! Let us travel with Jesus in a profound way, and with Easter, Resurrection Sunday, we will rise with Him.

Peace is available! May Jesus reign in our lives!

Pax. The Hermit of Peace.

https://gofund.me/1ad6a4aa

The Father Is Still Calling Us Home!

Regardless of what we have done, regardless of what gifts of God we wasted, God wants us home!

We are approaching the Great Feast of Easter and today we are reminded of the tremendous love of God for us. We are presented with the parable of the Prodigal Son. For our meditation today we will concentrate on the following section,

20 And he arose and came to his father. But while he was yet at a distance, his father saw him and had compassion and ran and embraced him and kissed him. Luke 15:20

The younger Son of the Father had fallen always from the Father’s love. He wasted the gifts that the Father gave him looking for pleasures that the world could provide, but the pleasures of the world do not last. When the son hit rock bottom, he remembered the Father and returned to him.

The love of the Father welcomed the son back and the celebration began!

Lent is a time to return to Father God! This Holy Season calls us back to True Love!

How are we doing?

Let us use these last few weeks of Lent so that we can embrace the Risen Lord with renewed vigor!

Pax. The Hermit of Peace.

https://gofund.me/1ad6a4aa

Being Tempted is a Reality!

Jesus reveals how we respond!

Welcome to the First Sunday of Lent 2025!

We begin this sacred time always in celebration of the holy time of Jesus’ 40 days in the wilderness as He prepared for His mission to humanity. Here we renew our mission to ourselves and the world!

Our Gospel Portion is taken from St. Luke 4: 1-13 and we will concentrate on the following,

And Jesus answered, “It is written, ‘You shall worship the Lord your God, and Him only shall you serve.’ ” Luke 4:8

Jesus had to go through three temptations from the evil one after His 40-day fast. He was in a weakened state, but He relied on Father God and was victorious over these temptations. In doing so, Jesus modeled for us how to deal with the temptations to do the wrong thing in our lives.

Temptations are a reality, it is how we deal with them that matters!

The Son of God, Jesus, came to teach us how to live out our true selves in a world that is not comfortable with the truth! There are so many easy answers to our problems and many of these answers are contrary to our true selves as images of God in the world. In our selection today we see our focus. If any action takes us from the true worship of God, then it is not appropriate for us!

During this sacred time of Lent, may we work on ourselves so that our lives mirror Jesus in all that we say and do, now and ages unending! Amen!

Pax. The Hermit of Peace.

https://gofund.me/033e2079

Be A Child Of The Most High!

Love Matters!

Being a Child of the Most High is challenging. However, it is a sure way to find true peace in one’s life. Jesus models this way of life.

Our Gospel Portion today is St. Luke 6:27-38 and our section to use today follows,

“But love your enemies, and do good, and lend, expecting nothing in return; and your reward will be great, and you will be children of the Most High; for He is kind to the ungrateful and the selfish.” Luke 6: 35

How does one truly become a Child of the Most High, simply it is to do what the Son of God Did! Jesus’ words and example are the way of life that brings peace on Earth and good will to all. This way of life goes against the way people normally live and treat one another, but it is the way of peace.

Be little Jesus and transform our lives.

The life, Passion, and Death of Jesus is His modeling of the good life for us. It is the life of a true child of the Most High.

Be like Jesus and change the world one person at a time!

Pax. The Hermit of Peace.

https://gofund.me/033e2079

Rejoice and Be Glad in Jesus!

Jesus will make a way!

The message of Jesus is so profound yet it it is so contrary to the way humans approach life. However, if we aim to fulfill the Way of Jesus, Heaven would be in our hearts and that Heaven would radiate from us through our world!

Our Gospel Portion today is the Sermon of the Plains, this is found in the Gospel of St. Luke 6: 17-26. Our selection is as follows:

“Blessed are you when men hate you, and when they exclude you and revile you, and cast out your name as evil, on the account of the Son of Man!

Rejoice in that day, and leap for joy, for behold, your reward is great in Heaven; for so their fathers did to the prophets.”

Luke 6:22-23

If we would take Jesus seriously, there is nothing that people would say and/or do to us that would destroy us! The real relationship that matters is our relationship with Jesus! We are built on the shoulders of those who took Jesus seriously! For the first 300 years of Christianity, being faithful could lead to be to being executed. Yet they were faithful unto death!

An example only 10 years ago, 21 people were beheaded, and the execution was filmed by their executioners. The executioner were members of ISIS. These Coptic Christians refused to renounce Jesus! These Christians truly lived the words of Jesus and they speak to us today that Jesus Is All! It has encouraged me to be more faithful and thousands of others.

Hopefully we will not have to experience execution physically for Jesus, but in little ways we may experience the hate of others because Jesus Is All for us!

May we never let anyone take Jesus away from us!

Jesus is our Heaven and we will experience Heaven here and now in Him!

Have an awesome Sunday!

Pax. The Hermit of Peace.

https://gofund.me/033e2079

Give Jesus Total Trust!

Jesus will make something beautiful out of us!

In our Gospel Portion today (St. Luke 5: 1-11) we have a very important conversation between Jesus and Simon Peter. We read,

And when He ceased speaking, He said to Simon, “Put out into the deep and let down your nets for a catch.”

And Simon answered, “Master, we toiled all night! But at Your word I will let down the nets.”

And when they had done this, they enclosed a great shoal of fish; and as their nets were breaking. They beckoned to their partners in the other boat to come and help them. And they came and filled both boat, so that they began to sink.

But when Simon Peter saw it, he fell down at Jesus’ knees saying, “Depart from me, for I am a sinful man, O Lord.” Luke 5: 4-8

We must think like Jesus, not like Simon Peter. Jesus knows us better than we know ourselves. Simon Peter had a limited understanding of himself. And that makes perfect sense. He knows how holy Jesus is, he knows how powerful Jesus is, and he knows how sinful he is. But Jesus saw through the shortcomings of Simon Peter and He knew He could do marvelous things through him.

Simon Peter did follow Jesus and Jesus could build His Church using him! Simon Peter surrendered to Jesus and this gives us an example for us to follow!

Do not let our opinions of ourselves become a barrier to God’s plan for us!

Let Jesus have His way with us and He will do marvelous things through us too!

Be blest!

Pax. The Hermit of Peace.

https://gofund.me/033e2079

Let Us Be Light!

May we be light to the darkness that surrounds us!

Happy Feast of the Presentation of Our Lord Jesus to the Temple!

We have another aspect of the Christmas Mystery today, the Presentation of the Lord in the Temple. Our Gospel Portion for today is St. Luke 2:22-40. This event follows the Jewish Law referred to as follows,

And when the time came for their purification according to the Law of Moses, they brought Him up to Jerusalem to press Him to the Lord

(as it is written in the Law of the Lord, “Every male that opens the womb shall be called holy to the Lord”) and to offer a sacrifice according to what is said in the Law of the Lord, “a pair of turtledoves or two young pigeons.” Luke 2:22-24

This celebration was done 40 days after the birth of Our Lord! What a blessing to celebrate this event of Our Lord’s life! Jesus did everything that people would do, yet the significance was magnificent! At the Presentation, God entered the Temple in bodily form. His presence blessed the Temple and two individuals received Him as Lord in His Temple. We read of one of these individuals as follows,

Now there was a man in Jerusalem, whose name was Simeon… And it was revealed to him that he would not see death before he had seen the Lord’s Christ. And inspired by the Holy Spirit he came into the Temple; and when the parents brought the Child Jesus, to do for Him according to the custom of the Law, he took Him in his arms and blessed God and said, “Lord, now let your servant go in peace, according to your word; for my eyes have seen your salvation which you have prepared in the presence of all peoples, a light for revelation to the Gentiles and the glory to Your people Israel”

Luke 2:25-32

Today it is customary to bless candles and walk into our temples, our church buildings. We have received Jesus, we carry our lights into the church, but do not leave them there!

Can we carry our lights out in the world? There is so much darkness and pain around us!

May we bring the Light of Christ everywhere we go!

Be light and break up the darkness!

Happy Feast Day!

Pax. The Hermit of Peace

https://gofund.me/033e2079