Starting Anew: Committing to Christ!
On the first day of September we begin a new ecclesiastical year. We start anew! As we return to our scheduled routines, send our kids off to school, and begin a new liturgical cycle – it offers us an opportunity to embrace a new beginning… to look ahead and make a fresh start.
Many of our children are excited to begin the start of the school year with brand new school supplies, a chance to meet new friends, and learn and explore new subjects. For parents, this new beginning is welcomed yet for others it is dreaded.
Welcomed for some because their kids would be out of the house and out of their parent’s hair. Dreaded for others because of the loss of not having the kids around the home for most of the day. In either case parents are excited for their children to learn!
Our Holy Church, as a loving Mother, wants her children to learn, to prosper and to become enlightened and educated. St. Basil says that the core of education is developing the ‘kalon kai agathon anthropos’, the good and righteous person.
The Church, as a loving mother, directs the flock, her children toward the best education as found in the life of the church, striving to help develop the ‘good and righteous person’. The focus of this education is rooted in developing the spiritual nature of the human person.
St. John Krondstadt reminds us that we develop and grow as people when we are “meditating, feeling, speaking and communing with God through prayer, divine services, the sacraments, learning the word of God, and fellowship with our neighbor through mutual conversation assistance and teaching”.
Our faith reminds us that we are a community of beautiful yet broken people who are not united by our problems or diagnoses, but we are united by our thirst for God! We are folks who hunger for the life in Christ who helps us become transfigured in Christ as ‘good and righteous people’.
We have hope and faith that Christ will guide us to become the ‘good and righteous person’ and to freely participate in this community because we feel safe and at home in God’s word which embraces people rather than judges them. Which joins the suffering of humanity more than advises them on how to feel better, shaping and molding us to pour the love and life into one another for God’s Kingdom.
Our hope at Holy Apostles is to continue walking in the light creating a true community that strives to change lives, a community that supports an encounter with the Real God, the Resurrected Lord who fills our soul with sheer delight! That is our hope, to continue developing a relationship with Jesus who helps create a community that transforms life!
God’s desire is to offer us Himself, to encounter Him and to be inspired by His love. I know we want it and it requires that we step into the pain and suffering in a world where good dreams sometimes become shattered. So the hope is to commit ourselves to a ‘new life in Christ’ so we can be in a position to receive His abundant joy, and to experience the pleasure of His company.
Our church welcomes us to “begin anew” and to think and dwell about this new life in Christ. St. Paul said, “Be imitators of me, just as I also am of Christ.”, and to accomplish this we must seek whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable, and if anything is excellent or praiseworthy—think about such things and ‘JUST DO IT’!!!
I hope you can contemplate and practice living from these core truths offered to us by St. Paul. In this passage we learn that we are called to actively pursue what is good and pure. What a great witness it will be when we practice righteousness, when we live in purity and when our thoughts and actions are directed towards all things that are excellent and praiseworthy.
May we make this new church year a time for us to actively pursue a life in Christ knowing that Jesus wants to transform and restore us to our original beauty. Knowing that we are all broken and in tremendous need of healing, let us all ask, as did the publican, for the Lord to “have mercy on us”.
I am confident that God will restore in us, a new zeal for living our Christian life with joy, with passion, and with a bold confidence that Jesus is here to walk with us doing everything to open doors for the benefit of our souls. All we have to do is truly desire it and make our actions reflect this desire to walk with God.
Let us examine our life and tend to our spiritual nature and commit to a pursuit of spiritual discipline! Let’s start anew and make it a priority to dedicate our life to prayer! Commit to beginning your day with prayer and ending your day with prayer. Strive to make time for God and His Church as you deepen your relationship with Him.
Let us be curious about how we pursue what is good and pure. Let us examine our lives, our faith and our commitment. Indeed, the Church is a place of hope, a place of refuge and a place of renewal. Let us participate fully as a community of faith as we commit ourselves and one another, and our whole life to Christ our God.
Do not hold aloof from the Church, for nothing is stronger than the Church. The Church is your hope, your salvation, your refuge. It is higher than the heavens, it is wider than the earth. It never waxes old, but is always in full vigor. St. John Chrysostom
Blessings to you all,
+Fr. Tom
