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From the Pastor’s Desk
Come, let us purify our souls with alms and mercy to the poor, not blowing a trumpet, or publishing what we do in charity,
lest our left hand know what our right hand has done, and vainglory steal from us the fruit of almsgiving.
But let us plead in secret with the One who knows our secrets, crying out: ‘Father, forgive us our wrongs,
for you are the lover of mankind!’
The antiphon above is chanted in the churches of our Orthodox brothers and sisters this First Sunday of Lent. It captures the call to conversion in this holy season of Lent in much the same way that we in the Roman Catholic Church did on Ash Wednesday.
Lent has begun and today, in earnest, we are invited to fully enter into metanoia – the Greek word that means “conversion,” i.e., to turn around. We turn so that we may face God once more, even with our sins, for the Mercy of God is greater than our sins. From our Parish Mission we learned that evil is not the opposite of good but, rather, the absence of God. The Evil One (Satan) who tempts the Son of God today in the Gospel wants us to commit to the absence of God in our lives. As the Letter of Saint James teaches us: “Submit yourselves to God. Resist the devil, and he will flee from you. Draw near to God, and he will draw near to you” (James 4:7-8).
Love,
Father Tom