Saint Anthony Church Reno NV

“If anyone would come  after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me.”  (Mk. 8:34)

At the heart of our faith, at the center of the Gospel is the Cross. Remember, ours isn’t a faith invented by someone, it has been given to us by Christ, and is the direct result of his life, teaching & miracles. So, truly, we can say that our Church is the product of the Son of God becoming the Son of Man!

“If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me.”

With these words of Jesus, dear Christians, we’re invited to offer to Him, not flowers and basils, but our hearts.

The Apostle Paul tells us that the Cross of our Lord was ‘foolishness for the Greeks’ and a ‘scandal for the Jews’. However, for those who believe -whether they’re Greek, Hebrew, or Roman- ‘the Cross is the power and wisdom of God.’ As we come to know and accept Christ -the crucified Christ- the Cross will become our greatest consolation -it’s a sign of God’s love for us. When Christ ascended the Cross, He offered salvation to the whole world, for all nations. But in order to gain our salvation, for each of us, every man, woman and child, it requires that we also choose to ascend the Cross. It means accepting the way of the Cross.

And whoever now ascends the cross can become a heavenly being, can find true life and see the glory of God! To ascend the Cross requires sacrifice and self-emptying, which is the opposite of self-gratification or self-indulgence. Nevertheless, for the race of Christians, self-sacrifice becomes our way to life; we lose our life to find it.

You can’t give something you don’t already have, this is undeniable, and the Lord didn’t promise earthly thrones because He Himself didn’t have these things: “My kingdom is not of this world”, he said. But what DID Christ promise? Sacrifice, self-denial and the Cross: “If anyone would come after me”, He said, “let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me”.

My dears, our life will be a cross, however, “through the cross joy has come to the entire world.” Do you know joy?

Today many Christian men and women approach the Church but never quite commit themselves to Christ for various reasons. Others will draw near and see Christ in the icon, feel something peaceful, sense the richness of Orthodox theology, the beauty of worship, but just don’t ever get too close. Why? What’s the reason?

The reason is that what we really want is an easy life. But Christ wants something else from us!

And for this reason some can no longer even come into the Church, because Christ really is here, and in Church we come face-to-face with the Crucified One and his love -his self-denying love- and we are judged by this love, because we know the Lord waits for our love in return.

Meanwhile, those who take up their cross continue to serve the Church and the world patiently, whoever they are, clergy or layperson, man, woman or child, there are always those who commit themselves to Christ, who joyfully offer themselves as a sacrifice for the glory of God as well as for society’s betterment, and for the peace of the world.

What do we say to this? How will we respond?

My dears, we will improve the world not with accusations and slanders, knives or guns – but with the Cross. The Cross, not some ornament or jewelry, not as a banner or emblem of war, not topping the king’s crown or a flagpole, but the Cross inscribed in our hearts and minds.

“The Cross,” as St John Chrysostom says, “let it become the instructor and the symbol of our life!”

God’s logic is different from ours; this is the mystery of life. Because of the death of Jesus Christ on the cross, we can now enjoy eternal life. And the cross is the symbol of the power and authority of the philanthropic God on earth – a triumph of death – through His death as a human but His resurrection as God.

Therefore, our greatest power is not what we have, but who we are. And we are Orthodox Christians – communicants of the Risen Body and Blood of Christ – and we are transformed into this new logic and new life.

But we must put into practice this new life that Christ has given us. This is the life of the Church, the life of the Divine Liturgy. Then we will gain the full extent of the power of this new mode of life – which death cannot destroy – it merely changes its external form and improves it!

And so, we venerate the cross of Christ which tells us of God’s coming to us, and of our return to Him – both accomplished by the death of the cross. We have been given the ability to die, and yet to live. This is the logic of the Divine Liturgy.

The Feast of the Exaltation of the Holy Cross is Monday, September 14th. Orthros and Divine Liturgy begin at 8am.

This weekend marks what would have been our Annual Greek Festival. Let us reflect on this while offering prayers for the health and resilience of our parishioners, their families, our community, and our world.

Let us look forward to the days we can once again come together without restriction to work in fellowship and share our church home with the community safely!

Until that time, the loss of our festival does present us with a significant financial hardship. As you know, all festival proceeds go directly towards supporting the operating expenses of our parish. This has been a primary catalyst for embarking on our “FAITH and LIGHT for All Generations” campaign with the goal of raising $125,000 to offset losses caused by the pandemic.

This weekend, when we would normally be enjoying our festival–the fellowship, the fun, the music, the dancing, the food, the pastries, the Greek beer, the Ouzo–we humbly ask that you reflect on what you may have spent leading up to the festival and throughout festival weekend, and consider offering this amount as a donation to our FAITH and LIGHT campaign.

We understand this time is impacting everyone in many ways and, therefore, all expressions of love for our church are deeply appreciated. It is your love that keeps alive the Faith and Light of our church, now and for generations to come.

May you have health and God’s blessing! Ygeía kai evlogía Theoú na éhete!

To Offer a Donation…

Please click on our Donations and Stewardship tab and select the Faith and Light option. Alternatively, you can mail or drop off a check to the church office. Please be sure to note “FAITH and LIGHT” in the memo so your funds can be attributed to this campaign

Michael, the great and chief commander of God’s bodiless hosts, both before the incarnation and after, showed compassion and solicitude toward the race of man [Josh. 5:13-15; Dan. 10: 13, 12: 1; Jude 1:9; Rev. 12:71. He bestowed many benefits on earth before the coming of Christ, and afterward he showed even greater care and love toward the Christians. Read more…

Archimandrite Vassilios Papavassiliou

In this passage, clearly, our Lord is speaking of an impossibility, not a mere difficulty, “it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich person to enter the kingdom of God.” And yet Christ gives hope even to the very rich: “For man it is impossible, for God all things are possible”.

But why does Christ tell us that it is impossible for the rich to enter the kingdom of heaven? What is so terrible about wealth?

St Basil the Great regarded great wealth as equal to not loving our fellow human beings, as he makes abundantly clear in his exegesis of today’s Gospel passage:

“…if what you say is true”, says St Basil to the Rich Man, “that you have kept from your youth the commandment of love and have given to everyone the same as to yourself, then how did you come by this abundance of wealth? Care for the needy requires the expenditure of wealth: when all share alike, dispersing their possessions among themselves, they each receive a small portion for their individual needs. Thus, those who love their neighbor as themselves possess nothing more than their neighbor; yet surely, you seem to have great possessions! How else can this be, but that you have preferred your own enjoyment to the consolation of the many? For the more you abound in wealth, the more you lack in love”. (To the Rich)

And as he iterates elsewhere:

“The bread you are holding back is for the hungry, the clothes you keep put away are for the naked, the shoes which are rotting away with disuse are for those who have none, the silver you keep buried in the earth is for the needy”.

St Basil, like St John Chrysostom and other Church Fathers, believed that whatever one has that is over and above one’s needs should be given to those who have less. But this is complicated by the human tendency to adjust the definition of “need” to fit one’s current level of income. Those who have more tend to use more.

St Basil treats this subject in his sermon, I Will Tear Down My Barns, which deals with the Parable of the Rich Fool (Luke 12: 16-21) who, on the very day he was to die, said to himself that he will tear down his barns and build larger ones to store his goods. St Basil regards this tearing down of the barns to build larger ones as a metaphor for expanding the baseline of need. “Barn” represents our definition of need; what we think we need to live. St Basil says that if we never have any extra to share, it is because we adjust our definition of need to suit our situation.

This is why wealth can so easily become an obstacle to love and salvation. Our definition of need becomes distorted, and we begin to see luxury and excess as a necessity, overlooking the abject poverty and genuine need and deprivation of others, favoring our own comfort and abundant wealth over the most basic needs of our fellow human beings.

The Church did not need to wait for [COVID19 and the ensuing global economic crisis] to know that wealth can so easily become an obstacle to love and salvation. It is a crisis that was caused by the greed of the wealthy. Thus, we are witnesses to the fact that Christ’s warning about wealth remains as relevant now as it did some 2,000 years ago!

Christ warns us to not attach ourselves to worldly treasure, but to the Kingdom of God. “Do not store for yourselves treasure on earth, which rusts and decays and which thieves break into and steal. But store for yourselves treasure in heaven. For where your treasure is, there will your heart be also”.

This is why, at every Divine Liturgy, the priest commands, “Let us lift up our hearts”, to which the people respond, “We lift them up unto the Lord”. But for our hearts to be with God in heaven, we have to let go of all the worldly attachments that keep our hearts on earth. That is why, as we begin now to prepare for Holy Communion at the Divine Liturgy, we will hear the words, “Let us now lay aside every care of this life, that we may receive the King of All”.

Christ tells us that the Kingdom of God is like a pearl of enormous value. When someone finds it and realizes its worth, he sells everything he has in order to obtain that pearl. (Matt. 13:45-46)

At the Divine Liturgy, we are reminded that what is more important than anything in this world, more valuable than anything in life, more precious than life itself, is the Kingdom of God. And if we sacrifice everything for that Kingdom, we will find that we have not really sacrificed anything at all, but rather, we will have gained something more precious than anything in the world. We will have gained eternal life, the life of God and His Kingdom which shall have no end.