Our Venerable Father Theodore Trichinas; Holy Anastasius of Mt. Sinai (686)
Read
Acts 3:19-26; John 2:1-11
Christ is risen! Truly, He is risen!
If there were one word to describe the way to live as a Christian, it would be repentance. Repentance has a two-fold movement: one movement in which we turn toward the Lord of our life, our Love; the other movement in which we turn away from sin and all that distracts us from our Lord, our Love. Repentance is the first word that our Lord preached in His public ministry, and it is the first of Peter in his sermon, a part of which we hear in the epistle reading for today. Repentance brings about a time of refreshment. It is not a passing refreshment like a brisk swim in some cool waters after a scorching hot and humid day. No, repentance brings about the refreshment of our humanity, a renewal of our humanity as it has been accomplished in our Lord through His death and resurrection.
The time from our Lord’s ascension and the giving of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost until the second coming of our Lord (the parousia), all spoken about by the prophets, is that time of refreshment, of renewal. We Christians do not panic when there are cataclysmic events or even events that affect the whole world (like our current pandemic) because we already know that we are in the end times. The peace that He gave to his disciples in the Upper Room in the evening of the day of Resurrection is the same peace we have received at our Baptism, the same peace with which are blessed in the Divine Liturgy. It is this very peace which acts as a rudder on the ship that stabilizes it against any wind or storm. It is the peace which affects our refreshment, our renewal.