The Holy Priest-Martyr Artemon and those with him (284-305)
Abstinence from meat and foods that contain meat.
Read
Acts 5:1-11; John 5:30-6:2
Christ is risen! Truly, He is risen!
Our Lord’s words in today’s reading from John’s Gospel are directed at those religious Jews, likely of the party of the Pharisees, who are in Jerusalem. They have challenged Jesus for healing the paralytic and He has rebuked them both for their misunderstanding of the Sabbath and for their hardness of heart. Our Lord by His actions and his healing ministry reveals His divinity and manifests the love of God, yet those around Him refuse to believe that He is the Messiah, that He is the one of whom Moses wrote. In other words, Christ as God is not simply the origin of the Law, He is Law. He is the God of the Old Testament and the New Testament. He is the Word through whom the world is created. He is the one who delivered Israel out of Egypt. He is the Son of David and the Son of God. And by His words, including these recorded in the Gospel of John, He calls all to believe in Him.
There has been a temptation among some throughout the history of the Church to create a false distinction between a loving, merciful God manifested in Jesus in the New Testament from a purportedly vengeful and wrathful God in the Old Testament. This is a grave error and not what the Church teaches. God is the God of all ages. Christ reveals us fully who God is -that same God who made a covenant with Abraham, who came to Moses and delivered the Law, and who chose David to be king. Christ as God reveals to us who He is most powerfully and wonderfully in His Glorious Resurrection which we continue to celebrate. Christ is who He says He is and the Holy Scriptures bear witness to Him. Is it too wonderful to believe? It’s too wonderful not to believe.