Our Venerable Father Onuphrius the Great; Our Venerable Father Peter of Athos.
Post-feast of Pentecost. Saint with Six Stichera.
Romans 1:28-2:9; Matthew 5:27-32.
Read Matthew 5:27-32
The readings following Pentecost and the Sunday of All Saints—today’s reading included—form the Church’s manual for discipleship. After centuries of waiting for the hidden Messiah, and following His revelation and ascension in glory, the Church, His Bride, swiftly enters her missionary phase—like a newly conceived mother whose body transforms to support new life. Just as the Old Testament “week of first fruits” (Lev. 23) called Israel to offer its best to the Lord, so now the new Israel offers the holy ones conceived through baptism in water and the Spirit.
Through these readings, these newborn disciples receive a firm catechetical foundation to grow in the Spirit-filled Church, their new family. It is this Church—ekklesia—that St. Matthew, more than any other Gospel writer, highlights explicitly. Like a child holding to a pillar before taking a first step, Matthew offers structure and authority to a fledgling community preparing to fulfill Christ’s command: “Go, therefore, and make disciples of all nations…” (Matt. 28:19).
The Sermon on the Mount exemplifies this teaching. If we are to set the world ablaze with God’s fire, we must be radically different from the cold, dark world. We don’t merely avoid adultery—we shun even its thought. We don’t simply resist sin—we flee from the very spirit behind it, the one that hides in shadows and spreads misery.
We must take radical action to avoid entanglement with the false church and preserve the Spirit we received when conceived in the womb of our true mother, the Church.