My beloved spiritual children in Christ Our Only True God and Our Only True Savior,
CHRIST IS IN OUR MIDST! HE WAS, IS, AND EVER SHALL BE.

OUR LORD INVITES YOU TO HIS "GREAT SUPPER"

"Then He said to him, 'A certain man gave a great supper and invited many, and sent his servant at suppertime to say to those who were invited, Come, for all things are now ready. But they all with one accord began to make excuses...Then the Master said to the servant, 'Go out into the highways and hedges and compel them to come in, that my house may be filled. For I say to you that none of those men who were invited shall taste my supper" (St. Luke 14:-16-24).

The Divine Liturgy is indeed the Heavenly "Great Supper" that all Christian believers are invited by Him to attend and participate in. Saint Theophylact writes: "By 'a certain man' the Lord means His Father, the Lover of man. But whenever it alludes to God's love for man, He is presented as a man, as is the case here. Since the parable treats of God's extreme love for man and the divine economy of the Incarnation which He worked in us, making us sharers of the Flesh of His Son, the parable calls God a man and this divine economy a great supper."

Are we to turn down His invitation to us to attend His Heavenly Banquet? To do so is a great mistake and a sin. To make excuses such as "I need my sleep, I need to take my son or daughter to an athletic game, I need to do things around the house, or to do my weekly shopping, etc., reveal our lack of understanding of Who it is Who is inviting us and for what reason.

In order to justify our laziness, we can come up with all kinds of excuses. We, as the children of God, were created by Him to worship "God, who made the world and everything in it, since He is Lord of heaven and earth...for in Him we live and move and have our being, as also some of your own poets have said, 'For we are also His offspring'" (Acts 17:24-28).

In the New Testament, Sunday became the greater holy day because our Lord Christ, having risen from the dead, sanctified that day. According to the Church canons (rules), whoever violates this commandment is subject to excommunication i.e., "...without any graver necessity or any particular difficulty compelling him to absent himself from his own church for a very long time, fails to attend church on Sundays for three consecutive weeks, while living in the city, if he be a cleric (priest), let him be deposed from office; but if he be a layman, let him be removed from Communion." Do you see how serious it is not to attend the Divine Liturgy on Sundays? By not attending the Divine Liturgy for months and years, and by not receiving the Divine Eucharist one cuts himself or herself from God, a kind of self-imposed excommunication.

In the church, He Himself is present in His Body and Blood. God revives us in the Mystery of Baptism. It is in the church that we find forgiveness from Him through the Mystery of Repentance/Confession. He offers us His own self in the Most Holy Communion. I ask you where else can we find such sources of incorruptible life? According to an ancient ascetic, they who throughout the week fight against evil, hurry on Saturdays and Sundays to church to partake from the sources of the Living Water of Holy Communion, in order to quench the thirst of their hearts and to be cleansed of the filth of their defiled conscience.

Besides the fact that in His Holy House our Lord protects us and gives us strength, He also teaches us, for the Divine Service in its entirety is a true school of Divine love. In God's holy church, we hear His word, we bring to mind His marvelous divine acts, we learn about our future; indeed, in God's "temple everything uttereth His glory" (Psalm 28:9), as if before our very eyes there take place feats of the martyrs, the victories of the ascetics, courage of kings and priests; we learn about the Mystical nature of God, about the salvation which Christ has granted us; here we rejoice at Christ's Glorious Resurrection. It is not accidental that we refer to Sunday Divine Liturgy as a "lesser Pascha".

My beloved brothers and sisters in Christ Sunday Divine Liturgy reveal to us our extreme hope. It was not without reason that the holy Prophet David said that "We have thought, O God, of Thy mercy in the midst of Thy temple" (Psalm 47:10). Sunday Divine Liturgy is the best weapon against those numerous depressions and sorrows which inhabit our gray everyday life. This divine service is a brightly shining rainbow of God's covenant amidst the fog of the everyday experience.

You see now how necessary it is for everyone to attend and participate in the Divine Liturgy every Sunday? It does not matter if it is summer, autumn, winter or spring. God invites us to His Heavenly Banquet and we must feel honored, appreciate and respect His invitation. A true Christian can never, ever, reject God's invitation to do is death.

With agape in our Merciful and Loving God,

+Father George