Human beings can have two kinds of faith. The first kind of faith, which has its seat in the mind, is the reasonable faith of acceptance. In this case, a person rationally accepts something and believes in what he has accepted, but this faith does not justify him. When Holy Scripture says, "Man is saved by faith alone" (Ephesians 2:8), it does not mean that he is saved merely by the faith of acceptance. There is, however, another kind of faith, the faith of the heart. It is referred to in this way because this kind of faith is not found in the human reason or intellect, but in the region of the heart. This faith of the heart is a gift of God that you will not receive unless God decides to grant it. It is also called inner faith, which is the kind of faith that father of young lunatic in the Gospel asked Christ to given him when he said, "Lord, help my unbelief" (St. Matthew 9:24). Naturally, the father already believed with his reason, but he did not have that deep inner faith that is a gift of God.

Oftentimes, people will say one thing and do another. A person should never boast about anything not only before but also after one has achieved it. You won't be able to work harder to achieve your next goal if you do not come out of the pride of your first achievement.

For our Holy Father, the purpose of the entire Triodion was to remind us in brief of God's benefaction to us from the beginning and to instill in the memory of all how we were fashioned by Him, and how we violated the commandment which He gave us for the sake of our nakedness; how we were banished from the delight of Paradise and expelled through the envy of our enemy the serpent, the Author of evil, who was brought down on account of his pride, and how we remained outcasts from the good things of Paradise and were led around by the Devil; how the Son of the Logos/Word of God, moved by compassion, bowed the Heavens and came down, dwelt in the Virgin and became man for our sake, and through His own way of life showed us how to ascend back to Heaven through humility, fasting, and refraining from evil deeds, and through His actions; how He suffered, arose, and ascended to the Heavens, and sent forth the Holy Spirit upon His Holy Disciples and Apostles;

The Parish church is governed and administered in accordance with the Faith, Tradition and Holy Canons of the Church together with the provisions of the Charter, and the Uniform Parish Regulations of the Greek Orthodox Archdiocese of America.

Our Great and Divine Benefactor Jesus Christ commands His followers and says, "Take heed to yourselves, lest your hearts be weighed down with 'carousing, drunkenness, and cares of this life, and that Day come on you unexpectedly. For it will come as a snare on all those who dwell on the fact of the whole earth. 'Watch, therefore, and pray always that you may be counted worthy to escape all these things that will come to pass, and to stand before the Son of Man'. And in the daytime He was teaching in the temple, but at night He went out and stayed on the mountain called Olivet. Then early in the morning, all the people came to Him in the temple to hear Him" (St. Luke 21:34-38).

On this and the following two Sundays, the theme is repentance. Repentance is the door through which we enter Lent, the starting-point of our journey to Pascha. And to repent signifies far more than self-pity or futile regret over things done in the past. The Greek word metanoia means 'change of mind': to repent is to be renewed, to be transformed in our inward viewpoint, to attain a fresh way of looking at our relationship to God and to others.