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All Glory be to our Lord and God and Savior Jesus Christ, today, tomorrow and forever!
“CALLED BY CHRIST…
GIFTED BY THE HOLY SPIRIT”
These words define the experience we all will have when we gather together on 19-23 October 2016 at our Metropolia Center in the Name of God in the Holy Trinity to convene the twenty-first Regular Sobor of our Church. It will be, once again, an opportunity for us as the inheritors of an incredibly rich spiritual legacy passed on to us by our forefathers and mothers in our Holy Orthodox Faith to consider and evaluate our success in not only living up to that legacy, but, indeed, enriching it for the generations that follow us.
We all are involved in the ministry of our Holy Church. At the moment of our Baptism we “clothed ourselves in Christ” and through our Chrismation we received the fullness of the “Gift” of the Holy Spirit. It is not at some particular moment “later” in our lives that we suddenly “discover” Christ and “experience” the enlightenment of the Holy Spirit. At that moment of our Baptism and Chrismation, we all were “CALLED BY CHRIST AND GIFTED BY THE HOLY SPIRIT”. Following that moment, all that we do and all that we are is continually reinforced in us through all the Holy Sacraments – especially through the Holy Eucharist – Christ uniting with us in our own bodies – “the temples of the Holy Spirit”, as we are defined by St. Paul. (1 Cor. 6:19)
