Our Home. Our Family

The Annunciation Cathedral is our spiritual home, and we her family.

Our spiritual home is a place of prayer, comfort, spiritual healing, and celebration. Perhaps, you were brought here as an infant for your 40-day blessing, or baptized or married here. Some may find a home here because this is where their parents or grandparents worshipped. Or maybe, this parish, this home, is the place you have found on your spiritual journey or as a respite while in school. We are all brothers and sisters in Christ – a family, traveling on our spiritual journey together.

As we enter the church each week and light a candle, we offer a prayer to prepare ourselves for worship, to open our hearts to the love of Christ, and to pray for ourselves and our loved ones. This preparatory act connects us to generations past, to those who have gone before us, to those who are with us, and to the saints of the Church. This same simple act of lighting a candle in prayer also connects us to future generations and creates and develops our spiritual home for our children, and their children.

Because of this, and the common faith we share, it is incumbent upon each of us today, as we gather for the Special General Assembly following Divine Liturgy, to engage with each other with Christian love and respect. We may have differing views on the Iconography Project that will be discussed today, but we share the same faith in the same God. We are all created in His image and Likeness and are called upon respect that image and to honor that likeness in all we say and do.

For this reason, during the Divine Liturgy we are called upon to, “Love one another and with one mind, confess, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, one in essence and undivided.” If we fail to do this we disrespect each other, we disrespect our forefathers, we disrespect future generations, we disrespect God, Himself.

As I wrote last week, St. Peter tells us, we must speak to one another in love, ‘as one who speaks the very words of God.’