My beloved family in The Lord,
I don’t know how many of you are aware that in 1987, The Antiochian Orthodox Christian Archdiocese of America, led at that time, by His Eminence Metropolitan Philp, received into Our Orthodox Faith, 75 former evangelical pastors, along with over 2000 people!
It was probably, the greatest mass conversion to Our Orthodox Faith in the modern days!
All these people who have come to Our Church, did not even know that such thing as The Orthodox Church exists in the world! They were not determined to find The Orthodox Church, but to find The Church of The New Testament, The Original Church of Our Lord Jesus Christ and in doing so, they found Our Church!
You can imagine as I stated in the first place here, that they were former evangelical Christians, they were pretty much Bible only/Sola Scriptura oriented people! To make it clear for everyone, what does this mean? There’s a religious current here in The South, called The Bible belt, that pretty much teaches that from The Doctrine of Our Lord Jesus Christ, whatever is written in The Holy Scripture (Bible) is to be considered and if it is not contained in The Bible, it is not to be considered! Now coming from that kind of a background, all these former evangelicals had hard time in the beginning, to accept our Orthodox Theology, in various aspects that are not included in The Holy Scripture! Such as, Liturgical Worship, Veneration of The Virgin Mary and All The Saints, calling our pastors “Father”, receiving The Holy Eucharist/Communion, etc.
Yet, they were opened their hearts and minds to The Will of God and they let The Holy to illuminate them with The Light of The Truth!
My dearly beloved in The Lord,
In Our Orthodox Church, we are known for preaching The Fullness of Christianity, which means literally that we preach, teach and live our life in Jesus Christ Our Lord!
It is not that we preach what Jesus said, but in Our Orthodox Liturgy, we literally do, what Jesus did, from the early age until He was a grown adult and even after that, when he finished His Mission here on the earth, and Ascended into Heaven, until His Second and Glorious Second Coming!
We did not invented Orthodoxy, Orthodoxy was giving us by God The Father, through the work of His Beloved Son, Our Lord Jesus Christ and through The Descent of The Holy Spirit, The Third Person of The Holy Trinity, Who protects and governs the world, until The Great and Fearful Judgement of Our Lord Jesus Christ!
As a last thought that I wanted to share with you in this message, it is that we have this responsibility to share Our Faith with others, because every single human being from the Florence community at large and surrounding areas, deserves to learn more about The Orthodox Church and to let The Holy Spirit to soften their hearts, to pursue it, if that is be The Will of God!
I will continue in the course of next weeks, to send you more messages about different teachings of Our Lord Jesus Christ, trying to clarify for you that everything that we do here in Church makes sense and is a part of The Doctrine of His Original Church!
With paternal love in Christ, I remain, prayerfully yours and your families, His humble servant,
+Father Catalin.