MOTHER OF THE PARISH - A Reflection on Divine Love

MOTHER OF THE PARISH - A Reflection on Divine Love Fr Luke A Veronis We just celebrated Valentine’s Day, a day when we remember our special loved ones. Of course, long before being a day for romantic lovers, this was a day to commemorate Saint Valentine the martyr, the Roman bishop who gave up his life because of his love for Jesus Christ. The romantic aspect of St Valentine’s Day developed later during the middle ages and now has become something totally disconnected with Faith and love for Jesus Christ. And yet, even though this is today's perspective, I still want to use this as an opportunity to talk about love and reflect upon the deeper meaning of what divine love truly is. “Love is patient and kind,” Saint Paul describes in his magnificent letter to the Christians in Corinth. “Love is not envious or boastful. It is not proud or rude or self-serving. It is not easily angered or resentful. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices in the truth. Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. Love never ends.” (1 Corinthians 13) Well, when I think of such divine love, I think of the example of my dear Presbytera Faith, my partner in ministry and co-worker in sharing the Good News of Christ for the past 30 years. She serves next to me, often in my shadow since people will notice the priest and often praise me, while they won’t always realize all that my presbytera does serving with her humble, quiet, Christ-like spirit of love. Throughout her life, my Presbytera rarely draws attention to herself. She doesn’t like being the number one person but prefers supporting others, building up others, encouraging others, and blessing others. In her spirit of humble and sacrificial love, she has always been my greatest co-worker in ministry. I think of all she did in our missionary work in Albania. While raising our children, Presbytera Faith found time to work with the new Presbyteras of Albania, support the women’s ministries, and work with me in reaching out to university and seminarian students. Our house was always a home of hospitality, open to all and having people, especially students come by every day. She offered a home of love to anyone who came by. She shared her love in creative ways as she started the National Children’s Office for the Church. Among many different ministry roles, her most successful was training and developing dozens of young Albanian leaders whom she guided to run three two-week long camps for more than 350 girls from the ages of 8 to 22 each summer. Two of the very special moms in our Church Family today, Evis Jordanoglou and Elisabeta Biti, were richly blessed by these summer camps in their youth. And along with these overnight camps, Pres. Faith then introduced dozens of day camps for hundreds of kids all around Albania. Her creative talent and loving spirit produced evangelistic puppet shows and other methods of introducing many children to the Good News of Jesus Christ. From Albania, we continued our co-ministry here in Webster, where she used her gifts and talents to love and serve this community. I will always say that any success we had in bringing new families with children to our church came by the grace of God working through her creative, loving spirit. She introduced puppet shows to our grandparents/ godparents Sunday, inspired our Vacation Church Camps, directed our Saint Nicholas Sunday celebrations and our Christmas pageants, among all the other children’s ministries. In the first decade when our church turned around from being a dying community without many children to a much healthier, vibrant church family with sometimes 50+ kids attending our Vacation Church Camps and Sunday School programs, Pres. Faith was behind the inspiration, planning and organization. Her loving, quiet, humble, selfless spirit of serving has been at the foundation of many positive things happening in our church. In our Greek Orthodox tradition, we call the wives of priests, the female version of the presbyter. The priest is the presbyter and his wife is the presbytera, signifying the special role she has in the church. In the Slavic tradition, the priest’s wife is often called the “Mother of the Parish,” highlighting her beautiful part in unconditionally loving the community as her children. It’s not always easy being a presbytera because we priests sometimes take up all the attention and are the ones who do most of the talking. We are front and center, while our wives stand in the background. Yet, how grateful I am for my dear, loving wife. She serves with me, supports me, and gives me all my good ideas. Often, she’ll suggest some creative new idea and then say, “OK. Now you make it happen.” She’s not interested in being in the center but is content staying in the background and supporting the work I do. Well, I thought of highlighting my Presbytera today, even though I know it will make her feel quite uncomfortable, as a response to St. Valentine’s Day and our focus on the theme of love. I can’t help thinking of her as someone who represents the divine love of God in beautiful ways. She shows how love is “patient and kind… not proud or rude or self-serving… bearing all things, believing all things, hoping all things, enduring all things, never ending with her love.” It's most appropriate that this sermon about love also falls on the Sunday of the Prodigal Son, because this parable is a story more about the Love of the Father than it is about the sinfulness of the son. Yes, the son turned away from his heavenly home and got lost in the world’s deceptive confusion, but it was the son’s memory of his Father’s Love that called him back. It didn’t matter what the son did because the Father’s love would never change. God loves us unconditionally and patiently waits for all to come to their senses and return back to His home of love. He sets the ultimate example of Divine Love. This is the love that inspired Saint Valentine to follow Jesus Christ, even to the point of dying for Him. And this is the spirit of love that we are all called to cultivate and imitate in our lives. For me, my Presbytera offers a wonderful example of such love in our community, and I lift her up today as the “Mother of our Parish.” Let us follow and strive to grow in such divine love - loving God with all our heart, soul, mind and strength and loving our neighbor as ourselves.