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For “everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved.”

Leadership requires action and example. A good leader (and remember, we are all leaders) sets a vision and then engages with others to meet the vision. Consider what bad leaders do. They say: ‘Do this and do that’ but merely sit back and watch. They are not alongside in working to accomplish the vision. They take a lais·sez-faire approach. Even worse, they sit back and criticize when they think you’re not doing it right. We can rightly say: How can we do it right without leadership?

Jesus is the good and perfect leader. He placed His entire self on the line for the vision His Father had set, the establishment of the Kingdom. He led and taught others the how and why. He set out clear goals and worked to get there – He alongside His disciples. He corrected His disciples when they went astray, but did so in a fair and evenhanded manner.

On the First Sunday in Lent our Epistle is taken from St. Paul’s letter to the Church at Rome. Paul is doing two things. He is contrasting the Law of Moses with its legalistic claim against the free gift of salvific grace offered through Jesus. St. Paul tells the Church that they have the Word of God and that if they confess Jesus as Lord and believe fully in Him they have salvation. They need not offer animal and grain sacrifices or carry out other precepts of the Law to obtain forgiveness or salvation. It is already theirs in Jesus’ sacrifice.

So too for us.

From there, Paul calls on us to lead by our proclamation. This was a call to bold leadership because to confess Jesus as Lord was quite hazardous then. For a Jew it could mean being cast out of family and community including great economic sacrifice. For a Gentile the penalties could include not only separation from family and community, but also arrest and prosecution, later even martyrdom. That’s not too far from reality today. Yet, lead we must without fear. Let us engage and through our Lenten action and example draw many to Christ trusting the assurance that no one who believes in Jesus will be put to shame.

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Welcome to our March 2025 Newsletter. We enter Lent on March 5th with Ash Wednesday. Lent provides us with apply opportunity to practice the disciplines of prayer, fasting, and sacrifice. Join in our Directed Giving program to provide food resources in our local community. Looking forward, we are preparing for our Seniorate Lenten Retreat on April 5th and our Basket Social on April 27th. Looking back we announce the winners of our Valentines Raffle. Congratulations to all who participated. You support the faith development of our youth. Read up about CarePortal’s Love Day 2025. What we do really matters. We announce upcoming Ordinations for three of our brothers, Tonsure, and Minor Orders for another five. God bless them! All that and a reflection on the Orthodox Hymn “Open To Me The Doors Of Repentance.”

Read up on all this and more in our March 2025 Newsletter.