Our Father's Business - Fr. Gregory - June 21, 2020

Today in Orthodoxy is the 2nd Sunday of Matthew as well as Father’s Day in the United States. The Gospel reading comes to us from Matthew 4:18-23 and accounts for us the calling of Jesus’ first four disciples. Father Gregory shares with us an inspiring message about discipleship and connects the Gospel to fatherhood. The Gospel takes us back to the beginning of Christ’s ministry just after His Baptism and temptation in the desert, to His calling of the first four disciples for seemingly no other reason than that they showed a willingness to work. This is the cycle of the Church to call people and shape and mold them in the Christian life as Christ did with His disciples and in our case with the guidance of our spiritual fathers the priests. Jesus came to work and was about His Father’s business working at the age of twelve in the temple teaching the people. Jesus called the disciples knowing their hearts and seeing their willingness to work but said that the harvest is plentiful and the laborers are few. Each of us as Orthodox Christians should work to become disciples in our corner of the world with excellence in whatever we have been called to do both in and out of the Church.