Topic: Saints

The Rev. Stomberg and the Rev. Galloway answer the question: what is a hero? The two discuss heroes vs. antiheroes, the Saints, and why we need them in our lives.

For every Saint whose name we remember, there are a thousand more who silently served and suffered for the sake of the Gospel, and they are as much responsible for the advance of the Gospel as the great heroes of the faith whom we celebrate. We forget this so easily, and this is precisely why we need the heroes of the faith - to encourage us in the ordinary work of Sainthood. The ordinary life is a beautiful thing, because God ordains the ordinary to accomplish His divine and perfect Will.

We are surrounded by a great cloud of witnesses. Do we hear them cheering for us? But what are they cheering for us to do? It isn’t for us to mope through life. It is for us to run the race with endurance. This is what we are called to do as disciples of Christ, in the good days and the bad. Our lives are filled with the endless, useless noise of sin. Only by cutting through the noise, and focusing on the call of the Lord and the cheers of the Saints, can we run the race with endurance.

Saint Thomas often gets a bad rap as "Doubting Thomas". Are we really any better than Thomas ourselves? Listen as the Rector examines Saint Thomas in Luke's narrative and what we can learn from his life and ministry.

We claim to join the saints in following Christ. Are we willing to pay the price for that? Is the eternal reward something we really desire? Do we really just want to live a quiet, comfortable life where we don’t take any risks, and we don’t offend anyone, and we just minimize the amount we suffer until we pass away? Or do we want to join the saints in the beatific vision? Listen as the Rector reminds us of the importance of All Saints’ Sunday.

The prophet Isaiah gives us the image of the Suffering Servant, a foreshadowing of Jesus Christ. In the image of the Suffering Servant, we receive not only a depiction of Christ, but also a depiction of His example which we are called to follow.

We certainly know Saint Matthew as the author of a Gospel. But we may be surprised by the incredible insights and details about his life that can be gleaned from the Biblical narrative and Church tradition.

On this Sunday we observed the Feast of Saint Mary the Virgin (the Assumption of Mary in the Catholic tradition). Listen as the Bishop-retired reflects on the Virgin Mary’s incredible purity, virtue, and integrity, and how a proper understanding of her is an antidote to this sinful age.

Today the Christian message is 'persona nongrata' in all sectors of public life. This is the greatest call of the Church today - in the example of Saint Paul the Apostle - to endure any hardship necessary for the advance of the Gospel.