His Eminence Metropolitan Antonios, Patriarchal Vicar, celebrated the great feast of the Presentation (Meeting) of Our Lord Jesus Christ at St Anthony Orthodox Church Bergenfield, NJ on Wednesday evening, February 1. He conveyed the greetings, love and prayers of Patriarch John X of Antioch and All the East.

“What does consecrating our life to God mean if there is no resurrection?” Sayidna Antonios preached. “All that was written in the Scriptures, all that the prophets said and what Jesus did was to give us resurrection. He accepted to be under the law of Moses to live above the law of Moses.”

His Eminence also explained that Orthodox Tradition teaches Elder Simeon, who carried the 40-day-old Christ in his arms, was one of the 70 interpreters of Holy Scriptures from Hebrew to Greek. Simeon was about to replace the word “virgin” with “young woman” giving birth to a son in Isaiah 7:14, but an angel stopped him and told him he would not see death until he held this Son in fulfillment of the prophecy.

“Every one of us should be like Simeon, waiting for God, waiting for Christ. But there are two kinds of waiting: negative and positive. To wait in a negative way is to sit down and wait for things to happen. To wait in a positive, Christian way is to live in the hope that is sure that God will come.

“In Arabic, we have two words to describe hope. ‘Amal’ is human hope, in which we wait or work for something, but we don’t know if it will be accomplished. ‘Rajaa’ means we hope in God and what is already accomplished, but we wait and work to receive it.”

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