A Note from Pastor (September 2025)

September 14 is Holy Cross Day, a day set aside on the church calendar to ponder the cross and its meaning in the life of the Christian.  During his life, Martin Luther lived under the cross, enduring much suffering for preaching Christ and Him crucified.  Luther wrote about the suffering all Christians will experience in his sermon on the Third Petition of the Lord’s Prayer in the Large Catechism:

“If we would be Christians, therefore, we must surely expect and count on having the devil with all his angels and the world as our enemies. They will bring every possible misfortune and grief upon us. For where God’s Word is preached, accepted, or believed and produces fruit, there the holy cross cannot be missing. And let no one think that he shall have peace. He must risk whatever he has upon earth – possessions, honor, house, estate, wife and children, body and life. Now this hurts our flesh and the old Adam. The test, is to be steadfast and to suffer with patience in whatever way we are assaulted and to let go whatever is taken from us.  So there is just as great a need, as in all the other petitions, that we pray without ceasing, “Dear, Father, Your will be done, not the devil’s will or our enemies’ or anything that would persecute and suppress Your holy Word or hinder Your kingdom. Grant that we may bear with patience and overcome whatever is to be endured.”  (Large Catechism, Part III, 65)