Fasting and Prayer

Fasting and Prayer go Together
One of the great benefits of fasting is to be found in the aid it lends to the controlling of our bodily inclinations to resist communion with God. Fasting and prayer go together for the precise reason that fasting helps the body conform to the spiritual conditions wherein we are open to the things of the Spirit.

Fasting helps us set aside worldly thoughts and pleasures, preparing us to enter into that silent place wherein we meet God. Fasting helps crush self will, and opens us to God’s grace, allowing for the transformation of our hearts. Fasting enhances prayer, for in our fasting we put aside the bodily resistance to inner sanctification, and enter into God’s Kingdom.

With love in Christ,
Abbot Tryphon

Sunday March 4, 2012

First Sunday of the Great Lent: Triumph of Orthodoxy. Tone five.
Great Lent. Food with Oil

“Cyprus” Icon of the Most Holy Theotokos from the village Staromniy, Moscow region (movable holiday on the 1st Sunday of the Great Lent).
Venerable Leo, bishop of Catania in Sicily (ca. 780).
Abbot Macarius and 34 monks and novices of Valaam Monastery martyred by the Lutherans: hieromonk Titus, schemamonk Tikhon, monks Gelasius, Sergius, Varlaam, Sabbas, Conon, Silvester, Cyprian, Pimen, John, Simonas, Jonah, David, Cornelius, Niphon, Athanasius, and Serapion, and novices Varlaam, Athanasius, Anthony, Luke, Leontius, Thomas, Dionysius, Philip, Ignatius, Basil, Pachomius, Basil, Theophilus, John, Theodore, and John (1578).
New Hieromartyr Nicholas priest (1938).
St. Yaroslav the Wise (1054).
Venerable Agatho, wonderworker of the Kiev Caves (13th-l4th c.).
Beheading of Venerable Cornelius, abbot of the Pskov Caves (1570), and his disciple St. Bassian of Murom.
Hieromartyr Sadoc (Sadoth), bishop of Persia, and 128 Martyrs with him (342).
Venerable Agatho, pope of Rome (682).
Venerable Bessarion the Great, wonderworker of Egypt (466) (Greek).
St. Cindeus, bishop of Pisidia (Greek).
Hieromartyr Eleutherius, bishop in Byzantium (2nd c.).
St. Eleutherius, bishop of Tournai (531).
St. Eucherius, bishop of Orleans (740).

We are hoping to retire the mortgage debt of $250,000.00. Having this hanging over our heads, and knowing the bank owns the monastery, is not a good thing. Your prayers are most appreciated, as we need a miracle.

Hebrews 11:24-26

²⁴By faith Moses, when he became of age, refused to be called the son of Pharaoh’s daughter, ²⁵choosing rather to suffer affliction with the people of God than to enjoy the passing pleasures of sin, ²⁶esteeming the reproach of Christ greater riches than the treasures in Egypt; for he looked to the reward.

Hebrews 11:32-12:2

³²And what more shall I say? For the time would fail me to tell of Gideon and Barak and Samson and Jephthah, also of David and Samuel and the prophets: ³³who through faith subdued kingdoms, worked righteousness, obtained promises, stopped the mouths of lions, ³⁴quenched the violence of fire, escaped the edge of the sword, out of weakness were made strong, became valiant in battle, turned to flight the armies of the aliens. ³⁵Women received their dead raised to life again.Others were tortured, not accepting deliverance, that they might obtain a better resurrection. ³⁶Still others had trial of mockings and scourgings, yes, and of chains and imprisonment. ³⁷They were stoned, they were sawn in two, were tempted, were slain with the sword. They wandered about in sheepskins and goatskins, being destitute, afflicted, tormented— ³⁸of whom the world was not worthy. They wandered in deserts and mountains, in dens and caves of the earth.³⁹And all these, having obtained a good testimony through faith, did not receive the promise, ⁴⁰God having provided something better for us, that they should not be made perfect apart from us.

The Race of Faith

12 Therefore we also, since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, let us lay aside every weight, and the sin which so easily ensnares us, and let us run with endurance the race that is set before us, ²looking unto Jesus, the author and finisher of our faith, who for the joy that was set before Him endured the cross, despising the shame, and has sat down at the right hand of the throne of God.

John 1:43-51

Philip and Nathanael

⁴³The following day Jesus wanted to go to Galilee, and He found Philip and said to him, “Follow Me.” ⁴⁴Now Philip was from Bethsaida, the city of Andrew and Peter. ⁴⁵Philip found Nathanael and said to him, “We have found Him of whom Moses in the law, and also the prophets, wrote—Jesus of Nazareth, the son of Joseph.”⁴⁶And Nathanael said to him, “Can anything good come out of Nazareth?”Philip said to him, “Come and see.”⁴⁷Jesus saw Nathanael coming toward Him, and said of him, “Behold, an Israelite indeed, in whom is no deceit!”⁴⁸Nathanael said to Him, “How do You know me?”Jesus answered and said to him, “Before Philip called you, when you were under the fig tree, I saw you.”⁴⁹Nathanael answered and said to Him, “Rabbi, You are the Son of God! You are the King of Israel!”⁵⁰Jesus answered and said to him, “Because I said to you, ‘I saw you under the fig tree,’ do you believe? You will see greater things than these.” ⁵¹And He said to him, “Most assuredly, I say to you, hereafter you shall see heaven open, and the angels of God ascending and descending upon the Son of Man.”