Keeping unrest at bay
Every day can bring about many events or problems that can make us feel unsettled. Yet if we want to keep unrest at bay, it is important that we prayerfully receive everything with the knowledge that God is watching over us, and that all will be fine in the end. Spending time worrying accomplishes nothing, for worrying simply brings on the stress that keep our attention in the wrong place.
If we keep our focus on Christ, knowing that He is with us in both troubled times, and moments of celebration, we can peacefully receive all that befalls us. Knowing that even difficulties and hardships are vehicles used by God for our salvation, how can we despair? “When we serve the Lord we shall not be troubled about many things, but always keep in mind the one thing needful (Luke 10:41).”
Love in Christ,
Abbot Tryphon
Photos: I am at Saint Nicholas Ranch and Retreat Center in Dunlap, CA., where I am the keynote speaker for the Orthodox Christian Fellowship’s college retreat. There are 57 registered college students for this gathering, and I consider myself blessed to have been asked to be here with these beautiful young people. Overlooking the center is the Monastery of the Life Giving Spring, a Greek Orthodox women’s monastery with 23 nuns, headed by Abbess Markella.
Monday December 29, 2014 / December 16, 2014
30th Week after Pentecost. Tone four.
Nativity (St. Philip’s Fast). By Monastic Charter: Food without Oil
Prophet Haggai (Aggaeus) (500 B.C.).
New Hieromartyrs Priest Vladimir (1918)
New Hieromartyrs Arcadius, bishop of Bezhetsk, and Priests Elias, Paul, Theodosius, Vladimir, and Alexander priests, Martyr Makarius (1937).
New Hieromartyr Peter priest (1937).
Venerable Sophia, nun (in the world Solomonia), wife of Grand Duke Basil III (1542).
Martyr Marinus of Rome (283).
Blessed Empress Theophania of Byzantium (893).
St. Memnon, archbishop of Ephesus (5th c.).
St. Nicholas Chrysoberges, patriarch of Constantinople (995).
St. Modestus II, archbishop of Jerusalem (634) (Greek).
Martyrs Promus and Hilarion (Greek).
Scripture Readings for the Day
Hebrews 8:7-13
A New Covenant
7 For if that first covenant had been faultless, then no place would have been sought for a second. 8 Because finding fault with them, He says: “Behold, the days are coming, says the Lord, when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and with the house of Judah— 9 not according to the covenant that I made with their fathers in the day when I took them by the hand to lead them out of the land of Egypt; because they did not continue in My covenant, and I disregarded them, says the Lord. 10 For this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, says the Lord: I will put My laws in their mind and write them on their hearts; and I will be their God, and they shall be My people. 11 None of them shall teach his neighbor, and none his brother, saying, ‘Know the Lord,’ for all shall know Me, from the least of them to the greatest of them. 12 For I will be merciful to their unrighteousness, and their sins and their lawless deeds I will remember no more.”
13 In that He says, “A new covenant,” He has made the first obsolete. Now what is becoming obsolete and growing old is ready to vanish away.
Mark 9:42-10:1
Jesus Warns of Offenses
42 “But whoever causes one of these little ones who believe in Me to stumble, it would be better for him if a millstone were hung around his neck, and he were thrown into the sea. 43 If your hand causes you to sin, cut it off. It is better for you to enter into life maimed, rather than having two hands, to go to hell, into the fire that shall never be quenched— 44 where
‘Their worm does not die
And the fire is not quenched.’
45 And if your foot causes you to sin, cut it off. It is better for you to enter life lame, rather than having two feet, to be cast into hell, into the fire that shall never be quenched— 46 where
‘Their worm does not die,
And the fire is not quenched.’
47 And if your eye causes you to sin, pluck it out. It is better for you to enter the kingdom of God with one eye, rather than having two eyes, to be cast into hell fire— 48 where
‘Their worm does not die
And the fire is not quenched.’
Tasteless Salt Is Worthless
49 “For everyone will be seasoned with fire, and every sacrifice will be seasoned with salt. 50 Salt is good, but if the salt loses its flavor, how will you season it? Have salt in yourselves, and have peace with one another.”
Marriage and Divorce
10 Then He arose from there and came to the region of Judea by the other side of the Jordan. And multitudes gathered to Him again, and as He was accustomed, He taught them again.
Wonderful message and to see young people involved in the church.
A lot of my worry now is with mainstream theology itself: you know, do I actually believe this or that teaching, did this or that heresy get suppressed because of God’s will or just by historical incident, etc. Many wouldn’t understand my “idiosyncratic” side.
I worry a lot, always have. But my worries have mostly been about ideas, which I cannot just pay lip service to. I take almost no exception to your church’s aesthetic expression (icons and Trisagion hymns and monks with full beards are fine), but it is difficult, very difficult, for me to take no exception to a two thousands years old canon of dogmatic theology that one is supposed to be perfectly submissive to.
The great peace that overtakes the heart when one no longer has to use logic and reason to search for truth, but rather be able to receive Absolute Truth from the Ancient Church. True liberation!
One of my favorite quotes is by that most insightful and dualistic of Orthodox Christian saints and mystics, St Diadochos of Photiki: “Nothing is more miserable than a godless mind philosophizing about God”
I wish I could take the cue.