Passing on the gift of love
My father was a golf pro in Spokane, Washington, during my grade and early middle school years, and the country club was the center of our family’s social life. My brother, Dwayne, and I use to play an average of 18 to 36 holes of golf every day, during the summer months (when we weren’t fly fishing in the Spokane River). Our whole family golfed together, although my mother’s primary love was music. She was a church organist and choir director, and eventually became a piano and organ teacher.
My first job was to fill the coin operated water cooler, with bottles of soda pop. When we moved from Spokane, Washington, to Sandpoint, Idaho, where my dad became the pro for a small country club, I took on my second job, at the age of sixteen, driving the large tractor that was used to cut the grass for the fairways. Those early years were wonderful, and I often think of how lucky I was to have been blessed with such wonderful, loving, parents.
Our home in Sandpoint, was on the lake, with views of forested mountains off in the distance. Is it any wonder I am so happy living on an island, surrounded by forest, for the forests and lakes of Northern Idaho were so prominent a part of the environment of my youth.
I was fortunate to have had a close relationship with both my father and mother during the last years of their lives. As an adult, I was gifted with enough time to have let both my parents know how much I loved them, and how I was a product of both their lives. I was able to tell my dad that I saw much of him, within myself. His humor, comfortableness with all kinds of people, joy of life, love of history, and, even his size (he was a big man), have been inherited by me, his son.
My mother’s love of music, architecture and interior design, are also a part of me, leaving me with the skills to work with our architect on the design of this monastery, and to personally design all the interiors of our monastic buildings. I am clearly the inheritor of the best that my parents displayed in their lives, and I will forever be grateful to them.
Yet, the most important gift I received from my parents, was the gift of love. They loved me, and demonstrated their love for me throughout their lives. They also showed me how to love others, and that ability to be willing to be open to love, and to demonstrate love, eventually allowed me to love God.
It was from my parents that I discovered that God was not simply there as a cosmic problem solver, or gift giver, or but was, like them, One Who loved me. God, like my parents, first loved me, and the lessons of love that I learned from my parents, enabled me to be open to the love of God. In turn, the gift of love that came from my parents, allowed me to see God as not my own private possession, but One Whom I wanted to share with others.
I often think how wonderful it would be if I were able to share a glass of wine in our monastery’s library/commons, with my beloved parents. There is a truism that says, “no matter how old you are, when you lose your parents, you become an orphan”.
Love in Christ,
Abbot Tryphon
Photos: Our beloved cat Hammi always sits on the stool in the kitchen, supervising Father Martin, during meal preparation.
Tuesday January 3, 2017 / December 21, 2016
29th Week after Pentecost. Tone three.
Nativity (St. Philip’s Fast). Food with Oil
Forefeast of the Nativity of Christ.
Virgin-martyr Juliana of Nicomedia, and with her 500 men and 130 women (304).
Repose of St. Peter, metropolitan of All Russia (1326).
New Hieromartyr Michael priest (1918).
New Hieromartyr Sergius deacon (1937).
New Hieromartyr Nicetas bishop of Belevsk (1938).
New Hieromartyr Leontius deacon (1940).
St. Juliana, princess of Vyazma (1406).
Blessed Procopius of Vyatka, fool-for-Christ (1677).
St. Philaret (Theodosius in schema), metropolitan of Kiev (1857).
Martyr Theomistocles of Myra in Lycia (251).
St. Macarius the Faster, Abbot of the Khakhuli Monastery (11th c.) (Georgia).
St. Anthony II The Catholicos of Georgia (1827) (Georgia).
Finding of the relicts (1950) of New Monk-martyr Ephraim of Nea Makri (1426).
Scripture Readings
John 10:1-9
Jesus the True Shepherd
10 “Most assuredly, I say to you, he who does not enter the sheepfold by the door, but climbs up some other way, the same is a thief and a robber. 2 But he who enters by the door is the shepherd of the sheep. 3 To him the doorkeeper opens, and the sheep hear his voice; and he calls his own sheep by name and leads them out. 4 And when he brings out his own sheep, he goes before them; and the sheep follow him, for they know his voice. 5 Yet they will by no means follow a stranger, but will flee from him, for they do not know the voice of strangers.” 6 Jesus used this illustration, but they did not understand the things which He spoke to them.
Jesus the Good Shepherd
7 Then Jesus said to them again, “Most assuredly, I say to you, I am the door of the sheep. 8 All who ever came before Me[a] are thieves and robbers, but the sheep did not hear them. 9 I am the door. If anyone enters by Me, he will be saved, and will go in and out and find pasture.
Hebrews 4:1-13
The Promise of Rest
4 Therefore, since a promise remains of entering His rest, let us fear lest any of you seem to have come short of it. 2 For indeed the gospel was preached to us as well as to them; but the word which they heard did not profit them, not being mixed with faith in those who heard it. 3 For we who have believed do enter that rest, as He has said:
“So I swore in My wrath,
‘They shall not enter My rest,’”
although the works were finished from the foundation of the world. 4 For He has spoken in a certain place of the seventh day in this way: “And God rested on the seventh day from all His works”; 5 and again in this place: “They shall not enter My rest.”
6 Since therefore it remains that some must enter it, and those to whom it was first preached did not enter because of disobedience, 7 again He designates a certain day, saying in David, “Today,” after such a long time, as it has been said:
“Today, if you will hear His voice,
Do not harden your hearts.”
8 For if Joshua had given them rest, then He would not afterward have spoken of another day. 9 There remains therefore a rest for the people of God. 10 For he who has entered His rest has himself also ceased from his works as God did from His.
The Word Discovers Our Condition
11 Let us therefore be diligent to enter that rest, lest anyone fall according to the same example of disobedience. 12 For the word of God is living and powerful, and sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing even to the division of soul and spirit, and of joints and marrow, and is a discerner of the thoughts and intents of the heart. 13 And there is no creature hidden from His sight, but all things arenaked and open to the eyes of Him to whom we must give account.
Mark 10:2-12
2 The Pharisees came and asked Him, “Is it lawful for a man to divorce his wife?” testing Him.
3 And He answered and said to them, “What did Moses command you?”
4 They said, “Moses permitted a man to write a certificate of divorce, and to dismiss her.”
5 And Jesus answered and said to them, “Because of the hardness of your heart he wrote you this precept. 6 But from the beginning of the creation, God ‘made them male and female.’ 7 ‘For this reason a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, 8 and the two shall become one flesh’; so then they are no longer two, but one flesh. 9 Therefore what God has joined together, let not man separate.”
10 In the house His disciples also asked Him again about the same matter. 11 So He said to them, “Whoever divorces his wife and marries another commits adultery against her. 12 And if a woman divorces her husband and marries another, she commits adultery.”