Arming Our Children
With Spiritual Weapons
It is essential that we expose our youth to the teachings of the Church, and offer them serious facts about traditional Christianity, while letting them see that faith is not simply a religious expression of the ethnic heritage of their parents, or of keeping a generational family tradition alive. If our youth don’t know the faith, and are not helped in making faith their own, and internalizing it into their hearts, how do we expect to break the downward cycle of church attendance that is happening across the nation? If we insist on being aloof in our priestly bearing, how will the youth feel free to come to us with their doubts and struggles with belief in God, and curb the mass exodus of young people from the churches?
How will these wonderful young people withstand the secularism, humanism, and atheism that is pounded into their young minds, if we do not arm them with a faith that can withstand the challenges of professors and fellow classmates who set out to destroy “the provincial and ethnic beliefs taught by backward parents, uneducated grandparents, and self-serving clergy”?
We are at war! If we don’t arm our children with spiritual weapons, they will be lost to the enemy, and we will have only ourselves to blame. If all our faith is to them, is a backward religion they don’t understand, and if they do not sense the love of Christ in the hearts of their parents, priests, and bishops, they will depart to the greener pastures of a society that has had it with religious pomposity, hypocrisy and scandal. If the youth don’t feel loved and respected by their bishops and priests, they will turn against all we stand for, and we will only see them at our ethnic church bazaars, and the occasional funeral.
If these youth are not taught the true faith of Christ, and helped to make it their own by our example of holiness of life, and by our love for them, they will not have been given the armor and ammunition to withstand the atheism of our age, and they will have been lost.
With love in Christ,
Abbot Tryphon
Thursday November 3, 2022 / October 21, 2022
21st Week after Pentecost. Tone three.
Venerable Hilarion the Great of Palestine (371).
Translation of the relics (1206) of St. Hilarion, bishop of Meglin, Bulgaria (1164).
New Hieromartyrs Paulinus bisop of Mogilev, Arkadius bishop of Ekaterinburg and with them Anatolius and Nicander priests and Martyr Cyprian (1937).
New Hieromartyr Damian bishop of Kursk (1937).
New Hieromartyrs Constantine, Sergius, Basil, Theodore, Vladimir, Nicholas, John, Basil, Alexander, Demetrius and Alexis priests, Sergius and John deacons and Martyrs Sophronius and Neophytus (1937).
New Woman-Hieromartyr Pelagia (1944).
Venerable Hilarion of the Kiev Caves (1067).
Venerable Hilarion, abbot, of Pskov (1476).
Venerables Theophilus and James, abbots of Omutch on Pskov Lake (1412).
Martyrs Dasius, Gaius, and Zoticus at Nicomedia (303).
Saint Hilarion, Metropolitan of Kiev (16th C).
Venerable Philotheus of Neapolis and Mt. Athos (14th c.) (Greek).
Martyr John of Peloponnesus (1773) (Greek).
oVenerables Bessarion (Sarai), hieromonk (1745), and Sophronius of Ciorara, monk (ca. 1765), confessors, and St. Oprea of Salistie, martyred by the Latins in Romania (Romania).
Priest-Confessors John of Gales, and Moses (Macinic) of Sibiel (18th c.) (Transylvania).
Newly-revealed Martyrs Andrew, Stephen, Paul and Peter (Greek).
Hieromartyr Priest Socrates and Martyr Theodote of Ancyra (230) (Greek).
Monk-martyr Eucratus (Greek).
St. Baruch, monk (Greek).
Monk-martyr Zachariah (Greek).
Martyr Azes (Greek).
Translation of the relics of St. Christodulus the Wonderworker of Patmos (1093) (Greek).
Martyr Ursula of Cologne and her companions (383).
St. Fintan Munnu of Teachmunnu (635) (Celtic & British).
St. Malathgeny of Cluain-Edneach (767) (Celtic & British).
St. Condedus, hermit of Fontenelle.
The Scripture Readings
Colossians 1:24-29
Sacrificial Service for Christ
24 I now rejoice in my sufferings for you, and fill up in my flesh what is lacking in the afflictions of Christ, for the sake of His body, which is the church, 25 of which I became a minister according to the stewardship from God which was given to me for you, to fulfill the word of God, 26 the mystery which has been hidden from ages and from generations, but now has been revealed to His saints. 27 To them God willed to make known what are the riches of the glory of this mystery among the Gentiles: which is Christ in you, the hope of glory. 28 Him we preach, warning every man and teaching every man in all wisdom, that we may present every man perfect in Christ Jesus. 29 To this end I also labor, striving according to His working which works in me mightily.
Luke 9:49-56
Jesus Forbids Sectarianism
49 Now John answered and said, “Master, we saw someone casting out demons in Your name, and we forbade him because he does not follow with us.”
50 But Jesus said to him, “Do not forbid him, for he who is not against us is on our side.”
A Samaritan Village Rejects the Savior
51 Now it came to pass, when the time had come for Him to be received up, that He steadfastly set His face to go to Jerusalem, 52 and sent messengers before His face. And as they went, they entered a village of the Samaritans, to prepare for Him. 53 But they did not receive Him, because His face was set for the journey to Jerusalem. 54 And when His disciples James and John saw this, they said, “Lord, do You want us to command fire to come down from heaven and consume them, just as Elijah did?”
55 But He turned and rebuked them, and said, “You do not know what manner of spirit you are of. 56 For the Son of Man did not come to destroy men’s lives but to save them.” And they went to another village.