Drought

Encountering drought in one’s soul

Like much of the country, Washington State is experiencing drought. When most people think of Seattle, they think of rain, lots of rain. Anyone who would choose to live in the Puget Sound region, better like rain, we tell our visitors. We love lush green forests, and rushing streams. We love our mountains, snow capped year round. We love the mist that rises over our lakes and rivers, and we love our foggy autumn days. We even love our rain!

Drought has had a significant impact on whole civilizations, even being responsible for the total abandonment of great cities, now buried beneath the sands of history. The Great Dust Bowl led to the mass migration of our own people, as farms and towns were gobbled up by dust storms, with a devastating impact on the lives of thousands of families.

As we all meditate on the dire possibilities, should this drought continue, it is perhaps a good time to take a look at another type of drought, one that impacts the souls of believers. Periods of spiritual dryness come to all of us, and just as the earth is impacted, with the death of plants and animals, so too can this spiritual drought bring death to the soul.

The image of the nineteenth century “rainmaker” comes to my mind, when traveling entrepreneurs managed to garner sums of money from local townspeople and farmers, with the promise of “making rain”. The desperate locals would fork over their remaining meager savings in the hopes of bringing the much needed rain for their crops, and dried up wells.

During periods of spiritual dryness, people tend to look in all the wrong directions, in a desperate attempt to quench their thirst for the meaning of life. Trying to fill a spiritual void, they look to entertainment, material goods, and worldly abandon, hoping to quench the drought they sense has taken hold of them. Like the farmers and townspeople of the Dust Bowl, they pay money to the “rainmakers” of pop music, entertainment, and material goods, all in a desperate attempt to find meaning to their lives, all the while ignoring the ocean of Living Water that resides within.

With love in Christ,
Abbot Tryphon

Photos: The monastery’s organic vegetable gardens.

Wednesday July 1, 2015 / June 18, 2015

5th Week after Pentecost. Tone three.
Apostles’ (Peter & Paul) Fast. By Monastic Charter: Strict Fast (Bread, Vegetables, Fruits)

Martyr Leontius, and with him Martyrs Hypatius and Theodulus, at Tripoli in Syria (73).
New Hieromartyrs Nicanor, Basil, Alexander, Basil and Sergius priests (1938).
Venerable Leontius, canonarch of the Kiev Caves (14th c.).
“Bogoliubov” (1157) Icon of the Most Holy Theotokos.
Reverence list of an “Bogoliubov” Icon of the Most Holy Theotokos: “Zimarovsky” (13th c.), Moscow (1157), “Uglich” and “Iur’evsk”.
The Meeting of the “Piukhtinsk” (“At the Source”) Icon of the Most Holy Theotokos (1946).
Venerable Leontius, clairvoyant of Dionysiou Monastery, Mt. Athos (1605).
Martyr Aetherus of Nicomedia (305).
St. Marina the Virgin of Bithynia (8th c.).
Finding of the relics (1997) of New Hieromartyr Victor, bishop of Glazov (1934).
St. Erasmus, monk (Greek).
St. Leontius the Shepherd, monk (Greek).

Scripture Readings

Glorify God Together

7 Therefore receive one another, just as Christ also received us, to the glory of God. 8 Now I say that Jesus Christ has become a servant to the circumcision for the truth of God, to confirm the promises made to the fathers, 9 and that the Gentiles might glorify God for His mercy, as it is written:

“For this reason I will confess to You among the Gentiles,
And sing to Your name.”

10 And again he says:

“Rejoice, O Gentiles, with His people!”

11 And again:

“Praise the Lord, all you Gentiles!
Laud Him, all you peoples!”

12 And again, Isaiah says:

“There shall be a root of Jesse;
And He who shall rise to reign over the Gentiles,
In Him the Gentiles shall hope.”

13 Now may the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace in believing, that you may abound in hope by the power of the Holy Spirit.

From Jerusalem to Illyricum

14 Now I myself am confident concerning you, my brethren, that you also are full of goodness, filled with all knowledge, able also to admonish one another. 15 Nevertheless, brethren, I have written more boldly to you on some points, as reminding you, because of the grace given to me by God, 16 that I might be a minister of Jesus Christ to the Gentiles, ministering the gospel of God, that the offering of the Gentiles might be acceptable, sanctified by the Holy Spirit.

Matthew 12:38-45

The Scribes and Pharisees Ask for a Sign

38 Then some of the scribes and Pharisees answered, saying, “Teacher, we want to see a sign from You.”

39 But He answered and said to them, “An evil and adulterous generation seeks after a sign, and no sign will be given to it except the sign of the prophet Jonah. 40 For as Jonah was three days and three nights in the belly of the great fish, so will the Son of Man be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth. 41 The men of Nineveh will rise up in the judgment with this generation and condemn it, because they repented at the preaching of Jonah; and indeed a greater than Jonah is here. 42 The queen of the South will rise up in the judgment with this generation and condemn it, for she came from the ends of the earth to hear the wisdom of Solomon; and indeed a greater than Solomon is here.

An Unclean Spirit Returns

43 “When an unclean spirit goes out of a man, he goes through dry places, seeking rest, and finds none. 44 Then he says, ‘I will return to my house from which I came.’ And when he comes, he finds it empty, swept, and put in order. 45 Then he goes and takes with him seven other spirits more wicked than himself, and they enter and dwell there; and the last state of that man is worse than the first. So shall it also be with this wicked generation.”