A grateful heart is fertile ground
When you strive to interact with members of your family, with friends, coworkers, and all others, with respect, humility, and dignity, you lay the groundwork for the abundance of Grace needed to quicken your heart for the things of God. The soil is prepared for the planting of seeds that allow you to respond to God’s grace, for a grateful heart is fertile ground for the things of God.
When you open your heart to others, with gratitude, the path is prepared for a relationship with Jesus Christ, and the indwelling of the Holy Spirit will fill you with the power to live a life that is transformed by God’s Grace. You will be filled with heartfelt gratitude for all God’s gifts, and inner peace will be yours.
The preparation for sowing the seeds of the love of God, begin with responsive gratefulness. The Apostle Paul writes, “Remember, it is not you that holds up the root, but the root that holds you up (Rom. 11:18).” Any relationship with God, must begin with a grateful heart, and is cultivated by kindness, and goodwill towards others. When you are grateful you respond toward God and others by enacting other virtues.
The constant and cultivated feeling of deep appreciation and heartfelt gratitude for others, quickens the soul to feel the inner need to freely and thankfully respond to God’s invitation to commune with Him.
With love in Christ,
Abbot Tryphon
Photo: The young men’s retreat concluded following the monastery’s celebration of our Patronal Feast.
Tuesday August 15, 2017 / August 2, 2017
11th Week after Pentecost. Tone one.
Dormition (Theotokos) Fast. By Monastic Charter: Food without Oil
Translation of the relics (428) of the Protomartyr and Archdeacon Stephen (428) and Translation of the relics (415) of the Righteous Nicodemus, Gamaliel, and Abibus.
Blessed Basil of Moscow, fool-for-Christ (1552).
New Hieromartyr Platon (1937).
Blessed Basil of Kuben Lake (1472).
Hieromartyr Stephen, pope of Rome (257).
St. Marco of Belavinsk (Vologda) (1492).
St. Friardus of Vindumitta (573) (Gaul).
Translation of the relics of Martyrs Maximus (286), Dada, and Quinctilian at Dorostolum in Moesia (Greek).
New Martyr Theodore of the Dardanelles (1690) (Greek).
Martyr Phocas (Greek).
The Scripture Readings
2 Corinthians 2:14-3:3
14 Now thanks be to God who always leads us in triumph in Christ, and through us diffuses the fragrance of His knowledge in every place. 15 For we are to God the fragrance of Christ among those who are being saved and among those who are perishing. 16 To the one we are the aroma of death leading to death, and to the other the aroma of life leading to life. And who is sufficient for these things? 17 For we are not, as so many, peddling the word of God; but as of sincerity, but as from God, we speak in the sight of God in Christ.
Christ’s Epistle
3 Do we begin again to commend ourselves? Or do we need, as some others, epistles of commendation to you or letters of commendation from you? 2 You are our epistle written in our hearts, known and read by all men; 3 clearly you are an epistle of Christ, ministered by us, written not with ink but by the Spirit of the living God, not on tablets of stone but on tablets of flesh, that is, of the heart.
Matthew 23:23-28
23 “Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you pay tithe of mint and anise and cummin, and have neglected the weightier matters of the law: justice and mercy and faith. These you ought to have done, without leaving the others undone. 24 Blind guides, who strain out a gnat and swallow a camel!
25 “Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you cleanse the outside of the cup and dish, but inside they are full of extortion and self-indulgence. 26 Blind Pharisee, first cleanse the inside of the cup and dish, that the outside of them may be clean also.
27 “Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you are like whitewashed tombs which indeed appear beautiful outwardly, but inside are full of dead men’s bones and all uncleanness. 28 Even so you also outwardly appear righteous to men, but inside you are full of hypocrisy and lawlessness.