In Good Company
We don’t like certain behavioral patterns that have become habitual, so we feel helpless in our attempt to change. Our growth as Christians is often fraught with failure, and we seem to find ourselves stuck. Our spiritual journey to God feels more like a treadmill, and our movement forward only seems like progress, yet we notice the scenery is remaining the same. Sometimes the only way to move forward is to commit to changing our environment, and we notice that the friendships we have might perhaps be the very thing that keeps us from moving ahead.
Back in the 1960’s I hung around with a group of friends in Berkeley, California, where we’d gather in a coffee house, talking about the poetry books we were going to publish, and the novels we were going to write, but all we did was talk. One day, one of our group of young bohemians announced he was no longer going to come to the coffee house, having decided it was just a waste of time. If he was ever going to make something of himself, he told us, he would have to make the break. He wanted to go to medical school, and decided all his energy needed to be focused on completing his college degree with the best grades he could possibly get. We all tried to convince him that he could accomplish all of that without abandoning the coffee house scene, but he all the more adamant. That was the last evening he ever joined the rest of us, and the next time I saw him, he’d been accepted into medical school. His decision to walk away from the rest of us haunted me, for deep down I knew he was right. My life was going nowhere, and I was feeling increasingly unfulfilled, both spiritually and intellectually. Within six months I made the decision to move to Portland, Oregon, for a fresh start. Abandoning those friends was the best decision I could have made, for none of us were motivated to go beyond that Telegraph Avenue coffee house ghetto that had ensnared us.
Sometimes the only way to make the changes that are needed is to walk away from relationships that are keeping us from reaching our full potential. As Christians, it does make a difference who we hang out with, and if the company we keep is preventing us from following God’s plan for our lives, we have to end those friendships. Having relationships with fellow Christians is the only way we can keep ourselves focused, and make sure we are allowing God’s plan for our life to be fulfilled. If we want to deepen our faith, we need to spend time with people who desire the very same thing. We can build a stronger relationship with Christ by spending time with people whose values are the same. If we waste our time with people who are pursuing worldly pleasures, we’ll end up just like them. The time God has allotted us must not be squandered. If we keep company with people whose goals are to please God, and whose lives are centered in Christ, our goals will be the same, and we will grow as Christians.
With love in Christ,
Abbot Tryphon
Quote of the Day
“Do you wish to honor the Body of the Savior? Do not despise it when it is naked. Do not honor it in church with silk vestments while outside it is naked and numb with cold. He who said, “This is my body,” and made it so by his word, is the same who said, “You saw me hungry and you gave me no food. As you did it not to the least of these, you did it not to me.” Honor him then by sharing your property with the poor. For what God needs is not golden chalices but golden souls.”
– St. John Chrysostom
Monday, July 23, 2024 (7532) / Monday, August 05, 2024
Monday of the 7th week after Pentecost; Tone V
No Fast
Martyrs Trophymos, Theophilos and 13 others in Lycia (4th C)
Hieromartyr Apollonarius, Bishop of Ravenna († c. 75)
Commemoration of the Miraculous Appearance of the Pochaev Icon of the Mother of God, which saved the Monastery from the assault of the Tatars and Turks (1675)
Icon of the Mother of God “Joy of All Who Sorrow” at the glass factory in Saint Petersburg
Daily Scripture Readings
10 Yet not altogether with the fornicators of this world, or with the covetous, or extortioners, or with idolaters; for then must ye needs go out of the world.
11 But now I have written unto you not to keep company, if any man that is called a brother be a fornicator, or covetous, or an idolator, or a railer, or a drunkard, or an extortioner; with such an one no not to eat.
12 For what have I to do to judge them also that are without? do not ye judge them that are within?
13 But them that are without God judgeth. Therefore put away from among yourselves that wicked person.
Chapter 6
1 Dare any of you, having a matter against another, go to law before the unjust, and not before the saints?
2 Do ye not know that the saints shall judge the world? and if the world shall be judged by you, are ye unworthy to judge the smallest matters?
3 Know ye not that we shall judge angels? how much more things that pertain to this life?
4 If then ye have judgments of things pertaining to this life, set them to judge who are least esteemed in the church.
5 I speak to your shame. Is it so, that there is not a wise man among you? no, not one that shall be able to judge between his brethren?
6 But brother goeth to law with brother, and that before the unbelievers.
7 Now therefore there is utterly a fault among you, because ye go to law one with another. Why do ye not rather take wrong? why do ye not rather suffer yourselves to be defrauded?
8 Nay, ye do wrong, and defraud, and that your brethren.
9 Know ye not that the unrighteous shall not inherit the kingdom of God? Be not deceived: neither fornicators, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor effeminate, nor abusers of themselves with mankind,
10 Nor thieves, nor covetous, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor extortioners, shall inherit the kingdom of God.
11 And such were some of you: but ye are washed, but ye are sanctified, but ye are justified in the name of the Lord Jesus, and by the Spirit of our God.
55 Is not this the carpenter’s son? is not his mother called Mary? and his brethren, James, and Joses, and Simon, and Judas?
56 And his sisters, are they not all with us? Whence then hath this man all these things?
57 And they were offended in him. But Jesus said unto them, A prophet is not without honour, save in his own country, and in his own house.
58 And he did not many mighty works there because of their unbelief.