Love Kingdom Come
Our liturgical rites and practices are not ends in themselves, but God-given vehicles by which we enter into a profound relationship with Him, Who is love. The very essence of our Christian faith is love because God Himself is love (1 John 4:8). Thus, our Christian morality, our ethics, and even our liturgical services and rites, are inconceivable in the absence of love. And, this love is not merely an act that has sprung up from a sense of ethical duty, but something that connects our world, the one seen, to the heavenly world, that world unseen. One world is temporal, and the other world is eternal, yet both have been created by God. The temporal world is the place we have been given to prepare ourselves for the eternal world. Mercy and love is the means by which both are connected.
Liturgical rites and religious traditions are of little value if we have not love and mercy. When we rise to a sincere evangelical love for others, we become God’s collaborators, for Christian love and mercy is the most divine trait possible for the human being. Christ-like mercy is the expression of our love of God, for it is in our love of God that this mercy is poured out upon those who suffer, and upon those who are ill, or helpless in body and mind. True Christian mercy springs from love and is a concrete expression of love.
Our Lord Himself made love and mercy the chief criterion whereby we will be judged on the Last Day (cf. Mt. 25:31-46). The fulfillment of the law is love, not liturgical correctness, as was thought by the Pharisees. If we see our Orthodox Christian faith only in the context of liturgical correctness, and the length of our services, but do not love others, we will have gained nothing of eternal value. If we do not show compassion and mercy towards everyone we meet, we will have committed a grievous crime against our Orthodox faith, and will stand before God with nothing to show for our life.
With love in Christ,
Abbot Tryphon
Quote of the Day
“Modern men have faith in machines, in material well-being, in the substantiality of all that seems obvious to common sense; this is a petty faith, the faith of petty men. The Christian has faith in God and the world to come, in the insubstantiality of all that is obvious, in the passing of this world and the coming of the new, transfigured world; if there is a faith worthy of men, it is surely this.”
– Hieromonk Seraphim Rose
Sunday, July 29, 2024 (7532) / Sunday, August 11, 2024
7th Sunday after Pentecost; Tone VI
No fast
Martyr Callinicus of Gangra in Asia Minor (Gangra; †4th century)
Martyr Theodotia and her 3 children
Holy Hierarch Luppus, Bishop of Troy
Venerable Martyr Michael “the Black-Robed” of St Sava’s Monastery († 9th C)
Holy Hierarch Constantine, Patriarch of Constantinople
Martyr Eustathios of Mtskheta, Georgia († 589)
Venerable Constantine and Cosmas, Abbots of Kosinsk and Staraya Russa (13th C)
Venerable Roman of Kirzha
New Martyrs Seraphim and Theognostus (1921)
Daily Scripture Readings
2 Let every one of us please his neighbour for his good to edification.
3 For even Christ pleased not himself; but, as it is written, The reproaches of them that reproached thee fell on me.
4 For whatsoever things were written aforetime were written for our learning, that we through patience and comfort of the scriptures might have hope.
5 Now the God of patience and consolation grant you to be likeminded one toward another according to Christ Jesus:
6 That ye may with one mind and one mouth glorify God, even the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ.
7 Wherefore receive ye one another, as Christ also received us to the glory of God.
28 And when he was come into the house, the blind men came to him: and Jesus saith unto them, Believe ye that I am able to do this? They said unto him, Yea, Lord.
29 Then touched he their eyes, saying, According to your faith be it unto you.
30 And their eyes were opened; and Jesus straitly charged them, saying, See that no man know it.
31 But they, when they were departed, spread abroad his fame in all that country.
32 As they went out, behold, they brought to him a dumb man possessed with a devil.
33 And when the devil was cast out, the dumb spake: and the multitudes marvelled, saying, It was never so seen in Israel.
34 But the Pharisees said, He casteth out devils through the prince of the devils.
35 And Jesus went about all the cities and villages, teaching in their synagogues, and preaching the gospel of the kingdom, and healing every sickness and every disease among the people.