Our Laziness and Misplaced Priorities
Our laziness and misplaced priorities regarding Sunday and holy day services keep us from our obligations to God, and endanger the soul. Keeping ourselves away from God’s temple causes us to remain afar from the cure that comes from participating in the Divine Mysteries. Saint Gregory Palamas tells us that we “may remain uncured, suffering from unbelief in your soul because of deeds or words, and failing to approach Christ’s surgery to receive… holy healing”.
Orthodoxy is not a religion by which we can attain salvation in the privacy of our own home, for our faith is a communal faith, whereby we participate in the Body of Christ in a corporate way. It is in this life that we must participate in the communal life of the Church, for after death there is no treatment for that which separates us from God. There is no repentance after this life, because all people share the same end. Each of us is destined to see the Glory of God at the Second Coming of Christ.
Our laziness, and our misplaced priorities, keep us from the Divine Mysteries, thus depriving our soul of the healing grace that comes from an encounter with the Living God. As the Hospital of the Soul, the Church has been established by Christ Himself as that place wherein we receive the cure, so that we may bask in the Eternal Banquet that awaits us in the after life. By depriving ourselves of the grace filled Mysteries in this life, that are only found within the life of the Church, we separate ourselves from the very treatment that ensures eternal bliss in the next life.
The great Greek theologian, Protopresbyter John Romanides, tells us, “All people will see the Glory (Uncreated Light) of God, and from this viewpoint they have the same end. Everyone, of course, will see the Glory of God, but with one difference: The saved will see the Glory of God as a most sweet and never-setting Light, whereas the damned will see the same Glory of God as a consuming fire that will burn them.”
With love in Christ,
Abbot Tryphon
Wednesday July 5, 2023 / June 22, 2023
5th Week after Pentecost. Tone three.
Apostles’ (Peter & Paul) Fast. By Monastic Charter: Strict Fast (Bread, Vegetables, Fruits)
Hieromartyr Eusebius, bishop of Samosata (380).
New Hieromartyr Gennadius priest (1918).
New Hieromartyrs Theodore and Gabriel (1938).
New Hieromartyr Michael Stephanovsky.
St. Alban, protomartyr of Britain (305) (Celtic & British).
Martyrs Zeno and his servant Zenas of Philadelphia (304).
Martyrs Galacteon, Juliana, and Saturninus of Constantinople.
St. Gregory metropolitan of Valasha (1834) (Romania).
Martyr Pompian (Greek).
1,480 martyrs of Samaria in Palestine (615).
The 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 Hismercy, 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.”