September 9 / August 27
Saints of the Day
St. Poemen the Great. St. Poemen of Palestine. St. Sabbas of Benephali.St. Liberius, pope of Rome. St. Hosius the Confessor, Bishop of Cordova. Hieromartyr Kushka and St. Pimen (Poemen) of the Kiev Caves. Martyr Anthusa. Translation of the Relics of Saints Theognostus, Cyprian and Photius, Metropolitan of Moscow. Great-Martyr Phanurius the newly-appeared of Rhodes.
Quote of the Day
What is the aim of the incarnate dispensation of God’s Word, preached in all the Holy Scriptures but which we, who read them, do not know? The only aim is that, having entered into what is our own, we should participate in what is His. The Son of God has become Son of Man in order to make us, men, sons of God, raising our race by grace to what He is Himself by nature, granting us birth from above through the grace of the Holy Spirit and leading us straightway to the kingdom of heaven, or rather, granting us this kingdom of heaven within us (Luke 17:21), in order that we should not merely be fed by the hope of entering it, but entering into full possession thereof should cry: our ‘life is hid with Christ in God’ (Col. 3:3).
St. Simeon the New Theologian
“Practical and Theological Precepts” (The Philokalia)
Photo of the Day
I was blessed to meet an old friend, Father John of the Cross, at Saint Elijah House of Studies, in Mount Angel, Oregon. Father John is a Discalced Carmelite Friar, whom I’d not seen in some twenty years. I met a young Carmelite friar, in the Mt. Angel Benedictine Abbey’s library, who told me about their House of Studies. I was so delighted to hear that Father John was living there!
Scripture Readings for the Day
Ephesians 1:1-9
Greeting
1 Paul, an apostle of Jesus Christ by the will of God,
To the saints who are in Ephesus, and faithful in Christ Jesus:
2 Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.
Redemption in Christ
3 Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places in Christ, 4 just as He chose us in Him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and without blame before Him in love, 5 having predestined us to adoption as sons by Jesus Christ to Himself, according to the good pleasure of His will, to the praise of the glory of His grace, by which He made us accepted in the Beloved. 6
7 In Him we have redemption through His blood, the forgiveness of sins, according to the riches of His grace 8 which He made to abound toward us in all wisdom and prudence, 9 having made known to us the mystery of His will, according to His good pleasure which He purposed in Himself,
A Gentile Shows Her Faith24 From there He arose and went to the region of Tyre and Sidon. And He entered a house and wanted no one to know it, but He could not be hidden. 25 For a woman whose young daughter had an unclean spirit heard about Him, and she came and fell at His feet. 26 The woman was a Greek, a Syro-Phoenician by birth, and she kept asking Him to cast the demon out of her daughter. 27 But Jesus said to her, “Let the children be filled first, for it is not good to take the children’s bread and throw it to the little dogs.”
28 And she answered and said to Him, “Yes, Lord, yet even the little dogs under the table eat from the children’s crumbs.”
29 Then He said to her, “For this saying go your way; the demon has gone out of your daughter.”
30 And when she had come to her house, she found the demon gone out, and her daughter lying on the bed.