Sustainability

Sustainability and inter-dependency

Since the foundation of this monastic community some thirty years ago, our holy brotherhood has been working towards becoming as self-reliant as is possible, given the age we live in. Recognizing that most of human kind, since the beginning, had no choice but to depend on personal gardens for vegetables, raising cows for milk and cheese, and chickens for eggs, pigs for sausages, and harvesting trees for cooking and heating, we are now live in a time when being totally self-reliant is impossible for most. We are now dependent on others for much of our food and fuel, and the day is long past when most people are able to be completely independent of others for their daily needs.

When I was a child I remember most people in our neighborhood raised their own chickens and rabbits for food, grew large vegetable gardens, and even baked their own bread. Today, most people purchase prepackaged food that requires little preparation. The food consumed by the average American household comes pre-prepared in frozen, canned, or boxed form. “Home made” cakes require only the mixing of eggs and water, are popped into the oven, and frosted with icing out of a plastic container. I would guess most people have never made a cake from scratch, or kneaded their own bread, and few would know how to grow a vegetable garden. Fewer yet have taken eggs from the nest of their own chickens. In short, we have become a nation of codependents.

Growing and canning our own vegetables, baking our own bread, harvesting our own honey from our monastery’s beehives, making our own cheese, and brewing our own mead, has given us a real sense of self-reliance. I can’t even imagine what it would be like to revert back to the days when we were totally dependant on a local grocery store. Our move towards self-reliance and sustainability has been a great blessing for us.

But it has also opened the door to an awareness that, as Christians, our dependence on praying together and working together towards the common goal of living totally fearless lives of faith in our Lord Jesus Christ, is a dependency that one would not want to sacrifice for the want of independence. Our connection as members of the One Body of Christ, the Church, is an inter-dependency.

With love in Christ,
Abbot Tryphon

Friday October 9, 2015 / September 26, 2015

19th Week after Pentecost. Tone one.
Fast. Food with Oil

Repose of the Holy Apostle and Evangelist John the Theologian.
Canonization of St. Tikhon, Patriarch of Moscow (1989).
New Hieromartyrs Athanasius, Alexander, Demetrius priests, martyrs John, Nicholas (1937).
New Hieromartyr Vladimir priest (1939).
Venerable Ephraim, abbot of Perekop, wonderworker of Novgorod (1492).
Righteous Gideon, judge of Israel.
Venerable Nilus of Rossano (Calabria) (1044).
Arrival of the Iveron Icon of the Most Holy Theotokos in Geogria (1989) (Georgia).

Scripture Readings

1 John 4:12-19

Seeing God Through Love

12 No one has seen God at any time. If we love one another, God abides in us, and His love has been perfected in us. 13 By this we know that we abide in Him, and He in us, because He has given us of His Spirit. 14 And we have seen and testify that the Father has sent the Son as Savior of the world. 15 Whoever confesses that Jesus is the Son of God, God abides in him, and he in God. 16 And we have known and believed the love that God has for us. God is love, and he who abides in love abides in God, and God in him.

The Consummation of Love

17 Love has been perfected among us in this: that we may have boldness in the day of judgment; because as He is, so are we in this world. 18 There is no fear in love; but perfect love casts out fear, because fear involves torment. But he who fears has not been made perfect in love. 19 We love Him because He first loved us.

John 19:25-27

Behold Your Mother

25 Now there stood by the cross of Jesus His mother, and His mother’s sister, Mary the wife of Clopas, and Mary Magdalene. 26 When Jesus therefore saw His mother, and the disciple whom He loved standing by, He said to His mother, “Woman, behold your son!” 27 Then He said to the disciple, “Behold your mother!” And from that hour that disciple took her to his own home.

John 21:24-25

24 This is the disciple who testifies of these things, and wrote these things; and we know that his testimony is true.

25 And there are also many other things that Jesus did, which if they were written one by one, I suppose that even the world itself could not contain the books that would be written. Amen.