The Gift

Let us pass on the gift of love

My father was a golf pro in Spokane, Washington, during my grade and early middle school years, and the country club was the center of our family’s social life. My brother, Dwayne, and I use to play an average of 18 to 36 holes of golf every day, during the summer months (when we weren’t fly fishing in the Spokane River). Our whole family golfed together, although my mother’s primary love was music. She was a church organist and choir director, and eventually became a piano and organ teacher.

My first job was to fill the coin operated water cooler, with bottles of soda pop. When we moved from Spokane, Washington, to Sandpoint, Idaho, where my dad became the pro for a small country club, I took on my second job, at the age of sixteen, driving the large tractor that was used to cut the grass for the fairways. Those early years were wonderful, and I often think of how lucky I was to have been blessed with such wonderful, loving, parents.

Our home in Sandpoint, was on the lake, with views of forested mountains off in the distance. Is it any wonder I am so happy living on an island, surrounded by forest, for the forests and lakes of Northern Idaho were so prominent a part of the environment of my youth.

I was fortunate to have had a close relationship with both my father and mother during the last years of their lives. As an adult, I was gifted with enough time to have let both my parents know how much I loved them, and how I was a product of both their lives. I was able to tell my dad that I saw much of him, within myself. His humor, comfortableness with all kinds of people, joy of life, love of history, and, even his size (he was a big man), have been inherited by me, his son.

My mother’s love of music, architecture and interior design, are also a part of me, leaving me with the skills to work with our architect on the design of this monastery, and to personally design all the interiors of our monastic buildings. I am clearly the inheritor of the best that my parents displayed in their lives, and I will forever be grateful to them.

Yet, the most important gift I received from my parents, was the gift of love. They loved me, and demonstrated their love for me throughout their lives. They also showed me how to love others, and that ability to be willing to be open to love, and to demonstrate love, eventually allowed me to love God.
It was from my parents that I discovered that God was not simply there as a cosmic problem solver, or gift giver, or but was, like them, One Who loved me. God, like my parents, first loved me, and the lessons of love that I learned from my parents, enabled me to be open to the love of God. In turn, the gift of love that came from my parents, allowed me to see God as not my own private possession, but One Whom I wanted to share with others.

I often think how wonderful it would be if I were able to share a glass of wine in our monastery’s library/commons, with my beloved parents. There is a truism that says, “no matter how old you are, when you lose your parents, you become an orphan”.

Love in Christ,
Abbot Tryphon

Tuesday February 16, 2016 / February 3, 2016
38th Week after Pentecost. Tone four.

Afterfeast of the Meeting of Our Lord.
Holy and Righteous Symeon the God-receiver and Anna the Prophetess (1st c.).
St. Nicholas, enlightener of Japan (1912).
New Hieromartyr John, Timothy, Adrian priests and Martyrs Vladimir, Michael (1938).
St. Romanus, prince of Uglich (1285).
St. Symeon, first bishop of Tver and Polotsk (1289).
Prophet Azarias (10th c.B.C.).
Martyrs Papias, Diodorus, and Claudianus at Perge in Pamphylia (250).
Martyrs Adrian and Eubulus, at Caesarea in Cappadocia (310).
Martyr Blaise of Caesarea in Cappadocia (3rd c.).
St. Ansgar, bishop of Hamburg, enlightener of Denmark and Sweden (865).
St. Laurence of Canterbury, bishop (619) (Celtic & British).
Venerable Werburga of Chester, abbess (700) (Celtic & British).
St. Ia, virgin of St. Ives.
St. James, archbishop of Serbia (1292) (Serbia).
Martyr Paul the Syrian, who suffered under Diocletian (4th c.).
St. Sviatoslav-Gabriel and his son St. Dimitry of Yuriev (1253).
St. Sabbas of Ioannina (15th c.).
St. Ignatius of Mariupol in Crimea, metropolitan of Gothia and Kafa (1786).
Greek New Martyrs Stamatius and John, brothers, and Nicholas their companion, in Chios (1822).

Scripture Readings

1 Peter 3:10-22

10 For

“He who would love life
And see good days,
Let him refrain his tongue from evil,
And his lips from speaking deceit.
11 Let him turn away from evil and do good;
Let him seek peace and pursue it.
12 For the eyes of the Lord are on the righteous,
And His ears are open to their prayers;
But the face of the Lord is against those who do evil.”

Suffering for Right and Wrong

13 And who is he who will harm you if you become followers of what is good? 14 But even if you should suffer for righteousness’ sake, you are blessed. “And do not be afraid of their threats, nor be troubled.” 15 But sanctify the Lord God in your hearts, and always be ready to give a defense to everyone who asks you a reason for the hope that is in you, with meekness and fear; 16 having a good conscience, that when they defame you as evildoers, those who revile your good conduct in Christ may be ashamed. 17 For it is better, if it is the will of God, to suffer for doing good than for doing evil.

Christ’s Suffering and Ours

18 For Christ also suffered once for sins, the just for the unjust, that He might bring us to God, being put to death in the flesh but made alive by the Spirit, 19 by whom also He went and preached to the spirits in prison, 20 who formerly were disobedient, when once the Divine longsuffering waited in the days of Noah, while the ark was being prepared, in which a few, that is, eight souls, were saved through water. 21 There is also an antitype which now saves us—baptism (not the removal of the filth of the flesh, but the answer of a good conscience toward God), through the resurrection of Jesus Christ, 22 who has gone into heaven and is at the right hand of God, angels and authorities and powers having been made subject to Him.

Mark 12:18-27

The Sadducees: What About the Resurrection?

18 Then some Sadducees, who say there is no resurrection, came to Him; and they asked Him, saying: 19 “Teacher, Moses wrote to us that if a man’s brother dies, and leaves his wife behind, and leaves no children, his brother should take his wife and raise up offspring for his brother. 20 Now there were seven brothers. The first took a wife; and dying, he left no offspring. 21 And the second took her, and he died; nor did he leave any offspring. And the third likewise. 22 So the seven had her and left no offspring. Last of all the woman died also. 23 Therefore, in the resurrection, when they rise, whose wife will she be? For all seven had her as wife.”

24 Jesus answered and said to them, “Are you not therefore mistaken, because you do not know the Scriptures nor the power of God? 25 For when they rise from the dead, they neither marry nor are given in marriage, but are like angels in heaven.26 But concerning the dead, that they rise, have you not read in the book of Moses, in the burning bush passage, how God spoke to him, saying, ‘I am the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob’? 27 He is not the God of the dead, but the God of the living. You are therefore greatly mistaken.”