Old Style
February 8
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Saturday |
New Style
February 21
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Cheese-fare Week—no meat; fish and dairy allowed.
Tone 3.
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Cheese-fare Week—no meat.
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Great-martyr Theodore Stratelates (“the General”) of Heraclea (319). Prophet Zachariah (ca. 520 b.c.).
St. Sava II, archbishop of Serbia (1269). Sts. John and Basil, of the Kiev Caves. St. Lyubov of Ryazan, fool-for-Christ (1921).
Martyr Conitus of Alexandria (249). St. Agathangelus, bishop of Damascus (ca. 325). St. Macarius, bishop of Paphos on Cyprus (Gr. Cal).
Repose of Schema-abbot Theodore of Valaam (1937).
Thoughts for Each Day of the Year
According to the Daily Church Readings from the Word of God
By St. Theophan the Recluse
Saturday. [Rom. 14:19–23, 16:25–27; Matt.
6:1–13. For the Fathers—Gal. 5:22–6:2;
Matt. 11:27–30][1]
They that are Christ’s have crucified the flesh
with the affections and lusts (Gal. 5:24). Nowadays,
this order of things has been perverted: people crucify
the flesh, but not together with the affections and
lusts—rather by means of affections and lusts. How
people now torture their bodies with overeating,
drunkenness, lustful deeds, dancing and merry-making! The
most heartless master does not torture his lazy animal
this way. If we were to give our flesh freedom and reason,
its first voice would be against its mistress—the
soul; it would say that the soul has unlawfully interfered
in the flesh’s affairs, brought passions alien to
it, and tortures it by carrying these passions out in the
flesh. Our body’s needs are essentially simple and
passionless. Look at the animals: they do not overeat,
they do not sleep in excess, and having satisfied their
fleshly needs at the given time, they remain calm for the
entire year. Only the soul, which has forgotten its better
inclinations, has by its intemperance developed out of the
body’s basic needs a multitude of unnatural
inclinations, which are unnatural for the body as well. It
is necessary to crucify the flesh in every possible way,
in order to cut the fleshly passions off from the soul
which the latter has grafted onto itself. This can be done
only in the reverse—that is, by not giving it enough
of what is necessary, or by meeting its needs to a far
lesser degree than what its nature demands.
[1]
The Romans Bible verses indicated in English at the top
of this entry are changed so that the texts match the
Russian Bible (three of the verses which are in Chapter
14 of the Russian Bible are found in Chapter 16 in the
KJV).
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