The Placing of the Cincture (Sash) of the Most Holy Theotokos (395-408).
Hieromartyr Cyprian, bishop of Carthage (258). St. Gennadius, patriarch of Constantinople (471). New Martyrs of Jasenovac (Serbia) (1941-1944) (Серб.). St. John, metropolitan of Kiev (1089).
St. Paulinus, bishop of Trier (358). St. Aidan, bishop of Lindisfarne (651). St. Gennadius Scholarius, patriarch of Constantinople (ca. 1372).
Repose of Schemanun Gabriela of the Holy Trinity Monastery in Kiev (1992).
The Fifteenth Sunday After Pentecost. [II Cor. 4:6-15;
Matt. 22:35-46]
The Lord offered the commandment about
love for God and one’s neighbor, and immediately
supplemented it with the teaching about His Sonship to God
and His Divinity. Why was this? Because true love for God
and people is possible no way other than by the influence
of faith in the Divinity of Christ the Saviour, that He is
the incarnate Son of God. Such faith arouses love for God,
for how can one not love God, who has loved us so much,
Who did not even spare His Only-Begotten Son, but gave Him
up for us? Faith brings this love to complete fulfilment,
or to what it seeks; while love seeks a living union. To
attain this union, one must overcome a feeling of
God’s righteousness which punishes sin; without this
it is terrifying to approach God. This feeling is overcome
through the conviction that God’s righteousness is
satisfied by the death on the cross of the Son of God.
Such a conviction comes from faith; consequently, faith
opens the path of love toward God. This is the first
thing. Second: faith in the Divinity of the Son of God Who
was incarnate, suffered, and was buried for our sake,
gives an example of love for one’s neighbor; for
love is when one lays down his soul for his beloved. Faith
also gives strength for the manifestation of such love. To
have such love, one must become a new person instead of an
egotistical person—one must become a
self-sacrificing person. Only in Christ does a person
become a new creature; but we can only be in Christ if we
unite with Christ by faith and grace-filled rebirth
through the holy mysteries accepted with faith. From here
it follows that any expectation by people without faith to
maintain even good moral conduct is in vain. Everything is
together; it is impossible to divide a man. One must
satisfy all of him.