Old Style
February 12
|
Thursday |
New Style
February 25
|
Fast-free Week.
Tone 5.
|
Fast-free period.
|
Appearance of the Iveron Icon of the Most Holy Theotokos (Mt. Athos) (9th c.). St. Meletius, archbishop of Antioch (381). St. Alexis, metropolitan of Moscow (1378). St. Meletius, archbishop of Kharkov (1840).
St. Mary, nun (who was called Marinus), and her father, St. Eugene, monk, of Alexandria (6th c.) St. Anthony II, patriarch of Constantinople (895). St. Bassian, founder of Ryabovsk Monastery (Uglich) (1509).
Hieromartyr Urbanus, pope of Rome (223-230). St. Ethilwald of Lindisfarne (740). St. Prochorus of Georgia, builder of Holy Cross Monastery near Jerusalem (1066). New Monk-martyrs Luke (Mukhaidze) (1277) and Nicholas (Dvali) (1314), of Jerusalem, and the holy fathers of the Georgian monasteries in Jerusalem. New Martyr Christos the Gardener, of Albania, at Constantinople (1748).
Repose of the cave-dweller Anastasia (Logacheva) of Ardatov (1875).
Thoughts for Each Day of the Year
According to the Daily Church Readings from the Word of God
By St. Theophan the Recluse
Monday (36th). [III John 1:1–14; Luke
19:29–40, 22:7–39]
What does it mean to walk in truth
(III John 1:4)? It means accepting truth in your heart,
abiding in such thoughts and feelings as the truth
requires. Thus, it is the truth that God is everywhere and
sees everything. He who accepts this truth with his heart
and begins to keep himself both inwardly and outwardly as
if God Himself were before him and were seeing everything
within him, is walking in this truth. It is the truth that
God contains all, and that without Him we cannot do
anything successfully. He who accepts this with his heart,
and turns in prayer in whatever he does for help to God,
accepting whatever happens to him as being from the hand
of the Lord—is walking in this truth. It is the
truth that death could steal us away at any hour, and
after death immediately comes the judgement. He who
accepts this truth with his heart, and begins to live as
if he were about to die this minute and appear before the
judgement of God, is walking in this truth. So it is
concerning every other truth.
Thursday. [I John 1:8–2:6; Mark 13:31–14:2]
What the Apostle directed us towards yesterday, the Gospel
now suggests directly to us: Take ye heed, watch
and pray: for ye know not when the time.… Watch ye
therefore ... lest coming suddenly he find you
sleeping (Mark 13:33, 35–6). It is
necessary to wait, and every instant to keep in mind that
the Lord is about to appear and shine like lightning from
one end of the universe to the other. It is thought by
some that it is possible to replace this waiting upon the
Lord with waiting for death. This is good, or at least
this should be done. But awaiting the coming of the Lord
is one thing, and awaiting death another. They lead to
different thoughts, and to different feelings born under
the impact of these different thoughts. Await the day of
the Lord, when all will end in an irrevocable
determination. After our death, time will still continue
in an undecided state; but the day of the Lord will assign
everything for eternal ages, and it will be sealed, so you
cannot expect any changes. “I have been
waiting,” you say. So wait longer, and continue to
wait. “But this,” you say, “will poison
all my joys.” It will not poison your joys—it
will only drive away from your everyday life those joys
that are illegitimately so-called. You will still rejoice,
only in the Lord. It is possible to wait for the Lord with
this joy; and if the Lord finds you in this joy, He will
not call you to account, but will praise you.
|