Old Style
July 14
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Wednesday |
New Style
July 27
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6th Week after Pentecost.
Tone 4.
Fast Day.
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Wine and oil allowed.
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Apostle Aquila of the Seventy (1st c.), and St. Priscilla (1st c.)
Martyr Justus, at Rome (1st c.). St. Onesimus, monk and wonderworker, of Magnesia (ca. 284-305). St. Ellius (Hellius) of Egypt (4th c.). St. Stephen, founder of Makhrishche Monastery (Vologda) (1406). St. Nicodemus of Mt. Athos, spiritual writer (1809). New Martyr John of Merv (Turkmenistan).
St. Heraclius, patriarch of Alexandria (246). St. Marcellinus, priest, of Utrecht (8th c.). St. Joseph the Confessor, archbishop of Thessalonica (832). St. Longinus, hieroschemamonk of Svyatogorsk Monastery (1882). Uncovering of the relics of St. Theophilus, fool-for-Christ, of Kiev (1993).
Thoughts for Each Day of the Year
According to the Daily Church Readings from the Word of God
By St. Theophan the Recluse
Thursday. [I Cor. 3:18-23; Matt. 13:36-43]
And shall cast them
(those who offend and do iniquity) into a furnace of
fire: there shall be wailing and gnashing of teeth.
Then shall the righteous shine forth as the sun in the
Kingdom of their Father. Thus will be carried out the
division of good and evil, light and darkness. Now is the
period of time in which they are mixed. It pleased the
Lord to arrange that the freedom of creatures should grow
and be strengthened in good through the struggle with
evil; evil is tolerated within the vicinity of inward
freedom, and in contact with a person externally. It does
not determine anything, only tempts. One who feels a
temptation must not fall, but enter into battle. He who
conquers is freed from one temptation, and advances
forward and upward to find new temptation there—and
so on, until the end of his life. Oh, when will we
comprehend this meaning of the evil which tempts us, so we
might arrange our lives according to this understanding!
The strugglers are finally crowned, and pass on to the
other life where there is neither sickness nor sorrows
from the outside, and where they become inwardly pure like
angels of God, free from the sting of tempting
inclinations and thoughts. This is how the triumph of
light and good is being prepared, and it will be revealed
in all of its glory on the last day of the world.
Wednesday. [I Cor. 2:9-3:8; Matt. 13:31-36]
The kingdom is like a grain of mustard
seed and leaven. A small grain of mustard seed grows up
into a big bush; leaven penetrates the whole lump of dough
and makes it leavened. Here, on the one hand, is an image
for the Church, which in the beginning consisted only of
the apostles and several other people, then spread and
became most numerous, penetrating all of humanity; on the
other hand, it is an image of the spiritual life revealed
in every person. Its first seed is the intention and
determination to be saved through pleasing God, upon faith
in the Lord and Saviour. This determination, no matter how
firm, is like a tiny dot. In the beginning it embraces
only one’s consciousness and activities; then from
this all of the activity of a spiritual life develops. Its
movement and strength multiply and mature within its own
self, and it begins to penetrate all the powers of the
soul—the mind, will, feelings, then fills them with
itself, makes them leavened according to its spirit, and
penetrates the entire constitution of the human nature,
body, soul, and spirit in which it was engendered.
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