St. Amphilochius, bishop of Iconium (ca. 395). St. Gregory, bishop of Agrigentum (680). Burial of St. Alexander Nevsky (Alexis in schema), great prince of Novgorod (1263). St. Metrophanes (Macarius in schema), bishop of Voronezh (1703).
St. Sisinius the Confessor, bishop of Cyzicus (ca. 325). Martyr Theodore of Antioch (4th c.). St. Amphilochius of the Kiev Caves, bishop of Vladimir, Volhynia (1122).
New Hieromartyr Seraphim (Tievar), hieromonk, of Moscow (1932). New Hieromartyrs Boris (Voskoboinikov), bishop of Ivanovo, and Eleazar Spyridonov, priest, of Eupatoria, Crimea (1937).
St. Ischyrion, bishop in Egypt, and hermit, of Scetis (5th c.). St. Trudo, abbot, of Zirkingen (Neth.) (693). St. Dionysius I, patriarch of Constantinople (15th c.). St. Anthony of Iezeru-Vilcea (Romania) (1714). New Hieromartyr Gregory (Peradze), archimandrite, of Georgia, at Auschwitz, Poland (1942).
Tuesday. [I Tim. 5:11-21; Luke 17:26-37]
Whosoever shall seek to save his
life shall lose it; and whosoever shall lose his life
shall preserve it. One must understand it this way: to
save your life means to pity yourself, while to lose your
life means not pitying yourself—that is, on the path
of the Lord’s commandments, or in working for the
Lord. So, it is like this: he who works for the Lord,
fulfilling His commandments without pitying himself, is
saved; but he who pities himself, perishes. If you pity
yourself you will unfailingly be found as a transgressor
of the commandments and, consequently, an unprofitable
servant; and what is the sentence for an unprofitable
servant? Cast ye the unprofitable servant into outer
darkness: there shall be weeping and gnashing of teeth
(Matt. 25:30). Make an effort to watch yourself if only
for a single day, and you will see that self-pity distorts
all of our [good] deeds and kills the desire to do them.
Without labour and effort, you will not be able to do
anything; but if you regret forcing yourself—it all
stops there. There are things which you must do, whether
you want to or not. Such things are done without fail,
difficult as they may be. But here self-pity is overcome
by self-pity. If you don’t do them, there will be
nothing to eat. But since what is required by the
commandments are not of such nature, they are always
omitted out of s elf-pity. You make condescensions to
yourself when it comes to bad deeds, also out of
self-pity. You hate to refuse yourself what you want and
so the desire is fulfilled, even though it is either
outright sinful, or will lead to sin. Thus it always goes
with one who pities himself—what he should do, he
does not, and what he should not do, he indulges himself
in doing; and he ends up good for nothing. What salvation
can there be here?