Thursday. [I Cor. 10:28-11:7; Matt. 16:24-28]

   The Lord demands decisive self-denial of those who want to follow Him: Let him deny himself, He says. It could be expressed like this: Cast aside your interests and pursue only the interests of the Lord. You will be fulfilling this when you always do what is pleasing to Him. How can one do this? Mind carefully what is in you, and what around you on the outside, and discern strictly in one or another situation, be it internal or external, how to act in the way that is most pleasing to God—then, not pitying yourself and not inserting your own calculations, act accordingly, with complete self-denial. You say, “It is hard to determine this.” No, it is not hard. We have been given clear and fixed commandments— they express what we can do to be pleasing to the Lord. All that remains is to apply them to the given situation, and this does not present any great problem. Having common sense is enough. If you cannot figure something out, ask your spiritual father or someone else whose words you respect, and act according to his directions. But it is always better to sharpen your discernment through reading the word of God and writings of the fathers, so that you will always have a decision-maker with you.

Friday. [I Cor. 11:8-22; Matt. 17:10-18]

Concerning John the Baptist the Lord said: Elias is come already, and they knew him not. Why was this? Because they did not heed the paths of God and were not interested in them: they had a different mentality, different tastes, different views on things. Outside the range of Divine things, their shrewdness was in play, but within this range they did not understand anything due to their estrangement from it. One’s inner mentality forms a feeling for things, which immediately notices and determines what is familiar to it, no matter how concealed it may be. An artist, scientist and economist look at one thing with equal attention, but each makes a judgment about it in his own way—one according to its beauty, the second according to causal relations, the third according to gains from it. So with the Jews: as was their disposition, so they judged about John, and then about the Saviour; but since they were disposed not according to God, they did not understand them, who carried out the work of God. Similarly, now people have begun to not understand the Forerunner and the Lord—and do with them what they like. A hidden persecution of Christianity has arisen, which has begun to openly break through, like recently in Paris. What was done there on a small scale, is what we must expect with time in big proportions…Save us, O Lord!