Daily Bread
Saturday, December 7, 2024
“When you sit down to eat, pray. When you eat bread, do so thanking Him for being so generous to you. If you drink wine, be mindful of Him who has given it to you for your pleasure and as a relief in sickness. When you dress, thank Him for His kindness in providing you with clothes. When you look at the sky and the beauty of the stars, throw yourself at God’s feet and adore Him who in His wisdom has arranged things in this way. Similarly, when the sun goes down and when it rises, when you are asleep or awake, give thanks to God, who created and arranged all things for your benefit, to have you know, love and praise their Creator.”
+ St. Basil the Great, from Homily V. In martyrem Julittam. A different translation is quoted in the Prolegomena in Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers Series II Volume 8
Daily Scripture Readings
2 Corinthians 11:1-6 (Epistle)
1 Oh, that you would bear with me in a little folly – and indeed you do bear with me.
2 For I am jealous for you with godly jealousy. For I have betrothed you to one husband, that I may present you as a chaste virgin to Christ.
3 But I fear, lest somehow, as the serpent deceived Eve by his craftiness, so your minds may be corrupted from the simplicity that is in Christ.
4 For if he who comes preaches another Jesus whom we have not preached, or if you receive a different spirit which you have not received, or a different gospel which you have not accepted – you may well put up with it!
5 For I consider that I am not at all inferior to the most eminent apostles.
6 Even though I am untrained in speech, yet I am not in knowledge. But we have been thoroughly manifested among you in all things.
Luke 13:18-29 (Gospel)
18 Then He said, “What is the kingdom of God like? And to what shall I compare it?
19 It is like a mustard seed, which a man took and put in his garden; and it grew and became a large tree, and the birds of the air nested in its branches.”
20 And again He said, “To what shall I liken the kingdom of God?
21 It is like leaven, which a woman took and hid in three measures of meal till it was all leavened.”
22 And He went through the cities and villages, teaching, and journeying toward Jerusalem.
23 Then one said to Him, “Lord, are there few who are saved?” And He said to them,
24 “Strive to enter through the narrow gate, for many, I say to you, will seek to enter and will not be able.
25 When once the Master of the house has risen up and shut the door, and you begin to stand outside and knock at the door, saying, ‘Lord, Lord, open for us,’ and He will answer and say to you, ‘I do not know you, where you are from,’
26 then you will begin to say, ‘We ate and drank in Your presence, and You taught in our streets.’
27 But He will say, ‘I tell you I do not know you, where you are from. Depart from Me, all you workers of iniquity.’
28 There will be weeping and gnashing of teeth, when you see Abraham and Isaac and Jacob and all the prophets in the kingdom of God, and yourselves thrust out.
29 They will come from the east and the west, from the north and the south, and sit down in the kingdom of God.
Saint Ambrose, Bishop of Milan
Saint Ambrose, Bishop of Milan, was born in the year 340 into the family of the Roman prefect of Gaul (now France). Even in the saint’s childhood there appeared presentiments of his great future. Once, bees covered the face of the sleeping infant. They flew in and out of his mouth, leaving honey on his tongue. Soon they flew away so high that they could no longer be seen. Ambrose’s father said that the child would become something great when he reached manhood.
After the death of the father of the family, Ambrose journeyed to Rome, where the future saint and his brother Satyrius received an excellent education. About the year 370, upon completion of his course of study, Ambrose was appointed to the position of governor (consular prefect) of the districts of Liguria and Aemilia, though he continued to live at Mediolanum (now Milan).
In the year 374 Auxentius, the Arian Bishop of Mediolanum, died. This led to complications between the Orthodox and the Arians, since each side wanted to have its own bishop. Ambrose, as the chief city official, went to the church to resolve the dispute.
While he was speaking to the crowd, suddenly a child cried out, “Ambrose for bishop!” The people took up this chant. Ambrose, who at this time was still a catechumen, considered himself unworthy, and tried to refuse. He disparaged himself, and even tried to flee from Mediolanum. The matter went ultimately before the emperor Valentinian the Elder (364-375), whose orders Ambrose dared not disobey. He accepted holy Baptism from an Orthodox priest and, passing through all the ranks of the Church clergy in just seven days, on December 7, 374 he was consecrated Bishop of Mediolanum. He dispersed all his possessions, money and property for the adornment of churches, the upkeep of orphans and the poor, and he devoted himself to a strict ascetic life.
Ambrose combined strict temperance, intense vigilance and work within the fulfilling of his duties as archpastor. Saint Ambrose, defending the unity of the Church, energetically opposed the spread of heresy. Thus, in the year 379 he traveled off to establish an Orthodox bishop at Sirmium, and in 385-386 he refused to hand over the basilica of Mediolanum to the Arians.
Finding God Amidst the Noise
If I say one hundred prayers a day in the silence of Katounakia and you say three prayers amidst the tumult of the city and your professional and family obligations, then we are equal. St. Ephraim of Katounakia
I ran across this small quote recently and was struck by its insight and typical Orthodox generosity. The kindness of the saints is among their most encouraging aspects. It also echoes a theme that I frequently meditate on: the hiddeness of the spiritual life.
There is a theme of hiddenness in the teaching of Christ, indeed, across the whole of Scripture. We can see it in the sayings regarding the Kingdom of God in which it is compared to a lost coin or a buried treasure or a pearl of great price. It is something that requires searching out, digging up, or even selling everything in order to have it. The Kingdom of God is something that you don’t know but is worth everything in order to know. To know it, however, we must ask, seek, and knock.
Much of our life is spent doing something else.
The theme and reality of hiddenness has two sides (or so it seems to me). The first is the side of becoming a seeker. It is the fundamental stance of a pilgrim (rather than a tourist). It has a way of organizing everything around it. For example, one insight that I gained over the years of my education was the central importance of the “question.” When I was in high school, I cannot say that I had any major questions. I thought I had major answers and lived my life accordingly (“teen wisdom”). For two years between high school and college I accumulated more answers, lost them, and began to acquire questions. Those questions, far from refined, gave me an inner burning that fueled certain aspects of my college studies as well as my seminary years that followed. Eight years after seminary, my questions, more refined by eight years of ordained ministry, propelled me into the doctoral program at Duke. The answers that began to mature during that period resulted in my conversion to Orthodoxy a decade later. The trick now is to continue to nurture the questions rather than imagining that, having entered Orthodoxy, I found all the answers. Nothing less than the Kingdom of God, embodied and lived, can be the “answer.” I should add that the “answer” is not a matter of more information. We are not saved by information.
The second side of hiddenness is found in the answers themselves. The Kingdom of God has this aspect of hiddenness not because of some pernicious desire of God. The hiddenness exists in order to nurture within us the proper disposition of the image of God. We fail to understand that God Himself seeks, asks, and knocks. We are the lost coin, the lost sheep, the treasure hidden in the field, the pearl of great price. God leaves everything in order to come among us and “find” us. His commandment to ask, seek, and knock, is similar to the commandment to be like God. It is, I think, what love does.
The great perversion of our consumer life-style is to substitute shopping for seeking. Our passions (traditionally described as: self-love, gluttony, lust, love of money and greed, sadness, acedia (sloth & dejection or apthy and boredom anger, fear, vainglory, and pride) create a counterfeit sense of seeking. The passions cry out to be fed and and satiated. However, they are disordered (for a variety of reasons) and generally only draw us deeper into a maw of darkness and addiction. We frequently imagine asceticism to be an unusual application in our life. What we imagine to be “self-denial” is, in fact, little more than a proper effort to live a life that is truly conformed to our nature. We cannot seek the true food of the soul until we find the soul’s true hunger.
Finding the soul’s true hunger is as much to say “finding the soul itself.” The soul is not the passions. Neither is it anything we immediately think of. Some would say, “We hunger for Jesus.” That is absolutely true, but the “Jesus of the passions” is often something that is quickly substituted for the truth. Back in the days of the Jesus Freaks, it was not unusual to hear someone say, “I don’t need drugs anymore – I get high on Jesus.” That was delusional and created any number of false paths.
The patriarch, Jacob, in the Old Testament, spent the better part of his life avoiding the true question of his soul. He stole his brother’s birthright and fled his wrath. Though he was the heir of the promise, he sought to find it somewhere else (working for his father-in-law, Laban). It was not until he decided to return home and face his brother, and to face whatever God would have of him, that the “question of his soul” came into focus. The last night before crossing the river and coming before his brother, he was met by an angel (or a manifestation of Christ?). He wrestled with him all night declaring, “I will not let you go until you bless me!” He was “blessed” when the angel withered his thigh. But in the wounding he received a blessing – a new name – that of Israel (“he who wrestled and prevailed”). Jacob did not know that he was Israel until he came face to face with the question: “Will you bless me?”
Jacob wrestled with God. St. Ephraim of Katounakia wrestled with his “hundred prayers.” We wrestle with whatever the day brings to us, including its “three prayers.” Whatever we do in the course of the day, it is good that we not lose ourselves amidst our distractions. Do the thing that truly matters, the “one thing needful.” We need to speak to God and ask the question. And keep asking, seeking, and knocking, until we find the right question.
God awaits us.
This week’s calendar reminders:
Monday 12/2: Matins 8:30 am
Tuesday 12/3: no services or events
Wednesday 12/4: no services or events
Thursday 12/5: Matins 8:30 am; Vespers w/Litya for St. Nicholas 6 pm
Friday 12/6: Paraklesis to Theotokos 8:30 am
Saturday 12/7: Catechumen Class 4:30 pm; Choir Rehearsal 5 pm; Great Vespers 6 pm
Sunday 12/8: Divine Liturgy 9:15 am
