'Daily Bread'
Saturday, Sept. 7, 2024
“The Lord wants us to love one another. Here is freedom: in love for God and neighbor. In this freedom, there is equality. In earthly orders, there may not be equality, but this is not important for the soul. Not everyone can be a king, not everyone a patriarch or a boss. But in any position it is possible to love God and to please Him, and only this is important. And whoever loves God more on earth will be in greater glory in His Kingdom.”
- St. Silouan the Athonite, Writings, VI.23
Daily Scripture Reading
1 Corinthians 1:3-9 (Epistle)
3 Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.
4 I thank my God always concerning you for the grace of God which was given to you by Christ Jesus,
5 that you were enriched in everything by Him in all utterance and all knowledge,
6 even as the testimony of Christ was confirmed in you,
7 so that you come short in no gift, eagerly waiting for the revelation of our Lord Jesus Christ,
8 who will also confirm you to the end, that you may be blameless in the day of our Lord Jesus Christ.
9 God is faithful, by whom you were called into the fellowship of His Son, Jesus Christ our Lord.
Matthew 19:3-12 (Gospel)
3 The Pharisees also came to Him, testing Him, and saying to Him, “Is it lawful for a man to divorce his wife for just any reason?”
4 And He answered and said to them, “Have you not read that He who made them at the beginning ‘made them male and female,’
5 and said, ‘For this reason a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh’?
6 So then, they are no longer two but one flesh. Therefore what God has joined together, let not man separate.
7 They said to Him, “Why then did Moses command to give a certificate of divorce, and to put her away?”
8 He said to them, “Moses, because of the hardness of your hearts, permitted you to divorce your wives, but from the beginning it was not so.
9 And I say to you, whoever divorces his wife, except for sexual immorality, and marries another, commits adultery; and whoever marries her who is divorced commits adultery.
10 His disciples said to Him, “If such is the case of the man with his wife, it is better not to marry.”
11 But He said to them, “All cannot accept this saying, but only those to whom it has been given:
12 For there are eunuchs who were born thus from their mother’s womb, and there are eunuchs who were made eunuchs by men, and there are eunuchs who have made themselves eunuchs for the kingdom of heaven’s sake. He who is able to accept it, let him accept it.
Forefeast of the Nativity of the Theotokos
Troparion — Tone 4
Today from the stem of Jesse and from the loins of David, / the handmaid of God Mary is being born for us. / Therefore all creation is renewed and rejoices! / Heaven and earth rejoice together. / Praise her, you families of nations, / for Joachim rejoices and Anna celebrates crying out: / “The barren one gives birth to the Theotokos, the Nourisher of our life!”
Kontakion — Tone 3
Today the Virgin Theotokos Mary / the bridal chamber of the Heavenly Bridegroom / by the will of God is born of a barren woman, / being prepared as the chariot of God the Word. / She was fore-ordained for this, since she is the divine gate and the true Mother of Life.
The Fear of God is Reverence for and Love of Him
If I love God, I’m careful not to lose that love. And the more I love Him, the more careful I am.
by Metropolitan Athanasios of Lemessos
The Church is not opposed to the human body. This is why the Fathers were so careful not to damage their body with their ascetic efforts. They tried to submit it to the Holy Spirit and to God’s commandments, so as not to seek the pleasures and lapses of the flesh, but they never accepted that their bodies should be damaged. In Patristic literature, there’s a saying that ‘we don’t slay the body, but we do slay the passions’. It’s sin and the passions which kill, not the body, which is the temple of God. And if, at times, it appears that the saints seem merciless and harsh in their treatment of the body, it was not to kill it, but, as we’ve said, to slay sin and their passions. It was because their body was often a prisoner to sin and the passions that they treated it in this way.
The Church never permitted people to kill or maim their bodies in the pursuit of some virtue. And besides, in the sphere of the Church, we have also to learn to overcome the difference between the sexes. In other words, we should learn to regard other people not in sexual or carnal terms, but as images of God, as our brothers and sisters, as people destined for sanctification and glorification. If we see them in this light, we won’t regard them in a sinful manner, but in a holy and virtuous way. This is the view of the Church concerning the human body.
In the Old Testament, God says: ‘I shall dwell among them and walk with them and in them and I shall be their God’. God is speaking personally, thousands of years before Christ, and saying that He will make a people of His own.
There’s no ethnicity in the Church. This is why we all work together, irrespective of racial origin, though, naturally, this is not to disregard our homeland and our nation. But in the Church we transcend this. So, in the Church there’s a new people, a new nation. The people which the Holy Spirit said, thousands of years ago, that God would walk among and be their God is, in fact, the nation of Christians. We’re a new people and we don’t depend on racial origins. This is why the Prophet Isaiah says: ‘Therefore come out from them, and be separate from them, says the Lord, and touch nothing unclean’. [This is actually Saint Paul, quoting Isaiah at 2 Cor. 6, 17. WJL].
This week’s calendar reminders:
Monday 9/2: Matins 8:30 a.m.
Tuesday 9/3: no services or events
Wednesday 9/4: no services or events
Thursday 9/5: Matins 8:30 a.m.
Friday 9/6: Matins 8:30 a.m.
Saturday 9/7: No Catechumen Class 4:30; Choir practice 5 pm; Great Vespers 6 pm
Sunday 9/8: Divine Liturgy 9: 15 a.m.
