Daily Bread
Friday, February 7, 2025
2 Peter 1:1-10 (Epistle)
1 Simon Peter, a bondservant and apostle of Jesus Christ, to those who have obtained like precious faith with us by the righteousness of our God and Savior Jesus Christ:
2 Grace and peace be multiplied to you in the knowledge of God and of Jesus our Lord,
3 as His divine power has given to us all things that pertain to life and godliness, through the knowledge of Him who called us by glory and virtue,
4 by which have been given to us exceedingly great and precious promises, that through these you may be partakers of the divine nature, having escaped the corruption that is in the world through lust.
5 But also for this very reason, giving all diligence, add to your faith virtue, to virtue knowledge,
6 to knowledge self-control, to self-control perseverance, to perseverance godliness,
7 to godliness brotherly kindness, and to brotherly kindness love.
8 For if these things are yours and abound, you will be neither barren nor unfruitful in the knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ.
9 For he who lacks these things is shortsighted, even to blindness, and has forgotten that he was cleansed from his old sins.
10 Therefore, brethren, be even more diligent to make your call and election sure, for if you do these things you will never stumble;
Mark 13:1-8 (Gospel)
1 Then as He went out of the temple, one of His disciples said to Him, “Teacher, see what manner of stones and what buildings are here!”
2 And Jesus answered and said to him, “Do you see these great buildings? Not one stone shall be left upon another, that shall not be thrown down.”
3 Now as He sat on the Mount of Olives opposite the temple, Peter, James, John, and Andrew asked Him privately,
4 “Tell us, when will these things be? And what will be the sign when all these things will be fulfilled?”
5 And Jesus, answering them, began to say: “Take heed that no one deceives you.
6 For many will come in My name, saying, ‘I am He,’ and will deceive many.
7 But when you hear of wars and rumors of wars, do not be troubled; for such things must happen, but the end is not yet.
8 For nation will rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom. And there will be earthquakes in various places, and there will be famines and troubles. These are the beginnings of sorrows.
Saint Parthenios, Bishop of Lampsakos
aint Parthenios, the Bishop of Lampsakos, was from the city of Melitopolis (Asia Minor), where his father Christopher served as a deacon. The young man could not read, but he learned the Holy Scriptures well, by attending the Divine Services in church. He had a kind heart and, when he went fishing, he distributed the proceeds to the poor. Filled with the grace of God from the age of eighteen, Saint Parthenios healed diseases, cast out demons, and worked other miracles in Christ's name.
Learning about the virtuous life of the young man, Bishop Philip of Melitopolis gave him an education and ordained him as a presbyter. In 325, during the reign of Constantine the Great, Archbishop Achilles of Kyzikos appointed him as Bishop of Lampsakos (in Asia Minor). Many pagans lived in the city, and the Hierarch was diligent in spreading the faith in Christ, and confirming it with many miracles and healings of the sick, according to God's will. People abandoned their pagan beliefs, and Bishop Parthenios visited Emperor Constantine the Great, requesting him to permit the destruction of pagan temples so that Christian churches could be built in their place. The Emperor received him with honor, and gave him a document authorizing him to destroy pagan temples, and provided him with the means to build a church. Returning to Lampsakos, Bishop Parthenios ordered the destruction of the pagan temples and built a beautiful church in the middle of the city.
Finding a large marble stone in one of the ruined temples, suitable for the Holy Altar in the church, the Bishop ordered work to begin on the stone so that it could be put on a wagon and taken to the church. Out of malice, the devil, who was enraged because the stone had been removed from the temple, overturned the wagon, and the stone killed the driver Eutykhianos. Saint Parthenios resurrected him by his prayers, and shamed the devil, who wanted to obstruct God's work.
The Hierarch's mercy was so great that he never refused to heal any of those who came to him, or the people he met on the roads, who were suffering from bodily ailments and possessed by unclean spirits. People stopped going to doctors, because Saint Parthenios freely healed every illness in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ.
By the great power of the name of Christ, the Hierarch cast out many demons from people, houses, and the waters of the sea. When the Bishop exorcised a demon from a certain man who had been possessed since childhood, the unclean spirit begged Saint Parthenios to give him another place to live. The Saint promised to show him such a place and, opening his mouth, he said to the demon: "Come and dwell in me." As if scorched by fire, the demon cried out, "How shall I enter the house of God?" and disappeared into desolate and impassable places. Expelled by the Saint the unclean spirit shouted that Divine fire was driving him into the fire of Gehenna. Thus, by showing people the great power of faith in Christ, the Saint converted many idolaters to the only true God.
The Saint's skull is located in the Monastery of Espigmenou on Mount Athos. Fragments of the Saint's relics are to be found in the Monasteries of the Great Cave at Kalavryta, Rovelistas of Arta, and Kykkos on Cyprus. Part of the Saint's skull is kept in the Holy Monastery of Makrymallē (Μακρυμάλλη). in the Holy Metropolis of Chalkida, in the center of the island of Euboea in Greece.
Patience: What Growth In Christ Looks Like
A small but always persistent discipline is a great force; for a soft drop, falling persistently, hollows out hard rock….
When patience greatly increases in our soul, it is a sign that we have secretly received the grace of consolation. The power of patience is stronger than the joyful thoughts that descend into the heart. (St. Isaac the Syrian, Homily 48)
When Jesus told His followers that they must eat His flesh and drink his blood, St. John tells us that many were offended, calling it a “hard” saying. The text tells us that many of his disciples no longer followed him after that point (John 6). Only the twelve disciples stayed with Him. But they stayed not because they understood him or because the saying seemed any less hard to them. They stayed because they had nowhere else to go, nowhere else where they could hear the words of life. Jesus had the words of life, and even if he offended them by saying something so ridiculous and patently offensive as “you have to eat me to be saved,” they weren’t going anywhere.
I’m sure it was much easier to follow Jesus a day or two earlier, when Jesus in the temple area and on the Sabbath healed a man who had been paralyzed for 38 years. It’s so much easier to follow Jesus when we see His power, when we hear words that comfort us, when our experience meets our expectations. This, I think, is the joy that St. Isaac is referring to above, the “joyful thoughts that descend into the heart.” When our prayers seem to be answered, when tragedy is avoided, when God seems so close to us because everything is going pretty much as we think it should, these are the times when a certain joy and confidence descends into our hearts and we feel that we could follow Christ anywhere. It is at times like this when we wonder how anyone could not follow Christ. In those moments of joy and confidence we feel encouraged and consoled, we feel as if nothing could ever shake us from our confidence in Christ.
However, such moments or seasons of confidence, of joy descending into our hearts, of everything seeming to work out as our theological ideals told us they would—prayers answered, needs met, and all sadness far away—these times of joyful confidence in God never last very long. They are great when they happen. In fact, it is probably necessary for us to have such moments or seasons of this kind of consolation (the consolation of joyful confidence) occasionally through our life, especially when we are young. A certain energy or power comes from such experiences, an energy or power that helps us commit to Christ, helps us say confidently to ourselves, “Yes, I will follow Christ!” It is a power that enables us to take big risks and make big changes and radical acts of repentance in our lives.
But deciding to follow Christ or repenting from a besetting sin is only the first step in a very long journey. St. Isaac likens this walk with Christ to a soft drop that hallows out a hard rock. It is not the gush of water caused by a sudden cloudburst of enthusiasm that actually changes us (although it often sets a direction). It is not the dramatic move that forms us into the image of our Master. Rather, it is the “small but always persistent discipline” that carves away the hard stone of our sinful passions and smooths our rough edges and undermines the foundation of our delusions about ourself, about the world and about God. This is why St. Isaac tells us that patience, actually, is the evidence of God’s consolation received secretly, or in a hidden way, in our souls.
When we can patiently endure a small, persistent discipline, then we know that God has secretly given us the Grace to grow in Christ, to grow just a little bit more, to let fall away another little bit of the world that clings so tenaciously to us. Patience is what the Grace of Christian growth looks like.
Both the words “small” and “persistent” are, I think, key to manifesting the grace of patience. A common newbie mistake in the Christian life, a mistake that I constantly make, is to seek for patience in the big things, to expect to be persistent in some big change in my life and to consider some small thing to be too easy or not a worthy offering, or even to think it is somehow beneath me (I sometimes foolishly think to myself, “I’m better than that.”). But what we all soon find out is that the Grace that we expected to help us overcome the large matters just doesn’t manifest when we think we need it and our big commitment leads us only to a big failure.
Perhaps this happens because of our pride. Or perhaps it happens just because it is the nature of the spiritual life: a seed grows slowly. Patience and persistence grow bit by bit, not in leaps and bounds.
If we want to cultivate the secretly given consolation of patience, I suggest we start small. It is actually much better for our growth in Christ to say, for example, the Lord’s Prayer (slowly and with attention) every morning and every evening for several years, than it is to attempt a thirty-minute prayer rule that we keep for a few weeks, then keep poorly for a few more weeks and then give up entirely in frustration. A certain brother once told me that fasting started to really mean something to him when he started giving up cream in his coffee. Such a small matter, but for him, consistently followed, had amazing results. It seemed that every cup of coffee throughout the day became a moment of offering, a prayer, a recommitment of his life to Christ. As St. Isaac says, it’s the small and persistent drop of water that hollows out the hard rock.
Certainly, there are also times when God’s Grace is such that we can, we must, make bold moves, make radical changes in our lives. A bank robber must stop robbing banks—even if for the rest of his life he struggles with temptation every time he passes a bank. Similarly, those living in inappropriate sexual relationships have to stop it. These are the bold acts of repentance that set the direction—or in many cases reset the direction of our lives. However, it is in the day to day, patient continuance in doing good (Romans 2:7) that the real progress in spiritual life takes place.
It is never easy in this broken world to grow in Christ. However, it’s not nearly as difficult as we imagine. Grand gestures or great sacrifice is seldom called for: doesn’t Psalm 50/51 tell us that sacrifice is not what God is looking for? What is God looking for? God is looking for a broken and humble heart. Sometimes, it is actually our failures, our inability to give God the big sacrifice that we think He wants that produces in us the humble heart that God is actually looking for. A humble heart is not afraid of the small thing. A humble heart can accept a small discipline and keep it faithfully. A humble heart, by a patient persistence, hollows out the hardest rock and softens the hardest heart.
This week’s calendar reminders:
Monday 2/3: Matins 8:30 am
Tuesday 2/4: no services or events
Wednesday 2/5: no services or events
Thursday 2/6: Matins 8:30 am
Friday 2/7: Matins 8:30 am
Saturday 2/8: Inquirer Class 4:30 pm; Great Vespers 6 pm
Sunday 2/9: Divine Liturgy 9:15am
CLICK BELOW to donate online:
Christ the Savior Orthodox Church is located in Southbury, Connecticut, and is part of the New England Diocese of the Orthodox Church of America.
Mailing address: Christ the Savior Church, 1070 Roxbury Road, Southbury, CT 06488
PLEASE DONATE to help our parish do the work of the Lord, thrive and grow, and extend the Kingdom of God. May the Lord bless your generosity!
Fr. Moses Locke can be reached at frmoseslocke@gmail.com