Sunday

**This week wisdom from Orthodox Elders

“We should regard Christ as our friend. He is our friend. He asserts that this Himself when He says you are my friends. Let a stretch out to him and approach Him as a friend. Do we fall? Do we send? With familiarity, love and trust let us run to Him \endash not with fear that He will punish us, but with the confidence which we derive from the sense of being with a friend. We can say to him “I have fallen, forgive me.” At the same time however, that is have the sense that He loves us and that He receives us with tenderness and love and forgives us. Don’t let send separate us from Christ. When we believe that He loves us and we love Him, we don’t feel strangers and distanced from Him even when we sin. We have secured His love and however we behave we know that He loves us.”
Elder Porphyrios ~Wounded by Love

Prayer:
Glory to God in the Highest and on earth peace good will among men.

Monday
“Love our Jesus and worship only Him in your life. May Jesus be the spiritual delight of your heart. Never exchange  this holy love for deceitful worldly pleasures no matter how hard the vein world tries to force you. Become a disciple of Jesus like another myrrh-bearer offering as a precious myrrh your virginal purity to your teacher. All earthly things pass like a dream and nothing in this world remain stable and unchangeable. So then why should we love transitory and ephemeral things instead of the eternal and everlasting ones?”
Elder Ephraim+ ~Counsels from the Holy Mountain

Prayer:   May the Strength of God guide us. May the Power of God preserve us.
May the Wisdom of God instruct us. May the Hand of God protect us.
May the Way of God direct us. May the Shield of God defend us.
May the Angels of God guard us. – Against the snares of the evil one.
Prayer for the Faithful of St. Patrick Part 1

Tuesday
“Brethren, our faith is tried more often than a reed is rocked by the winds. Trials are like the winds: they will uproot a weak faith, but a strong faith will be strengthened even more. Trials are also like the flame in which straw is burned and gold is purified….Our faith is further tried by suffering and misery. This is the fire in which our faith is either burned like straw or tempered like pure gold. Our faith will survive these trials if we remember Christ crucified on the Cross for us, and the many thousands of martyrs for the Faith, who by endurance conquered all, emerging from the flames like gold, and continuing to shine down through the centuries among the angels and among men.”
St. Nikolai Velimirovich ~The Prologue

Prayer:
May Christ be with us! May Christ be before us! May Christ be in us, Christ be over all!
May Thy Grace, Lord, Always be ours, This day, O Lord, and forevermore. Amen.
Prayer for the Faithful of St. Patrick  Part 2

 

Wednesday
“When we consider that the most wrongly accused is Christ, we would receive injustice with joy. Though He was God, He came down to earth out of great love and was enclosed in the womb of the Panagia for nine months. Then, for thirty years He lived quietly. From fifteen to thirty He worked as a carpenter for the Jews…Then later, three years of hassle…This is why those who have been wrongly accused have within their hearts the wrongly accused Christ, and rejoice in exile and in prison as if they are in Paradise, because wherever Christ is, there is Paradise.”
Elder Paisios ~Elder Paisios the Athonite

Prayer:
Glory to Jesus Christ – Glory forever!
Thursday
“God seeks only one thing: that you honor him, love Him, and keep His commandments, acknowledging that He is your maker. He does not want you to divide His glory and to worship other things instead of Him. He does not want you to love anything more than Him for this reason when He gave His commandments to Moses through the divinely written law He said “here out Israel:thou shall love the Lord thy God with all thy soul and with all by heart and with all thy might and with all thy mind.” So my beloved child, do you understand? He has left no room for your love to incline anywhere else, but absolutely all the desire of your soul should be to love the Lord. In this manner Is grace will dwell upon you.”
Elder Joseph ~ Monastic Wisdom

Prayer:
For as many have been baptized into Christ have put on Christ…Alleluia

Friday
“When I say someone has caught the Eastern spirit and abandoned the European, I mean that he has left behind logic, rationalism and has instead taking hold of simplicity and piety because that is the Orthodox spirit within which Christ rests, simplicity and piety. Today even spiritual people are often lacking in simplicity, the sacred simplicity that comforts the soul. If we do not renounce the secular spirit and do not adapt to the simple way – in other words if we do not stop being preoccupied with how others see us, or with what they say about us – we will never experience kinship with God and the Saints. But for this to happen we need to move to the spiritual realm. The more we live with simplicity…the fewer bumps from our passions and the smoother we become. Otherwise we end up creating a fake person. This is why we must always strive to get rid of the secular carnival and become angels.”
Elder Paisios ~With Pain and Love

Prayer:
Christ is in our midst – He is and always shall be

Saturday
“Love Christ, have humility, prayer and patience. These are the four indicators on your spiritual compass; may the magnetic needle be your youthful Christian heart. When you have this hope my children, and Christ at the helm, fear not the stormy sea however tempestuous it may be. Your ship will arrive at the harbor filled with many virtues. Angels will come to unload and bring the valuable goods to Christ the King’s heavenly storehouse.” Elder Amphilochios Markis ~Our Geronda

Prayer:
Preserve O Lord while waking and guard us while sleeping that awake we may watch with Christ and asleep we may rest in peace.