Sunday

Matthew 22:1-14:  And Jesus answered and spoke to them again by parables and said: 2 “The kingdom of heaven is like a certain king who arranged a marriage for his son, 3 and sent out his servants to call those who were invited to the wedding; and they were not willing to come. 4 Again, he sent out other servants, saying, ‘Tell those who are invited, “See, I have prepared my dinner; my oxen and fatted cattle are killed, and all things are ready. Come to the wedding.”’ 5 But they made light of it and went their ways, one to his own farm, another to his business. 6 And the rest seized his servants, treated them spitefully, and killed them. 7 But when the king heard about it, he was furious. And he sent out his armies, destroyed those murderers, and burned up their city. 8 Then he said to his servants, ‘The wedding is ready, but those who were invited were not worthy. 9 Therefore go into the highways, and as many as you find, invite to the wedding.’ 10 So those servants went out into the highways and gathered together all whom they found, both bad and good. And the wedding hall was filled with guests.  11 “But when the king came in to see the guests, he saw a man there who did not have on a wedding garment. 12 So he said to him, ‘Friend, how did you come in here without a wedding garment?’ And he was speechless. 13 Then the king said to the servants, ‘Bind him hand and foot, take him away, and[a] cast him into outer darkness; there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.’  14 “For many are called, but few are chosen.”

Orthodox Study Bible Commentary:

The repeated sending out of servants shows the Father’s great desire to have His people with Him in the Kingdom. The first group (v. 3) is interpreted to be Moses and those with him, while the second group (v. 4) is composed of the prophets. These groups call those initially invited— the Jews. The third group (v. 9) represents the apostles sent to the Gentiles, those not initially invited, but now called. 22: 4 The oxen represent the sacrifices of the Old Covenant, while the fatted cattle represent the eucharistic bread of the New Covenant. (Fatted is better translated “wheat-fed,” or even more literally “formed from wheat”; see note at Lk 15: 23.) Thus, both the Old and New Covenants are fulfilled at the wedding of Christ and His Church. 
 
Burned up their city: St. John Chrysostom teaches that Christ is prophesying the destruction of Jerusalem by the Romans in AD 70, and thus attributes this destruction to an act of God rather than simply to that of men. Nevertheless, God showed His patience by waiting some 40 years from the time of Christ, giving the entire generation a chance to repent. The wedding garment would have been provided by the king, and therefore the man had no excuse for not wearing one; thus he is speechless. His refusal to wear the garment that was provided is an illustration of those who refuse God’s hospitality, or who want His Kingdom on their own terms. Specifically, the garment refers to the baptismal garment, and by extension, a life of faith, repentance, virtue, and charity. Without these, a person will ultimately be cast into outer darkness.

Monday

This week will have excerpts from St. Nikolai’s ‘Prologue’

The apostles of God taught others that which they themselves fulfilled in their own lives. When they had food and clothing, they were content. Even when it happened that they had neither food nor clothing, they were content, for their contentment did not emanate from the outside but from within. Their contentment was not so cheap as the contentment of an animal, but costly— more costly and more rare. Inward contentment, the contentment of peace and love of God in the heart— that is the contentment of greater men, and that was the apostolic contentment. In great battles, generals are dressed and fed as ordinary soldiers: they do not seek contentment in food or in clothes but in victory. Victory is the primary contentment of those who battle. Brethren, Christians are constantly in battle— in battle for the victory of the spirit over the material, in battle for the victory of the higher over the lower, and in battle for the victory of man over his beastly nature. Is it not, therefore, absurd to engage in battle and concern oneself not with victory but with external decorations and ornaments? Is it not  foolish to give to one’s enemies the marks of identification? Our invisible enemy, Satan, rejoices at our vanity and supports us in every vain thought. The invisible enemy occupies us with every possible unreasonable pettiness and idleness, only to impose upon our minds the heavy forgetfulness of that for which we are here on earth. The invisible enemy presents to us the worthless as important, the irrelevant as essential, and the detrimental as beneficial, only in order to achieve victory over us and to destroy us forever.

Tuesday

There is no greater honor or greater calling on earth than to be a Christian. When the judge-torturer Sevirus asked the young Peter Apselamus: “Of what lineage are you?” Peter replied: “I am a Christian.” The judge further inquired of him: “What rank are you?” To this, Peter responded: “There is no greater or better rank than that of a Christian.” Father John of Kronstadt writes: “The whole world is but a cobweb in comparison to the human soul of a Christian.” The Christian is an earthen vessel into which is poured divine power and light. Whether this vessel is placed on a golden royal throne or whether it is lowered into a dark hut of a beggar, its value will be neither magnified nor diminished. Does not gold have the same value whether it is wrapped in a silk handkerchief or in a cabbage leaf?

Wednesday

A good deed done in silence is worth more than a good deed done with an explanation, and is worth incomparably more than the most spiritual explanation without a good deed. From St. Nicholas of Myra in Lycia no words have remained, but his deeds have remained. On three occasions, without any explanation, he came at night to the home of a poor man and secretly threw a bag of gold through the window. A certain elder of Scetis in Egypt became very ill and desired to eat a little fresh bread, for the bread that the monks ate at that time was dried in the sun and kept for months. Upon hearing this, one of the monks, without saying anything to anyone, departed from Scetis and went to a distant town, where he purchased fresh bread for the ailing elder. Learning about the effort of this monk, the elder did not want the bread, saying: “This is the blood of my brother!” (That is to say, the brother provided it with great difficulty, with great effort.) Then the other monks implored the elder to eat, saying to him: “Do not despise the sacrifice of the brother.” What kind of explanation and what words of brotherly love are able to replace this simple and silent act of brotherly love?

Thursday

All that belongs to God carries the seal of immortality. And the Kingdom of God is immortal. If we desire to breathe the air of immortality, we must enter within ourselves, within our hearts, within the Kingdom of God. Outside of ourselves is the air of time, the  air of transitoriness and decay, in which the soul breathes with difficulty. The kingdom of nature is the sensual kingdom; hence, it is a kingdom foreign to our souls— our souls being of our inner kingdom. Why do men love to reside for a long, long time in a foreign land? Why do they rarely and reluctantly enter into their own home? Whenever we think about the world, we are thinking about that foreign land. Whenever we converse about the sensual world, we are conversing about a foreign land. Living by the senses, we are similar to a man who rushes around all day to the homes of strangers and only at night returns to his own home to sleep. And so we dedicate our waking time to death and our sleep to immortality! We come to ourselves, we return to ourselves only in sleep. But even our sleep is dreaming of our waking life, i.e., even when we are in our own home, in an unconscious state, we dream of foreign homes. Our dreams are sensual, for our consciousness is sensual. And so we are in a foreign land; we are strangers in reality and in dreams. We are constantly outside ourselves. The Lord wants to return us to ourselves, to His home and to His homeland. For us, the Kingdom of God is within us; outside of ourselves is a foreign land. In order to escape from a foreign land and find our true home, in which we directly encounter God, we must enter within ourselves, into our hearts. There is the King; there also is the Kingdom.

Friday

We see this material and transient world, but we look to that spiritual and immortal world.

We see earthly joy, often interrupted by tears and sighs and, in the end, always concluding with death; but we look to spiritual joy among the angels and saints of God in the heavens, to joy uninterrupted and eternal. We see the sufferings and failures of the righteous in this life, but we look to their glory and celebration in the next world. We see the many successes, the glory and the honor of the unrighteous in this life; but we look to their defeat, condemnation and indescribable torment in eternity. We see the Church of God often humiliated and persecuted in this world; but we look to the final victory of the Church over all her enemies and adversaries, both visible and invisible. Brethren, we often see tyrants and abductors as rulers and wealthy men in this age, and we see saints as poor, dejected and forgotten; but then we look at the other kingdom, the Kingdom of God— eternal, sinless and immortal— in which the saints will reign, without one tyrant or abductor. O Lord, most patient and most merciful, open our spiritual vision, that we may see that which awaits us after this brief life, and that we may endeavor to fulfill Thy law.

Saturday

Do not ever think that God does not hear you when you pray to Him. He hears our thoughts, just as we hear the voices and the words of one another. And if He does not act immediately according to your prayer, it is either because you are praying to Him in an unworthy manner, or because you ask something of Him which would be detrimental to you, or because He, in His wisdom and providence, delays the fulfillment of your  petition until the proper moment. Father John of Kronstadt writes: “As by means of the electric telegraph we speedily communicate with persons who are far away from us, so likewise, by means of lively faith— as though through telegraph wires— we speedily communicate with God, with the angels and saints. As we trust entirely in the speed of the electric current and in its reaching its destination, so likewise should we completely trust in the speed of the prayer of faith and in its reaching its destination. Send your petition to God and the saints by means of the telegraph of faith, and you will speedily obtain an answer.” And again, in another place, St. John writes: “God and the created spirits, and the souls of the departed— as well as those of the living— are sentient beings; and thought is rapid and in some manner omnipresent. Think of them with your whole heart, and they will be present with you. God will surely be with you always; and the others, by the gift and power of God, will also be with you.”