Sunday

1 Corinthians 6:12  All things are lawful for me, but all things are not helpful. All things are lawful for me, but I will not be brought under the power of any. Foods for the stomach and the stomach for foods, but God will destroy both it and them. Now the body is not for sexual immorality but for the Lord, and the Lord for the body. And God both raised up the Lord and will also raise us up by His power. Do you not know that your bodies are members of Christ? Shall I then take the members of Christ and make them members of a harlot? Certainly not! Or do you not know that he who is joined to a harlot is one body with her? For “the two,” He says, “shall become one flesh.” But he who is joined to the Lord is one spirit with Him. Flee sexual immorality. Every sin that a man does is outside the body, but he who commits sexual immorality sins against his own body. Or do you not know that your body is the temple of the Holy Spirit who is in you, whom you have from God, and you are not your own? For you were bought at a price; therefore glorify God in your body and in your spirit, which are God’s.

Saint Focus: on Wednesday we celebrate the memory of St. Raphael of Brooklyn. With all of this travels and missionary activity from his native Syria to America he in many ways is a modern version of St. Paul. One of his pioneering efforts was promoting the use of English in all facets of worship and church life since he saw the children of immigrants at the turn of the 20th century already adopting the language of their new homeland. If Orthodoxy is ever to reach Americans it needs to follow the path he laid out over 100 years ago.

Monday

++Meditations from St. Anselm this week

Observe, then, that likeness is one thing; image another. For example, the horse, the ox, or other dumb animal may have a certain likeness to man; but the image of man is borne by none but a human being. Man eats, so does the horse; here is a certain likeness, a certain something common to creatures of diverse moulds. But the image of man is only borne by some human being, some being of selfsame nature with that man whose image he is. Image, therefore, is of a higher order than likeness.   God’s Likeness, then, may be attained by us in this way; if, musing [thinking/pondering]  on Him as the Good, we study to be good; if, owning Him the Just, we strive to be just; if, contemplating Him the Merciful, we make endeavours after mercy.   [Become what we set out mind on]

Tuesday

To praise God eternally the end of our creation. Are, then, these so incalculable benefits of thy Creator inducements enough to thee for continual thanksgiving in return, and for discharging the debt of an endless love; when thou considerest that out of nothing–rather, out of clay–thou wast raised by His bounty to so excellent a dignity in the very beginning of thy state? Test thy life, therefore, by the master-feeling of the saints, and note well what is said of the saint, With his whole heart he praised the Lord’ . Behold the end of thy creation, behold the task set thee as God’s servant! Why should God have graced thee with the privilege of so illustrious a lot, if He had not willed thee to apply thyself unceasingly to the praise of Himself? Thou wast created for the glory of thy Creator, that, making His praises thy employment, thou mightest ever advance towards Him by the merit of justice in this life, and mightest live happily in the world to come. For the praise of Him yields the fruit of justice here, and of beatitude hereafter.   [Realize God did not create us to ignore us or for us to ignore Him]

Wednesday

Yes, indeed, thou wast created for this; to praise Him, and to praise Him without end; which thou wilt then more fully understand when, entranced by the blessed vision of Himself, thou shalt see that by His sole and gratuitous goodness thou, when thou wast not, wast created out of nothing; so blessed, and to such unspeakable bliss created; created, called, justified, glorified. Such a contemplation as that will give thee an untiring love of praising Him without end; from whom, and through whom, and in whom thou wilt rejoice in being blessed with blessings so great and so unchangeable.  Wherever we are, we live, move, and are in Him; whilst also we have Him within us. But, returning from the beatitude that is to be, do thou with the eye of contemplation consider for a while the abundance of grace wherewith He hath enriched thee even in this fleeting life. He, very God, whose dwelling is in heaven, whose throne among the angels, He to whom heaven and earth, with all that they contain, do bow down and obey, has offered Himself to thee as thine abode, and furnished and prepared His presence for thee; for, as the Apostle teaches, in Him we live, and move, and be’.   [Strive to love God more since he blesses us everyday in numerous ways]

Thursday

Do thou, therefore, apply thyself unweariedly to the pursuit of holiness, lest thou cease to be the temple of God. He Himself says of His own, I will dwell in them and walk in them’ (2 Cor. vi. 16). Doubt not, therefore, that wherever there are holy souls, there He is in them. For if thou art in those limbs of thine which thou quickenest [enliven], wholly and in all their parts, how much more is God, who created thee and thy body, wholly present in thee through and through? It is thy duty, then, to think with most intense devotion with what consideration and what reverence we should control those senses and those members of our body, over which the very Godhead sits in charge. Let us offer, therefore, as is meet, the whole empire [self] of our heart to so great an Indweller, that nothing in us may rebel against Him; but that all our thoughts, all the movements of our will, all our words, and the whole course and tenour of our actions may wait upon His beck, stand obedient to His will, and be conformed to His rule of right. For thus shall we truly be His kingdom, and He will abide in us; and we, abiding in Him, shall live aright.   All of us who have been baptized in Christ have put on Christ.  [Strive through prayer and thoughts to give our self completely to God through prayer and thought]

Friday

A consideration of our sins, for the which our conscience does the more sting us, and by which we have forfeited all these blessings. But whilst thou considerest to what and how great blessings thou hast been advanced by His grace, reflect also what and how great blessings thou hast by thine own fault foregone, and into what evils thou hast fallen, overburdened by a load of sins. Ponder with sighs over the ills thou hast wantonly committed; reflect with groans and tears over the blessings which by those same ills thou hast miserably lost. For what good has not thy all-bountiful Creator of His goodness lavished on thee? And what ill hast thou not paid Him in requital [return], grown wanton in execrable impiety? Thou hast cast away good, and merited evil; nay, made shipwreck of good, and freely chosen evil; and, the grace of thy Creator being thus lost, or rather thrown away, thou hast miserably incurred His wrath. Thou hast no resource for proving thyself innocent when a crowd of evils done by thee surrounds thee like a countless army, here confronting thee with thy unholy deeds, there marshalling an innumerable host of unuseful and, what is more to be condemned, of harmful words; and there yet again parading an infinite array of wicked thoughts. These, then, are the price for which thou hast foregone inestimable blessings; for these hast thou forfeited the grace of thy Creator. Conjure them up, and grieve over them; grieve over them, and renounce them…and change thy life to a better course.  [By our actions we have thrown away God’s blessing and shown ingratitude]

Saturday

[The example Christ set on earth]  And when in the Jordan, stooping to baptism at the hand of John, He heard the Voice of the Father, and received the Holy Spirit’s advent under the figure of a dove, it was to teach us how to stand in unvarying humility of soul–as is intimated by the Jordan, which is by interpretation their going down–and so be favoured with converse with our heavenly Father, of Whom it is said, that His communication is with the simple’ (Prov. iii. 32), and exalted by the presence of the Holy Ghost, Who takes His rest with the humble; at the hand of John withal, a name signifying the grace of God, that, whatever we receive from God, we ascribe all to His grace, not our merits. And when He had completed His fast of forty days, and was gloriously tended by ministrant angels, He taught us how, by turning away from the enticements of transitory things, all through the course of the present life to trample the world and the prince of the world under our feet, and so be guarded by troops of angels. By day He converses with the people, preaching the Kingdom of God to them, and edifies the surging crowds by His miracles and His doctrine; by night He frequents the mountain, and spends the time in prayer: hinting to us how, at one time, as opportunity offers, to point the way of life, according to our measure, by word and by example to our neighbours among whom we live; how at another, to betake ourselves to thoughtful solitude, and climb the hill of virtues, and yearn after the sweetnesses of high contemplation, and with unweariable desire direct our soul’s bent to the things that are above.