How to Conduct Ourselves at Feasts
Let revelry keep away from our rational entertainments, and foolish vigils, too, that revel in intemperance. For revelry is an inebriating pipe, the chain. The passage is obscure. of an amatory bridge, that is, of sorrow. And let love, and intoxication, and senseless passions, be removed from our choir. Burlesque singing is the boon companion of drunkenness. A night spent over drink invites drunkenness, rouses lust, and is audacious in deeds of shame. For if – …
Let Us Obey the Trumpet of God
"It is well, my beloved, to proceed from feast to feast; again festal meetings, again holy vigils arouse our minds, and compel our intellect to keep vigil unto contemplation of good things. Let us not fulfill these days like those that mourn, but, by enjoying spiritual food, let us seek to silence our fleshly lusts." These were the words of our great father, St. Athanasius the Apostolic, in his fourth festal message to the Christian – …
The Nurse of Hope: Patience in Tribulations
The blessed prophet David shows that those who put their trust in God were most courageous when he says, “Act like men and let your hearts be strong, all you who hope in the Lord” (Ps. 31:24, LXX). For those plants which are in pleasure gardens both increase, bloom, and are raised to a great height by abundant streams of waters. And a man’s soul, by the comforts and encouragements of the Holy Spirit, becomes – …
Treasures of the Fathers: Third Sunday of Tubah
“He must increase, but I must decrease.” What is this? He must be exalted, but I must be humbled. How is Jesus to increase? How is God to increase? The perfect does not increase. God neither increases nor decreases. For if He increases, He is not perfect; if He decreases, he is not God. And how can Jesus increase, being God? If to man’s estate, since He deigned to be man and was a child; – …
Treasures of the Fathers: 2nd Sunday of Great Lent-Temptation Sunday
The Second Sunday of the Great and Holy Fast: On the Mountain of Temptation (Matins: Luke 4:1-13) And the devil said to Him, “If You are the Son of God, command this stone to become bread.” But Jesus answered him, saying, “It is written, ‘Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word of God'” (Luke 4:3-4). On the First Temptation Then the devil draws near to tempt Him; expecting that the feeling – …