JUNE 5 Hieromartyr Dorotheus, Bishop of Tyre Do not ever violate the fast on Wednesday and Friday. This fast is commanded by the Church and is well founded. If you have ever in your life violated this fast, pray to God that He forgive you, and sin no more. Pious men do not consider themselves exempt from this fast when traveling, or even in sickness. St. Pachomius met some men carrying a corpse and he saw two angels in the funeral procession. He prayed to God to reveal to him the mystery......

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JUNE 4 St. Metrophanes, first Patriarch of Constantinople It is a horrible thing to kill a man. There are no words to describe the horror which lays hold of the murderer. While a man is preparing to kill another man, he thinks that killing a man is the same as killing an ox. When he carries out his preconceived crime, then, all at once, he realizes that he has declared war on heaven and earth, and that he has become exiled and cut off from both heaven and earth. The victim does......

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JUNE 3 Holy Martyr Lucillian and those with him Oh, if only we could enter into the mystery of God’s Providence in the lives of men! We would be filled with fear and trembling before every evil deed and before every sin of men. I understood Your works, O Lord, and I was afraid (Habakkuk 3:2) In certain great events, the mystery of God’s Providence is obvious even to less spiritual men, for example, in the fate of the Crown Prince Dimitri and the bloodthirsty and power-loving Boris Godunov. In order to......

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JUNE 2 St. Nicephorus the Confessor The veneration of icons is an integral part of Orthodoxy, from which it cannot be separated. That the veneration of icons appears to some people the same as idolatry is no proof against icons. To the Jews it seemed that Christ worked miracles by the power of Satan and not God, and to the Romans it seemed that Christian martyrs were ordinary sorcerers and magicians. Saint Nicephorus said to Leo the Armenian, the iconoclastic emperor: “An icon is a divine thing, but not to be worshipped.”......

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JUNE 1 Martyr Justin the Philosopher of Rome, and those with him …The Talmud seethes with evil and malice toward the Lord. But all of those worthless calumnies are refuted by the most prominent historian of the Jews, Josephus Flavius, a rabbi and scholar who lived near the end of the first century after Christ. Josephus writes: “Now there was about this time Jesus, a wise man, if it be lawful to call Him a man; for he was a doer of wonderful works, a teacher of such men as receive the......

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MAY 30 Venerable Isaac, Founder of the Dalmatian Monastery in Constantinople The Word of God is food for the soul. The Word of God is both power and light for the soul. He who reads the Word of God gives food, power and light to his soul. He who can, should read the Word of God in Holy Scripture, and he who cannot should listen to him who reads Holy Scripture. All the saints emphasized the benefit of reading Holy Scripture. St. Seraphim of Sarov says: “The soul should be provided with......

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MAY 29 Virgin Martyr Theodosia of Tyre Oh, how great was the fearlessness of the holy men and holy women! When we read about their lives, both shame and pride is awakened involuntarily in us: shame that we have lagged so far behind them, and pride that they are of our Christian race. Neither sickness, nor prison, nor exile, nor suffering, nor humiliation, nor the sword, nor the abyss, nor fire, nor the gallows were able to shake the exalted peace of their souls, firmly attached to Christ, the Helmsman of the......

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MAY 28 Ascension of the Lord Only a proud man is always prepared to equate Christ with other great men. However, it is obvious at first glance that great men are one thing and the Lord Christ another, just as creation is one thing and the Creator is another. Christ is not only great but He is the Creator and Source and Inspirer of everything truly great in the history of mankind. While in exile and misery on the island of St. Helena, Napoleon, a man of transient greatness, uttered these words:......

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MAY 26 Apostles Carpus and Alphaeus from among the seventy CHRIST IS RISEN! INDEED HE IS RISEN! We should not desire the death of a sinner, but his repentance. Nothing grieves the Lord more, Who suffered on the Cross for sinners, then when we pray to Him for the death of a sinner and thereby to remove him from our path. It happened that the Apostle Carpus lost his patience and began to pray that God send down death upon two sinful men; one a pagan and the other an apostate from......

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MAY 25 Third Finding of the Honorable Head of St. John the Baptist CHRIST IS RISEN! INDEED HE IS RISEN! Some misguided men think more about the end of the world than the end of their lives even though it is obvious that for him to whom the end of his life comes the end of the world has come. A brother standing before St. Seraphim of Sarov continually kept in his mind how he was going to ask the saint about the end of the world. St. Seraphim discerned his thought......

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