27
Aug 2020
DAILY REFLECTION • AUGUST 27 • Venerable Poemen (Pimen) the Great REFLECTION One who crawls up a steep mountain and scrapes with both hands and feet to take one step forward, not thinking to look back, such were the great Orthodox ascetics in the difficult climb to the Kingdom of God. Their labor and their detachment is indeed for amazement. St. Pimen did not want to see his mother when she came to visit him. A prince wanted to see Pimen but he refused. Then the prince thought of a cunning way,......
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26
Aug 2020
DAILY REFLECTION • AUGUST 26 • Martyrs Adrian and Natalia and 23 companions, at Nicomedia REFLECTION Occasionally one hears an ungodly word even among Christians: here, even God cannot help! There is no danger in which God cannot help nor are there any enemies who could conquer by their own power without God’s permission. Do not ask how God will destroy the powerful army of our enemies that is easier for God then it is for you to inhale or exhale air. Read how God, by one apparition, terrified the Syrian army,......
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25
Aug 2020
DAILY REFLECTION • AUGUST 25 • Holy Apostle Bartholomew REFLECTION The superhuman courage and readiness of our Christian foretellers to endure all sufferings and voluntary death for Christ, evoked fear on their tormentors. Emperor Maximian, a fierce and merciless persecutor of Christians, ordered his pro-consul in Antioch to release St. Andrew Stratelates from prison to freedom out of fear that the people, who respected Andrew more than they did the emperor, would rebel. Emperor Valens ordered his eparch in Edessa to slay all Christians who opposed Arius. The eparch had more human......
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24
Aug 2020
DAILY REFLECTION • AUGUST 24 • Hieromartyr Eutychius, disciple of St. John the Theologian REFLECTION If you were to ask many people why they do not go to Church to pray, they will generally answer you: I have no time, I have to work! Just look at those people who only work and do not go to Church, placing their trust only in their work and compare them with those who divide their time between work and prayer and you will quickly be convinced that the latter are more well off and,......
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22
Aug 2020
DAILY REFLECTION • AUGUST 22 • Martyr Agathonicus and his companions REFLECTION When a man once truly repents, he need not think any more about the sins he committed so that he will not sin again. St. Anthony counsels: “Be careful that your mind not be defiled with the remembrance of former sins and that the remembrance of those sins not be renewed in you.” Again, in another place, St. Anthony says: “Do not establish your previously committed sins in your soul by thinking about them so that they not be repeated......
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21
Aug 2020
DAILY REFLECTION • AUGUST 21 • Holy Apostle Thaddeus of the Seventy REFLECTION Magnanimous forgiveness of slanderers and prayer for them is a characteristic of Christian saints who do not ascribe all the slanders against themselves to men but rather to demons, the main instigators of every slander as well as every sin in general. St. Abraham of Smolensk was slandered by envious priests to the prince and the bishop as a deceiver, magician and hypocrite. The slanders sought nothing less than to have him burned. The prince and the bishop believed......
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20
Aug 2020
DAILY REFLECTION • AUGUST 20 • Holy Prophet Samuel REFLECTION Repent before death closes the door of your life and opens the door of judgement. Repent before death, and, because you do not know the hour of death, repent today, even now, and cease to repeat your sin. Thus, St. Ephraim the Syrian prays: Before the wheel of time stops in my life, have mercy on me; Before the wind of death blows–and diseases, the heralds of death, appear in my body–have mercy on me; Before the majestic sun......
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19
Aug 2020
DAILY REFLECTION • AUGUST 19 • Martyr Andrew Stratelates and those with him in Cilicia REFLECTION When an unexpected misfortune happens to us who are innocent, we should not immediately grieve, but rather we should try to see God’s providence in the situation. Through that misfortune, God is preparing something new and beneficial for us. One day, unexpected news came to Blessed Theophanes, the Abbot of Dochiariou, that the Turks had seized his sister’s son, had forced him to embrace Islam and had taken him to Constantinople. Theophanes went immediately to Constantinople,......
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18
Aug 2020
DAILY REFLECTION • AUGUST 18 • Repose of Venerable John, Abbot of Rila REFLECTION It is not a rare occurrence, especially in our time, for parents to be responsible for the spiritual death of their children. Whenever a child has an aspiration for the spiritual life and asceticism, and the parent curtails this aspiration instead of encouraging it, such a parent becomes the murderer of his child. And such children, as a punishment to their parents, often turn to the opposite side and become perverted. A boy named Luke, the nephew of......
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17
Aug 2020
DAILY REFLECTION • AUGUST 17 • Martyr Myron, Presbyter, of Cyzicus REFLECTION The Lord does not allow His faithful servants to be shamed. It often happened that the martyrs of Christ, ridiculed and mocked before the courts, unexpectedly performed a miracle, which instilled fear in the unbelievers. Either the idols fell or thunder destroyed the temples of the heathen or an unexpected downpour of rain extinguished the fire prepared for their burning or the torturers beat themselves with stones and rods and so forth. Thus, Antipater, the torturer of St. Myron, during......
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