On this, the 6th Sunday after Pentecost, we commemorate the Holy Great-Martyr and Healer Panteleimon (305); St. Anthusa, abbess of Mantinea, Asia Minor (8th c.); St. Clement of Ochrid, bishop of Greater Macedonia (916), and Sts. Angelar, Gorazd, Nahum and Sabbas (10th c.), disciples of Sts. Cyril and Methodius; Blessed Nicholas Kochanov, Fool-for-Christ at Novgorod (1392); and St. Ioasaph, metropolitan of Moscow (1555).
Through the intercessions of Thy Saints, O Christ God, have mercy on us and save us!
The temple of God is a foundry, where rusty, sinful natures are melted down. It is a bath-house where filthiness of the flesh and spirit is washed away. It is a school for teaching crude and wandering souls. It is a sun that enlightens and vivifies those in darkness and deadens sins. The temple of God is a hospital in which spiritual wounds are healed. The temple of God is a sanctuary in which the uncleanness of sin is taken away and our souls and bodies are sanctified by the grace of the Holy Spirit and Sacramental services. The temple of God is a paradise on earth in which we are fed with immortal, incorruptible food -- the Body and Blood of Christ. The temple of God is a mystical Mountain of Sinai from which the true Lawgiver, Christ our God, constantly announces to us His will. In the Church of God and the Heavenly Kingdom are mysteriously mingled all the members of the Body of Christ, both the heavenly and the earthly. . . . Here is the full Church of the first-born, for here are the forefathers, patriarchs, prophets, apostles, hierarchs, martyrs, the choir of monk-saints and all the righteous ones who sing and together with us glorify the only God, our Savior and Life-Giver.
Like an Ethiopian who cannot change his skin and a leopard who cannot change his spots, so also you cannot do good who have learned to do evil. [In other words, sinful actions develop into sinful inclinations and habits which are difficult to overcome.]
"The Church of God is holy as you are holy. . . . Do you not know that you are a temple of God?"
All of you, my beloved brethren, came to this temple to repent, to throw off from yourselves the yoke of sins, to be at peace with God, reconciled with God and your conscience, to receive peace in your souls, freedom, lightness of soul, renewal, the power to lead a virtuous life. But what is sin, that darkens all of us, that fogs us up, that shames us, dooms us? This is the smiting of the devil, that evil spirit that has lost its original goodness and light through pride and resistance to God and complete, unimaginable evil. Sin is a vicious pain, a wound that covers the whole of humanity, a running wound that carries a foul smell over all mankind. It's a frightful decomposition that rots gradually, and sometimes with excessive speed, the whole of mankind. So it was in the time of Noah, of Abraham and Lot, and so it is today. It is embryonic death, threatening to turn into the outward death of souls. Against this sickness, against this plague, against this open wound, this decomposition, there is only one remedy: faith in the Lord Jesus Christ and sincere repentance. The wisest people, most highly educated, strongest and greatest in the sight of the world, though having performed many great deeds could not conquer themselves - just as also contemporary, secular and intelligent people, great in the sight of the world, cannot conquer sin without faith in Christ.
Once when Abba Agathon went down to the city to sell some of his baskets and to procure a little bread, he found near the marketplace an old, poor cripple. "For the love of God, Abba," the cripple began to plead on seeing the Saint, "don't you, too, leave this poor wretch unaided! Bring me near to you!"
Abba Agathon picked the man up and sat him next to him in the place where he had set up his baskets to sell them. "How much money did you make, Abba?" the cripple would ask each time that the Elder sold a basket, and the Elder would tell him how much.
"That's good enough," the cripple finally said. "Won't you buy me a little pie, Abba? That would be good of you, since I have not eaten since last evening."
"With pleasure," the Saint told him, immediately fulfilling the cripple's request.
Shortly thereafter, the cripple requested some fruit. And then something sweet. Thus, for each basket that was sold, the Saint spent the proceeds, until, thanks to his patronage, all of the baskets and the money were gone, without his having kept even two pennies for himself. More importantly, he did this all with great eagerness, even though he knew that he would thus go perhaps two weeks without any bread for himself. Finally, when he had sold his last basket, the Saint got ready to leave the marketplace.
"So you're going?" the cripple asked him.
"Yes, I have completed all of my work."
"Uh, do me the favor of taking me as far as the crossroads, and you can leave for the desert from there," the strange old man again pleadingly said.
The good Agathon took the cripple on his back and carried him to the place where he wanted to go, though with great difficulty, since he was exhausted from his day's work. As soon as he reached the crossroads and started to put down his living burden, he heard a sweet voice say to him: "May you be blessed, Agathon, by God, both on earth and in Heaven."
The Saint raised up his eyes to see who it was who had spoken with him. The would-be old man had completely disappeared, since he was an Angel sent by God to test the Saint's love.
- from the Evergetinos
- The Teaching of the Twelve Apostles
- Elder Sophrony of Essex, England
The fundamental thought of St. Thalassios of Libya is concentrated upon the inner effort, involved in the struggle with the passions. "If you wish," he says, "to be freed totally from every evil, then make renunciation from the mother of evils: self-love. Self-love precedes all the passions, and behind all of them there follows, finally, bitterness. The three primary thoughts of lust are begotten from the passion of self-love, behind which follow all the other passionate thoughts, but not all together." The Monk Thalassios died in old age in about the year 660, and his relics were glorified by a flow of fragrant myrrh.
Hell is not, as some mistakenly say, the absence of God. God cannot be absent from any place. God is present even in hell. In Scripture, God is called a "consuming fire" (Heb. 12:29). The fiery love of God warms and delights those who love God and is a burning, painful flame to those who do not. It is painful for sinners who have rebelled and rejected God to be unable to escape His presence, as they tried to do in earthly life. This is an important teaching of the Fathers. It does not however mean that hell is any less real as a "place" and state of the soul. It just explains that God does not torture souls -- they torture themselves.
In the words of the renowned Greek theologian, Fr. John Romanides: "In the Orthodox Tradition, both the just and the unjust will have the vision of God in his uncreated glory, with the difference that for the unjust this same uncreated glory of God will be the eternal fires of hell. God is light for those who learn to love Him, and a consuming fire for those who will not."