Saturday June 12 / 25 ns 2022 + APOSTLES' FAST + Fish, wine and olive oil permitted today • Saint Onoúphrios of Egypt, Saint Peter the Athonite ~ CONCERNING THE DESERT FATHERS by +Met. Chrysostomos ~ THE WISDOM OF SAINT ISAAC THE SYRIAN

 APOSTLES' FAST

Fish, wine and olive oil permitted today

Saint Onoúphrios of Egypt,
Saint Peter the Athonite

Saint Onoúphrios had been living a whole sixty years in the desert when the monk Paphnoutios visited him. His hair and beard reached down to the ground, and long hair, as white as snow, had grown all over his body during his years of nakedness. His appearance was cadaverous, unearthly and awe-inspiring. Seeing Paphnoutios, he called him by name and then recounted to him his life in the desert. His guardian angel had appeared to him and taken him to that place. He had for a long time only eaten earth, which it was hard to find in the desert, and, after that, when he had survived an intensive struggle with diabolical temptations and when his heart had become utterly established in love for God, an angel had brought him bread to eat. And besides that, through God's gracious providence, a palm tree grew up at one side of his cell, that gave good dates, and a spring of water began to flow there. 'But especially,' said Onoúphrios, 'my food and drink are the sweet words of God.' To Paphnoutios question about his receiving of Communion, the hermit answered that the angel of God brought him Communion every Saturday. On the next day, the old man told Paphnoutios that it was the day of his departure from this world; then he knelt down, prayed to God and gave his spirit into God's hands. Then Paphnoutios saw a heavenly light that illumined the body of the departed saint, and heard a choir of the angelic hosts. He buried Onoúphrios body with honor and returned to his own monastery, there as a living witness to narrate to the brethren, for their edification, the wonderful life of the man of God and the greatness of God's providence towards those who give themselves wholly to His service. Onoúphrios died in the year 400.

Saint Peter of the Holy Mountain Athos was a Greek by birth, and a soldier by profession. Being once engaged in battle against the Arabs, he was captured, chained and thrown into prison. Peter spent a long time in imprisonment in the town of Samara on the Euphrates, and prayed God with all his being to free him and take him to some desert place where he could devote himself to prayerful asceticism. St Simeon the God-Receiver appeared to him in the prison, together with St Nicolas, and touched the iron of his chains which melted like wax. Peter suddenly found himself in the open outside the city. He immediately set out on the road for Rome, where he was tonsured as a monk by the Pope Gregory III (Pope from 731-741 under the Byzantine Exarchate of Ravenna) at the tomb of St Peter. He then set out by ship to return to the East. The most holy Mother of God appeared to him in a dream, talking with St Nicolas, and she told St Nicolas that she had set Mount Athos apart for Peter to live on in asceticism. Peter had at that time not heard of Mount Athos. Disembarking, then, at the Holy Mountain, Peter settled in a cave, where he spent fifty-three years in strict asceticism, in struggles with hunger and thirst, with heat and cold and especially with diabolical powers, until he had overcome them all by the help of God. When he had undergone the first temptations and succeeded in the first test before God, an angel of God began to bring him bread every forty days. The tempter appeared to him several times in the guise of an angel of light, but Peter drove him away with the sign of the Cross and the name of the most holy Mother of God. A year before his death, a deer-hunter passed that way and learned of the saint's life from his lips. He died in 734, and his relics were taken to Macedonia.

Romans 3:19-26
19 Now we know that what things soever the law saith, it saith to them who are under the law: that every mouth may be stopped, and all the world may become guilty before God.

20 Therefore by the deeds of the law there shall no flesh be justified in his sight: for by the law is the knowledge of sin.

21 But now the righteousness of God without the law is manifested, being witnessed by the law and the prophets;

22 Even the righteousness of God which is by faith of Jesus Christ unto all and upon all them that believe: for there is no difference:

23 For all have sinned, and come short of the glory of God;

24 Being justified freely by his grace through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus:

25 Whom God hath set forth to be a propitiation through faith in his blood, to declare his righteousness for the remission of sins that are past, through the forbearance of God;

26 To declare, I say, at this time his righteousness: that he might be just, and the justifier of him which believeth in Jesus.

Saint Matthew 7:1-8
7 Judge not, that ye be not judged.

2 For with what judgment ye judge, ye shall be judged: and with what measure ye mete, it shall be measured to you again.

3 And why beholdest thou the mote that is in thy brother's eye, but considerest not the beam that is in thine own eye?

4 Or how wilt thou say to thy brother, Let me pull out the mote out of thine eye; and, behold, a beam is in thine own eye?

5 Thou hypocrite, first cast out the beam out of thine own eye; and then shalt thou see clearly to cast out the mote out of thy brother's eye.

6 Give not that which is holy unto the dogs, neither cast ye your pearls before swine, lest they trample them under their feet, and turn again and rend you.

7 Ask, and it shall be given you; seek, and ye shall find; knock, and it shall be opened unto you:

8 For every one that asketh receiveth; and he that seeketh findeth; and to him that knocketh it shall be opened.

 T H E   W I S D O M 
 O F   S A I N T   I S A A C   T H E   S Y R I A N 

The ladder to the Kingdom is hidden within you, and within your soul. Dive down into yourself, away from sin, and there you will find the steps by which you can ascend.

Concerning the Desert Fathers

by Metropolitan Archbishop Chrysostomos

of Blessed Memory

"...to grasp their importance sufficiently (that of the desert fathers and mothers) one must look at their witness in the Church in a very intimate and personal way. To see them in abstraction is to misunderstand them. The desert fathers and mothers, who deserve equal prominence with the somewhat more numerous male monastics of the ancient desert, do not give up their hidden wisdom and the life-changing powers of their teachings easily.

We must live with these spiritual masters, come to grasp the magnitude of the charismatic gifts that flow from their words, and savor their sweet metaphysical fruits over time, letting these gifts, words, and poetic delectables nourish the inner man and become an integral part of our existential growth. 

 These parents, fathers and mothers in the faith, must become our lifelong intimates and advisors, as they help us to mind the riches that they have left stored in the caves of the earth, aiding us, as well, properly to adjust our hearing to the boundless beauty of the spiritual melodies that still fill the silent spaces of their hearts and isolated hermitages.