Reading the Ascetic Discourses of Saint Isaac the Syrian as a Layperson

By Monk Damaskenos the Hagiorite

The more someone studies Abba Isaac and ascends his spiritual steps, the more one becomes aware of their spiritual poverty, that is, of their distance from the measure of the Saints, and of how far they are from the perfection of humility and love. Moreover, Abba Isaac gives them the possibility, if they desire it, of attaining this perfection, with the cooperation of Grace.

But here I must point out the following as well:

Abba Isaac reveals to the reader the full truth about how God acts in order to save man. He emphasizes that God acts like a father who loves and disciplines his son, not only to protect him from the dangers of life, but also to educate him spiritually and lead him to spiritual perfection. And he points out that although God is generally merciful, philanthropic, and compassionate toward all people, toward His own children, His chosen ones, while He provides in all things for their biological and spiritual survival, He simultaneously desires that they always follow the narrow and afflicted path, so as to secure their spiritual progress and deem them worthy of participation in His Kingdom. That is, He desires them to live continually in affliction, with only brief periods of relief and respite. This, moreover, is the spirit of the gospel, which is completely opposed to the spirit of this world, which wants and seeks for people to live continually in comfort and to avoid difficulties and afflictions.

Synaxarion of the Holy Prophet Baruch

Synaxarion

On this same day [September 28], the commemoration of the Righteous and Prophet Baruch.

Verses

Baruch, the friend of Jeremiah the Prophet,
Joins the chorus of Christ’s Prophets in Heaven.

Baruch the Righteous and Prophet was of the tribe of Judah and flourished around 606 B.C. His father was named Neriah, and he also had a brother named Seraiah, who was a court official of King Zedekiah. His teacher was the great Prophet Jeremiah. He was so greatly loved by him that he was regarded as the breath and consolation of Jeremiah. The two of them were known together as one soul united in two distinct bodies, because they had one and the same leader and commander, the Holy Spirit.[1]

Baruch, however, proclaimed more clearly and openly the things concerning the Incarnation of the Lord, saying: “This is our God; no other shall be accounted in comparison with Him. … After this He appeared upon the earth and lived among men” (Baruch 3:35–37). One may also find other such passages by anyone who diligently reads the Old Testament, which clearly demonstrate and present that Baruch is a Prophet. Having therefore lived a life pleasing to God, he surrendered his soul to the Lord in peace.[2]

Venerable Chariton the Confessor Resource Page

St. Chariton the Confessor (Feast Day - September 28)

Verses

All earth’s delights Chariton trampled on,

Now taking delight in heaven's graces.

On the twenty-eighth Chariton died in his old age.

 

Venerable Chariton the Confessor

 

Saint Chariton the Confessor as a Model for our Lives

 

September: Day 28: Teaching 1: Saint Chariton the Confessor

 

September: Day 28: Teaching 2: Saint Chariton the Confessor 

 

Homilies from the Menaion for Every Day of the Year: September 28

 

Venerable Chariton the Confessor in the Hymnography of the Orthodox Church 

 

The Rebirth of the First Monastery in the Holy Land - The Lavra of Saint Chariton

  

A Pilgrim Visits Saint Chariton Monastery in the Judean Desert

 

Venerable Chariton the Confessor in the Hymnography of the Orthodox Church

By Fr. George Dorbarakis

1. The Venerable Chariton lived during the reign of Aurelian and was from Iconium in Lycaonia. Because of his faith in Christ, he was brought before the ruler Hypatikos, and because he boldly confessed Christ as God, they beat him and burned him with fiery torches. After the fall of Aurelian, he was set free and went to a deserted place, where he fell into the hands of robbers who took him captive. He was freed once again, however, in the following manner: A viper entered the pitcher in which the robbers kept their wine and poured its venom into it, and when the robbers drank from it, they all died. Seeing that the cave was suitable as a place for his ascetic struggle, the Venerable One turned it into a church, and because many people began coming to practice asceticism near him, he eventually transformed it into a monastery. Because of the distractions, he withdrew elsewhere, but there too the same “fate” awaited him, until he found the edge of a rock where he could devote himself undisturbed to prayer and to God. He overcame the lack of water through the grace of God. He entreated the Lord, and crystal-clear water sprang forth from the rock. There, upon that rock, he lived to a very advanced old age, performing multitudes of miracles.

September: Day 28: Teaching 2: Saint Chariton the Confessor

September: Day 28: Teaching 2:
Saint Chariton the Confessor
 
(Why Is the Path to the Kingdom of Heaven Indicated by the Gospel Narrow?)

By Archpriest Grigory Dyachenko

I. On the day of Venerable Chariton, now glorified in the Church’s hymns and readings, who attained the Kingdom of Heaven by the narrow path, first through suffering for Jesus Christ under the Emperor Aurelian, and then through works of love for God and his neighbors and through strict asceticism in the monasteries he founded, it is fitting, my beloved brethrens, to speak with you about why the path to the Kingdom of Heaven indicated by the Gospel must be narrow and constricted, that is, difficult and sorrowful.

II. The path to the Kingdom of Heaven is narrow:

a) Because it gives no passage to our passions and our vices.

Does the Gospel path seem too narrow to you? Do you want to widen it? How? Everyone wants to be given free rein to his favorite inclinations: one to his ambition, another to his greed, a third to his sinful attachments, a fourth to his resentment and delight in the misfortunes of others, and all together to their secret idolatry. Nothing irritates you more than the Gospel declaration that absolute self-denial is the only reasonable service of the Christian God. Let us try to widen the path, then, and let your desire be fulfilled. Let us create a moral teaching that suits your heart. You are now satisfied with it. But who can assure me that you will still be satisfied with it tomorrow? Who will tell me that your passions, increasingly exceeding all bounds and satisfied by nothing, will not demand further concessions from the Gospel? And even if you yourself manage to set a limit to them, who will assure me that others will be able to stop, as you have, and will not, in the name of breadth, proceed to destroy the remaining barriers that still stand in the way of their whims? “There is no more narrowness,” all the passions and desires will cry out together. “Give us a broad path! Away with religious prejudices, that empty scrupulousness of timid souls, and all these chains that have burdened us for so long! Pleasure for us, the present hour with all its joys for us, and for us—the cup of pleasures with which the fortunate have already quenched their thirst without us, to moisten our parched lips!” And in the terrible chaos of all these desires, without doubt, victory will belong to the wildest self-love, the most animal-like egoism. This is the final word of human broadness! Therefore, we are left to choose either the broad path of sinful passions, which leads to hell, or the narrow road of holiness, which leads into paradise.

Prologue in Sermons: September 28

It Is a Sin to Judge Our Neighbor

September 28

(From a Saying of Saint Evagrius: “Do Not Judge Your Neighbor”)
 
By Archpriest Victor Guryev

Since God is the one Judge over all, it is obvious that when we judge our neighbors, we usurp the right of the Lord; and therefore, in passing judgment on others, we thereby give cause for judgment to be passed on ourselves. “He who judges his brother,” says the Apostle James, “speaks evil of the law and judges the law; but if you judge the law, you are not a doer of the law but a judge. There is one Lawgiver and Judge, Who is able to save and to destroy. Who are you to judge another?” (James 4:11–12). And indeed, the law commands us to love our neighbor. Therefore, he who judges his neighbor acts contrary to the law and, if not in word, then in deed judges the law, as though the law were insufficient and therefore one might depart from it. The Apostle Paul likewise teaches: “Who are you who judge another’s servant? To his own master he stands or falls” (Romans 14:4).

Homilies from the Menaion for Every Day of the Year: September 28

The Month of September 

Day 28

29. To Unrepentant Sinners

(From the Life of our Venerable Father Chariton)

Unrepentant sinners, who have come into the depths of evil, whose habit of one sin or another has turned into a passion, not only do not think about correcting their lives, but are concerned with only one thing: where and how they might more conveniently commit some evil deed without punishment—for example, how they might kill someone, rob, deceive, or wrong someone. What do you think, brethren, will such hardening in evil pass these sinners by without consequence, or not? Know that it will not pass them by, either in this life or in the life to come. There is no need even to speak of the fact that it will not pass them by in the life to come; but that it does not pass them by in the present life, we shall prove by actual examples.

When the Venerable Chariton the Confessor was going to Jerusalem, robbers attacked him, seized him, bound him, brought him to their cave, and, intending to put him to a bitter death the following day, went out onto the main road in order to find more people whom they could either rob or kill. When the robbers had gone, Chariton prayed throughout the night that the Lord would deliver him from them, and the Lord truly delivered him. The robbers had left in the cave where they lived a vessel of wine. During their absence, a serpent crawled into the cave and, finding the vessel of wine, drank from it. Having become intoxicated, it vomited the wine it had drunk back into the vessel together with its poison, and then crawled away. The robbers returned home, and, overcome by thirst, all rushed to the vessel of wine, drank from it, and then, as it is said, “killed themselves with that deadly poison: for they all fell to the ground, and, having convulsed, died.”

Homily for the First Sunday of Luke (St. Cleopa of Sihastria)

 

Homily for the First Sunday of Luke, 
or Eighteenth Sunday After Pentecost

On the Fruits of Obedience to God

“Master, we have toiled all night and caught nothing; but at Your word we will let down the nets.” (Luke 5:5)

By St. Cleopa of Sihastria

Beloved faithful,

From the beginning of the creation of the world, all people who have obeyed God have been blessed, both in the present age and in the age to come. Thus we see that, as long as our foreparents, Adam and Eve, obeyed God, their Creator, and faithfully kept His commandment, they were blessed and enjoyed all the beauty and delight of Paradise. But when, of their own free will, they turned away from obedience and transgressed the commandment of their Creator, they were punished and driven out of Paradise (Genesis 3:16–19). If we look back through the sacred history of the world, that is, through what is written in the Holy and Divine Scripture, we shall see that all the holy and chosen people of God who obeyed and fulfilled His commandments were blessed on earth and deemed worthy of the blessing of God.

Noah, who was the second Adam of the human race, obeying God and building the ark and doing all that He had commanded him, was delivered, together with his entire family, from the waters of the Flood and was blessed by God (Genesis 6:22; 9:12). Likewise, the blessed patriarch Abraham, obeying God and departing from his land and from his kindred, went to Haran and from there to the promised land, Canaan, where, as he lived there, he demonstrated the most perfect obedience, to the extent that he was willing to offer his only son, Isaac, as a sacrifice to God, thereby mystically prefiguring the offering as a sacrifice by the heavenly Father of His beloved Son for the salvation and redemption of the human race from bondage to the devil. Because of this faith and perfect obedience of Abraham, God blessed him with an oath and called him the father of many nations (Genesis 22:1–18; 17:5). But in addition to the great divine blessing leading to eternal blessedness, Abraham was also blessed by God with temporal happiness, so that he might have an abundance of all that was necessary for life on earth. The divine Scripture says: “Now Abraham was rich in livestock, in silver, and in gold, and the land which he had inherited for his dwelling was like the Paradise of God” (Genesis 13:2, 10). Likewise, his son Isaac was blessed by God because he did not go down into Egypt, obeying His commandment (Genesis 26:2–4).

Homily Three on the First Sunday of Luke (St. John of Kronstadt)

Homily Three on the First Sunday of Luke 

18th Sunday after Pentecost

By St. John of Kronstadt

“And He sat down and taught the people from the boat.” (Luke 5:3)

Brethren, what do I see? What is this spectacle at which heaven itself marvels? The eternal Son of God, the Creator of Angels, borne upon the Cherubim, the Creator of heaven and earth, surrounded by a small number of His chosen disciples, sits in a boat tossed by the waves of the sea; the eternal Word of the unoriginate Father Himself, in the humble form of a man, teaches a people immersed in the darkness of ignorance. O boundless goodness, O boundless condescension! Behold, man, what your God, your Creator, your Savior has done for you! He Himself came to enlighten you, to teach you the knowledge of God, the knowledge of His will. He Himself came to save you, a perishing sinner. Behold how precious and exalted He considers your salvation! And how do you value this condescension—and your own salvation? O, it seems that you have forgotten who you are and why you came into this world. You have forgotten that you are a being created in the image of God; that you are immortal in soul and will one day also be immortal in a transformed, spiritual body; you have forgotten that you are called to practice righteousness and holiness and to fulfill the commandments of God, which “are not burdensome” (1 John 5:3), according to the word of the Apostle. You do the will of your own flesh, sinful and destructive, and you have sunk into lawlessness and are drowning in it.