Repose of Blessed Olga (Olha), Princess of Kiev, named Helen at Holy Baptism (c. 970); The Holy and Praise-worthy Martyr Euphemia (303); Hoshiv Icon of the Mother of God (Attestation of Miracles by Metropolitan Athanasius Sheptytsky, 1737)
Read
Galatians 3:23-29; Matthew 25:1-13
Glory to Jesus Christ! Glory forever!
Prayer, fasting, vigil and all other Christian activities, however good they may be in themselves, do not constitute the aim of our Christian life, although they serve as the indispensable means of reaching this end. The true aim of our Christian life consists in the acquisition of the Holy Spirit of God. As for fasts, and vigils, and prayer, and almsgiving, and every good deed done for Christ’s sake, they are only means of acquiring the Holy Spirit of God. Saint Seraphim of Sarov put it this way, “Only the good deed done for Christ’s sake brings us the fruits of the Holy Spirit. All that is not done for Christ’s sake, even though it be good, brings neither reward in the future life nor the grace of God in this.”
Let us more fervently strive to receive the grace of the Holy Spirit, so to say, the oil which the foolish bridesmaids lacked. They were called foolish just because they had forgotten the necessary fruit of virtue, the grace of the Holy Spirit, without which no one is or can be saved, for as we sing at Matins:
Every soul is quickened by the Holy Spirit and exalted by purity and mystically illumined by the Unity of the Trinity.