Our Venerable Father and Confessor Basil, Ascetical Companion of Procopius (716-40).
Great Fast Day 17. Abstention from meat and foods that contain meat. According to liturgical prescriptions, the Divine Liturgy is not celebrated today.
Sixth Hour – Isaiah 10:12-20. Presanctified – Genesis 7:6-9. Proverbs 9:12-18.
Read Isaiah 10:12-20
Glory to Jesus Christ! Glory forever!
Today’s reading from the prophet Isaiah begins by revealing the arrogance of the king of the Assyrians who Isaiah predicted would come to attack Jerusalem and be defeated. The king said: “I shall act in my strength and by the wisdom of my understanding. I also shall remove the boundaries of the nations and plunder their strength. I shall shake their inhabited cities. I shall overtake with my hand all the inhabited world as a nest, and take them as eggs that have been left. There is no one who can escape or oppose me” (Is. 10:13-14). We read in Proverbs: “A haughty look, a proud heart, and the plowing of the wicked are sin” (Prov. 21:4). Likewise, in the Psalms: “The one who has a haughty look and a proud heart, him I will not endure” (Ps. 101:5).
When someone is tempted to the sin of pride, that person has an excessive love of his or her own excellence. This excessive, distorted self-love leads one to think he or she is capable without God. In the Garden of Eden, God warned Adam and Eve that they should not eat of the fruit of the tree in the center of the garden, lest they die. In light of this, the serpent tempted Eve to doubt God: “You will not surely die. For God knows that in the day you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil” (Gen. 3:4-5). In their pridefulness, Adam and Eve sought to make themselves like God, equal to Him and not subject to Him.
“Shall the potter be esteemed as the clay; for shall the thing made say of him who made it, ‘He did not make me?’ Or shall the thing formed say of him who formed it, ‘He has no understanding?’” (Is. 29:16). God is the Potter, and we are the works of His hands. We are dust, and to dust we shall return (see Gen. 3:19). In response to the Assyrian king’s haughtiness, Isaiah wrote: “Shall the ax glorify itself without him who chops with it? Or shall the saw exalt itself without him who saws with it? It is likewise if one should lift a rod or a piece of wood” (Is. 10:15). Whatever good we do in our lives, whatever our accomplishments are, we should always see ourselves as God’s instruments. When Jesus was addressed as the “Good Teacher,” He taught: “Why do you call Me good? No one is good but One, that is, God” (Mk. 10:18). Of course, Jesus is God, but His response to being addressed as “Good Teacher” reminds us that all goodness originates in God. We are God’s instruments, and anything good we do and any successes we have are an outpouring of God’s love for us. Let us be on guard against the sin of pride and remember our dependence on our Creator.