Twelfth Sunday after Pentecost. Octoechos Tone 3. Post-feast of the Transfiguration. Holy Martyr Euplus (304).
Dormition Fast.
1 Corinthians 15:1-11. Matthew 19:16-26.
Read 1 Corinthians 15:1-11
It is disheartening when we put effort into something and find that we have nothing to show for it. When that happens with a do-it-yourself home fix-it project, some time may have to pass before it can become a humorous story. But there are things that mean more to us than home renos. As one generation yields to the next, as things that we have invested in are discarded or not maintained, sometimes nothing seems to last – “Vanity of vanities! All is vanity!”
Today’s epistle reading says that if we are to have “something to show for it” as we pass from the temporal to the eternal, it is by the grace of God and our response to Him. Though the Corinthians to that point had received the gospel, stood in and were saved by it, unless they were to “hold it fast”, they would have “believed in vain”. Paul, on the other hand, could say that God’s grace toward him was “not in vain”, that he “worked harder than any of them, though it was not I, but the grace of God which is with me.”
In the mystery of the relationship between God’s grace and human agency, two things are known: God’s grace is prior to human action and the exercise of human agency is essential for the grace of God to have its lasting result – faith is both a grace and a human act. By tending daily to our faith, we build preparation against both the sudden losses and slow erosions of this world. Neither will we be like the rich fool in the parable who is told that, “This night your soul is required of you,” nor like those who let their “hearts be weighed down with dissipation and drunkenness and cares of this life”.