Bright Saturday. The Holy and Glorious Great-Martyr, Victory-bearer and Wonderworker George
Acts 3:11-16; Acts 12:1-11; John 3:22-33; John 15:17-16:2
Bright Week. All-Night Vigil Feast. No fasting or abstention from foods.
Read Acts 3:11-16
Christ is risen! Truly, He is risen!
Who is not concerned over many things? All of us live our lives as best as we can while constantly “multitasking.” We see this continual refrain in the gospel itself. Consider Martha busy serving while Mary sits at our Lord’s feet, or the boy Jesus asking Mary and Joseph why they were concerned that he needed to “be about His Father’s business.”
It’s not even a question of too much busyness but of what we are busy over. We can belong either to the earth with our concerns or we can bring heaven into the earth of our concerns if our hearts are in the right place, that is in heaven!
St Augustine writes:
Will you glory in yourself? You will grow; but you will grow worse in your evil. For whoever grows worse is justly decreased. Let God, then, who is ever perfect, grow and grow in you. For the more you understand God and apprehend him, he seems to be growing in you; but in himself he does not grow, being always perfect.… Do but examine the nature of humanity: a person is born and grows, he learns the customs of people. What does he know but earth and things of the earth? He speaks the things of people, knows the things of people and minds the things of people. Carnal, he judges carnally, conjectures carnally. Everything is about humanity! Let the grace of God come and enlighten his darkness, as it said, “You will lighten my candle, O Lord; my God, enlighten my darkness”; let it take the mind of humanity and turn it toward its own light. Immediately [John] begins to say, as the apostle says, “Yet not I, but the grace of God that is with me,”and “Now I live; yet not I, but Christ lives in me. That is to say, “He must increase, but I must decrease. (Tractates on the Gospel of John 14.4-6)