Our Venerable and God-bearing Father Euthemius the Great.
Polyeleos Feast.
Hebrews 13:17-21. Luke 6:17-23.
Read Luke 6:17-23
Christ is born! Glorify Him!
For the entire week, our Church venerates the memory of the earliest Desert Fathers who were the founders of monastic life and the great examples of radically following of Christ. On Monday and Wednesday, we commemorated the first ever known hermits, St. Paul of Thebes and St. Anthony the Great, whose lives were depicted by St. Jerome and St. Athanasius of Alexandria already in the 4th century. On Friday and today, we reflect upon the lives of St. Macarius of Egypt and St. Euthemius the Great without whom we can not even imagine development of the monastic way of life in the Christian East.
Each of the Venerable Fathers of the Desert has left his own legacy and his own “recipe” of spiritual growth in Christ. While the Church obtains no record of the words of St. Paul of Thebes, learning from his silent monastic feat, we can all benefit from St. Anthony the Great’s formula of holiness according to which: “Wherever we go, we should keep God always before our eyes, and do every deed in such a way that we can find evidence for it in the Holy Scripture.”
Equally important lesson of how we should pray gives us St. Macarius the Great: “A prayer does not require many words, but one should simply lift one’s arms and say: Lord! In whatever way You wish and see fit – save me.”
St. Euthemius the Great in his turn advises to conquer our passions by virtues: “What salt is to bread, love is to other virtues. Every virtue is made secure by love and humility. Obedience is a great virtue. The Lord loves obedience more than sacrifice, but disobedience leads to death.”
On first sight, the words that Jesus said at the time of His Sermon on the Mount may sound like nonsense. How can we possibly be happy and blessed when we are poor, hungry, weeping, and hated by other people? Everyone in this life quite naturally longs for stability and prosperity. Yet, if we are not satisfied by sensual comfort and still searching for a deeper sense of life, we need to follow the example of the Great Fathers of the Desert in their unseen warfare with the Evil One who wants to steal our true happiness. Undoubtedly, most of us will never embrace the solitude of the desert as Sts. Anthony and Paul, but we are all invited to bring to God our small sacrifices or, perhaps, even sufferings, so we can taste the sweetness of the fruits of the Holy Spirit.