Newsletter June 27, 2024

Culture of Prayer

Does prayer have a culture? The answer is yes. A person’s mentality, shaped by convictions, principles and values, determines how he approaches life. Every human being, consciously or unconsciously, adopts a certain style, outlook, thought process and behavior in managing his affairs. These, taken together, constitute his unique culture which pigments his entire life. The prayerful person, for example, carries his joy and sadness, his pain, health and suffering, his strengths and weaknesses, his environment and society, and everything else that pertains to him, and presents them all to God before anyone else. Then he is inspired to act, relying on the help and grace of his Lord.

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Gather as a Christian community with your brothers and sisters to pray for the peace of the world and for the souls who inhabit it. Offer along with them supplications for specific problems. Hold vigils in parishes and say The Jesus Prayer. Let the faithful encourage priests and vice versa to call for intensified prayers on days of hardship. Let everyone, with one heart and one mind, pray with their prayer ropes, invoking God’s mercy for the world. The disciples of Saint Silouan the Athonite pray, collectively, in their monastery in Great Britain, to this day: “O Lord Jesus Christ, have mercy on us and have mercy on your world.”

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Saint Silouan the Athonite once was told that the monks were troubled by the communist persecution of the Church. He replied: “I, too, was very troubled at first about what was happening. But after much prayer and supplication, this thought came to me: God loves everyone beyond description. He is the ruler of times, events, everything and everyone. He allowed this persecution for the good of the future. I cannot understand this, nor can I stop it. I have nothing but prayer and love.” He advised his brethren to have the same.

This is the culture of prayer!

Read the entire article: https://www.antiochian.org/regulararticle/2089

Please remember that our full calendar continues to be available at our parish web site. Here is a link:
https://stjfc.org/Pages/Calendar/calendar.php

Full schedule: https://stjfc.org/Pages/Ministries/Prosphora/Docs/prosphora sched 2024 web.pdf

Full schedule: https://stjfc.org/Pages/Ministries/Altar/Docs/epistle readers for 2024.pdf

Epistle: ST. PAUL’S LETTER TO THE HEBREWS 11:33-40; 12:1-2

Brethren, all the saints through faith conquered kingdoms, enforced justice, received promises, stopped the mouths of lions, quenched raging fire, escaped the edge of the sword, won strength out of weakness, became mighty in war, put foreign armies to flight. Women received their dead by resurrection. Some were tortured, refusing to accept release, that they might rise again to a better life. Others suffered mocking and scourging, and even chains and imprisonment. They were stoned, they were sawn in two, they were tempted, they were killed with the sword; they went about in skins of sheep and goats, destitute, afflicted, ill-treated – of whom the world was not worthy – wandering over deserts and mountains and in dens and caves of the earth. And all these, though well attested by their faith, did not receive what was promised, since God had foreseen something better for us, that apart from us they should not be made perfect. Therefore, since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, let us also lay aside every weight, and sin which clings so closely, and let us run with perseverance the race that is set before us, looking to Jesus the pioneer and perfecter of our faith.

Gospel: MATTHEW 10:32-33; 37-38; 19:27-30

The Lord said to his disciples, “Every one who acknowledges me before men, I also will acknowledge before my Father who is in heaven; but whoever denies me before men, I also will deny him before my Father who is in heaven. He who loves father or mother more than me is not worthy of me; and he who loves son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me; and he who does not take his cross and follow me is not worthy of me.” Then Peter said in reply, “Lo, we have left everything and followed you. What then shall we have?” Jesus said to them, “Truly, I say to you, in the new world, when the Son of man shall sit on his glorious throne, you who have followed me will also sit on twelve thrones, judging the twelve tribes of Israel. And every one who has left houses or brothers or sisters or father or mother or children or lands, for my name’s sake, will receive a hundredfold, and inherit eternal life. But many that are first will be last, and the last first.”

What Spiritual Warfare Is All About

Fr. Michael Gillis

Someone recently asked me about how to understand the evil thoughts they experience. Influenced by Jordan Peterson, this person suggested that it is a dialog between “ego” and the shadow or negative parts of themselves. I don’t know what Jordan Peterson actually says about these things, but I have some idea about what the spiritual fathers of the Orthodox Church teach us about thoughts and the battle against evil with us.

The principal way we experience (or notice that we are experiencing) the angelic influence (both heavenly and infernal) is in/by our thoughts. However thoughts are seldom merely spiritual, they are very often associated with a feeling (a passion) which itself is almost always associated with a bodily experience (real or feared or hoped for). The first thing we must realize is that these thoughts and feelings are not who we are. We are the person experiencing the thoughts and feelings, we are not our thoughts and feelings. These thoughts and feelings, or feeling-thoughts, are what we call passions.

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Spiritual warfare, then, is when we fight the thoughts and passions that lead us away from Christ. However, like a beginning gardener, we must first learn to tell the difference between the weeds and the flowers. This telling the difference is what the spiritual fathers call discernment. Discernment is not the ability to know something about someone else’s motives or inner life. No, that is suspicion, and suspicion is a passion, not a spiritual gift. Discernment is knowing yourself. Discernment is recognizing the source of your own thoughts and feelings, where they are tending toward and what actions they are prompting and whether such actions are life-giving or not.

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Read the entire article: https://www.holynativitychurch.ca/blog/fighting-demons-in-the-garden-of-your-mind