14th Week of Pentecost

MONDAY
1 John 3:23-4:6
And his commandment is this: we should believe in the name of his Son, Jesus Christ, and love one another just as he commanded us. Those who keep his commandments remain in him, and he in them, and the way we know that he remains in us is from the Spirit that he gave us. Beloved, do not trust every spirit but test the spirits to see whether they belong to God, because many false prophets have gone out into the world. This is how you can know the Spirit of God: every spirit that acknowledges Jesus Christ come in the flesh be longs to God, and every spirit that does not acknowledge Jesus does not belong to God. This is the spirit of the antichrist that, as you heard, is to come, but in fact is already in the world. You belong to God, children, and you have conquered them, for the one who is in you is greater than the one who is in the world. They belong to the world; accordingly, their teaching belongs to the world, and the world listens to them. We belong to God, and anyone who knows God listens to us, while anyone who does not belong to God refuses to hear us. This is how we know the spirit of truth and the spirit of deceit.

Luke 15:1-7
The tax collectors and sinners were all drawing near to listen to him, but the Pharisees and scribes began to complain, saying, “This man welcomes sinners and eats with them.” So to them he addressed this parable. “What man among you having a hundred sheep and losing one of them would not leave the ninety-nine in the desert and go after the lost one until he finds it? And when he does find it, he sets it on his shoulders with great joy and, upon his arrival home, he calls together his friends and neighbors and says to them, ‘Rejoice with me because I have found my lost sheep.’ I tell you, in just the same way there will be more joy in heaven over one sinner who repents than over ninety-nine righteous people who have no need of repentance.

Prayer of the Faithful, vol. III
SECOND PRAYER
Lord, have mercy on us and save us.
O Son,
condescending to become one of us,
you humbled yourself and came down to earth.
Stretch forth your merciful right hand upon us,
that it may protect us from the enemy,
now and forever.
Amen.

Saint of the Day: Saints Castus, Magnus, Maximus and Companions of Ancyra. A group of martyrs that died together, martyred at Ancyra, Galatia (in modern Turkey).

Meditation:
Come to prayer, and bring with you your whole self. Let not your mind remain in the market about your business. If you are here, let also your inner man be here within the doors of the crowned (bride). Why have your thoughts gone forth and become distracted by affairs, so that when you are here you are not here, but there? Outside amid the markets your mind is wandering, (taken up) with reckonings and profits; fetch it, that it may come in and ask for its Life. Stand not with one half of you within and one half without, lest when you are divided your prayer loses itself between the two parts. Stand at prayer a united and complete and true man, and all whatsoever you ask you can obtain from God. Why are you impatient to be off when He has not yet given to you? Stay long and knock at the Physician, and beseech Him, and bring the tears of repentance and besprinkle His doorstep; entreat much; and if for love He give not to you, yet to your begging He will not be able to deny all requests. Be insistent at the Physician’s door, and dont give up; for if you go backward He will not bind you up. Why stand still? The begger knows how to obtain mercy of Him; and unless He give to her she will not suffer Him to depart.
A HOMILY of MAR JACOB of SERÛGH ON THE RECEPTION OF THE HOLY MYSTERIES