I’ve been thinking about how our prayer and readings throughout the week both mimick and follow the liturgical services of the Church, whether we have attended them or not. For each service, there is the keeping of the calendar, mindful of the season, whether, for example, it is the Nativity Fast or Penetecost, mindful of the day, whether it is a fast or a feast, and of which saints, icons, or events, are especially venerated on the day. For each service, there are readings, common prayers and changeable prayers (e.g. the Troparia and Kontakia for the Saints commemorated this day), intercessions, thanksgiving, acknowledgement of our sins, prayers to the Lord and to the Theotokos… You see where I’m going; our own rules, our own practices, mimick and follow those of the Church’s liturgics.
For each day, there are readings. Likewise, it is the pious custom of Orthodox Christians to read the scriptural readings appointed for the day, even when not attending services. I have found myself out of step with the Saints in this regard, struggling as I do to keep even the simple prayers of my rule. And if I do not pray, how shall I read? I am well aware, too, that the fathers always couple fasting with prayer; and teach us that “as we fast from food, let us abstain also from every passion.” – better to eat and be dispassionate than to be passionate and fast from food. After all, it is partly liberation from the passions, at war with me in my flesh, that the fast from food is meant to serve. So how is it that I find it easier to keep the rule of the fast in food than to follow the train of holy fathers in their supreme fasting from the passions?
In the same way, I find it easier to be regular at liturgy, and to tick off the times and seasons than to live the life of which the liturgies speak, and of which we pray and read. So, I cannot call you, my fellow catechumens in Christ (we are all always catechumens in the Lord), to live the pious life that I am presumably living. Far from it. Instead, I can only ask you to help me in my struggle, as I strive to help you in yours. Let us encourage and exhort one another. Let us help one another over the hurdles, pulling one another up the ladder, grasping hands so we don’t fall. Most of all, let us press on since, only if I press on will I have any word or example or meaning when I turn to give footing to another.
– Catechetical Letter 11/30/2005
I have written to you, fathers, because you have known Him Who is from the beginning. I have written to you, young men, because you are strong, and the Word of God abides in you, and you have overcome the wicked one.
Love not the world, nor the things that are in the world. If any man loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him.
For all that is in the world, the lust of the flesh, and the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life, is not of the Father, but is of the world. And the world is passing away, and its lust: but he that does the will of God abides forever – St. John the Apostle