The Morning Offering

How to Have Peace
in the World

The Struggle Between Two Worlds

The two young men held in an Iranian prison for two years are now on their way to the United States. After being arrested for crossing over the unmarked Iraq/Iran boarder and being accused of espionage, they became pawns in the ongoing dispute between the United States and Iran. After the posting of a million dollar bail they are now free and reunited with their families.

The world is in a new struggle not unlike that  which happened during the Soviet Union and the cold war that was brought on after the fall of the Royal House of Romanov. This was followed by World War II when we saw the struggle between the free world and the fascism of Nazi Germany, Italy and Japan.

All these ideologies have much in common with Islam, where there is a non-democratic tradition and people live under strict rules that leave little room for personal choice, and where fate governs the people. The idea of mankind being formed in the image and likeness of God and having  a role in making choices for ourselves, is foreign to Islam. The god of Islam demands submission, just as did communism and fascism.

In Christ you have freedom. God does not demand submission but desires your freely offered love and worship. God has invited you into loving communion because He first loved you. This is a personal relationship that is offered to you, not one based on rigid rules and forms that bespeak of a god who is all about law and submission.

The war of ideology between the Christian West and the Islamic world is one that promises the get worse before it gets better. Some authorities are projecting this war of ideology will go on for at least two generations, much as happened during the Communist days of the Soviet Union. The only way to survive this war is to make Christ central in your life. This world will change for the better only when change has begun in you.

The Islamic world will never know Christ if all they see from the West is secular and worldly idolatry, lust for their oil reserves, and disrespect for their ancient cultural traditions. They must see the love of Christ in our hearts. Muslim neighbors must be treated with the love that Christ tells us must be extended even to our enemies. If all the Islamic world sees as Christian, is the secularism and base worldliness that has replaced Christianity, they will never know the truth that is in Christ.

Love in Christ,
Abbot Tryphon

Sunday September 25, 2011 / September 12, 2011

15^th Sunday after Pentecost.

Sunday before the Universal Elevation of the Precious and Life-Creating Cross of the Lord
Apodosis of the Nativity of the Theotokos.
Hieromartyr Autonomus, bishop in Italy (313).
Venerable Athanasius (1401), disciple of Venerable Sergius of Radonezh and abbot of the Vysotsk Monastery in Serpukhov, and his disciple Venerable Athanasius (1395).

2 Corinthians 4:6-15

 

⁶ For it is the God who commanded light to shine out of darkness, who has shone in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ.

Cast Down but Unconquered

⁷ But we have this treasure in earthen vessels, that the excellence of the power may be of God and not of us. ⁸ We are hard-pressed on every side, yet not crushed; we are perplexed, but not in despair; ⁹ persecuted, but not forsaken; struck down, but not destroyed— ¹⁰ always carrying about in the body the dying of the Lord Jesus, that the life of Jesus also may be manifested in our body. ¹¹ For we who live are always delivered to death for Jesus’ sake, that the life of Jesus also may be manifested in our mortal flesh. ¹² So then death is working in us, but life in you.
¹³ And since we have the same spirit of faith, according to what is written, “I believed and therefore I spoke,” we also believe and therefore speak, ¹⁴ knowing that He who raised up the Lord Jesus will also raise us up with Jesus, and will present us with you. ¹⁵ For all things are for your sakes, that grace, having spread through the many, may cause thanksgiving to abound to the glory of God.

Matthew 22:35-46

 

³⁵ Then one of them, a lawyer, asked Him a question, testing Him, and saying, ³⁶ “Teacher, which is the great commandment in the law?”

³⁷ Jesus said to him, “ ‘You shall love the LORD your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind.’ ³⁸ This is the first and great commandment. ³⁹ And the second is like it: ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ ⁴⁰ On these two commandments hang all the Law and the Prophets.”

Jesus: How Can David Call His Descendant Lord?

⁴¹ While the Pharisees were gathered together, Jesus asked them, ⁴² saying, “What do you think about the Christ? Whose Son is He?”
They said to Him, “ The Son of David.”
⁴³ He said to them, “How then does David in the Spirit call Him ‘Lord,’ saying:
       ⁴⁴ ‘ The LORD said to my Lord,

      “ Sit at My right hand,
       Till I make Your enemies Your footstool”’?

 ⁴⁵ If David then calls Him ‘Lord,’ how is He his Son?” ⁴⁶ And no one was able to answer Him a word, nor from that day on did anyone dare question Him anymore.