The Morning Offering

 How to Pray

Two Old Islanders

When you Pray, Pray for Repentance

When you pray, make the central theme of your prayer a request that God bring you to true repentance. Repentance must be the goal of your prayer life, for only in repentance can you gain humility. God's grace will sustain you through any trial and His grace will abound in you if it can take root in a humble heart achieved through repentance.

Love in Christ,
Abbot Tryphon

Bringing in a new display case for the gift shop
(click on photo to enlarge)

 
Friday September 2, 2011 / August 20, 2011

12^th Week after Pentecost. Tone two.
Strict Fast (Bread, Vegetables, Fruits)

Afterfeast of the Dormition.
Prophet Samuel (6th c. B.C.).
New Hieromartyr Vladimir priest (1938).
Hieromartyr Philip, bishop of Heraclea, and with him Martyrs Severus, Memnon, and 37 soldiers at Plovdiv in Thrace (304).

2 Corinthians 7:10-16

 

¹⁰ For godly sorrow produces repentance leading to salvation, not to be regretted; but the sorrow of the world produces death. ¹¹ For observe this very thing, that you sorrowed in a godly manner: What diligence it produced in you, what clearing of yourselves, what indignation, what fear, what vehement desire, what zeal, what vindication! In all things you proved yourselves to be clear in this matter. ¹² Therefore, although I wrote to you, I did not do it for the sake of him who had done the wrong, nor for the sake of him who suffered wrong, but that our care for you in the sight of God might appear to you.

The Joy of Titus

¹³ Therefore we have been comforted in your comfort. And we rejoiced exceedingly more for the joy of Titus, because his spirit has been refreshed by you all. ¹⁴ For if in anything I have boasted to him about you, I am not ashamed. But as we spoke all things to you in truth, even so our boasting to Titus was found true. ¹⁵ And his affections are greater for you as he remembers the obedience of you all, how with fear and trembling you received him. ¹⁶ Therefore I rejoice that I have confidence in you in everything.

Mark 2:18-22

 

Jesus Is Questioned About Fasting

¹⁸ The disciples of John and of the Pharisees were fasting. Then they came and said to Him, “Why do the disciples of John and of the Pharisees fast, but Your disciples do not fast?”
¹⁹ And Jesus said to them, “Can the friends of the bridegroom fast while the bridegroom is with them? As long as they have the bridegroom with them they cannot fast. ²⁰ But the days will come when the bridegroom will be taken away from them, and then they will fast in those days. ²¹ No one sews a piece of unshrunk cloth on an old garment; or else the new piece pulls away from the old, and the tear is made worse. ²² And no one puts new wine into old wineskins; or else the new wine bursts the wineskins, the wine is spilled, and the wineskins are ruined. But new wine must be put into new wineskins.”

Hammi rolling in the sand
(click on photo to enlarge)