The Morning Offering

The Garden

 Tending the Garden of the Heart

Both my Norwegian grandfather, and my mother, were avid gardeners, so I grew up surrounded by the beauty of plants and flowers. The cottage garden is a distinct style of garden that is certainly my favorite. The use of traditional materials, in an informal design, together with dense plantings, and a mixture of ornamental and edible plants, is identified the world over as English in origin. The grandeur and formal structure, found in classical English estate gardens, has surrendered to homey and functional gardens that are filled with  grace and charm.

The massive plantings of perennials, annuals, vegetables, and plants and flowers of every size and color, display like nothing else, the variety of beauty that bespeaks God's creation. These gardens remind me of people, coming, as we do, in every size and color, all beautiful in our own special way. Some are like climbing roses, reaching to the heavens, and God's glory. Others are like creepers, hugging the ground, and covering large areas like a carpet of green. Some are like cactus, needing little water, while able to living in the ascetic splendor of an Egyptian desert. Others, like water lilies, display beautiful blooms, even while floating in squalid water.

Like plants, we need watering and tending. For Christians, the Waters of Life can be found in baptism, where we are immersed in the Living Waters that bring us into life, standing us before the Creator, Who, like the gardener, tends to our needs, that we may grow and bloom to all our potential.

As we tend to our own heart, we must make sure we have guarded ourselves against the weeds that would strangle us, and smother our full potential as children of God. We must make sure we avail ourselves to the life sustaining food and water, that comes from God as His Uncreated Grace. And, as the Body of Christ, the Church, ("neither male nor female, Greek nor Jew") we will flower together, making up a garden of beautiful souls, basking in the Light of the Son of Righteousness.

With love in Christ,
Abbot Tryphon

Monday June 25, 2012 / June 12, 2012

4^th Week after Pentecost. Tone two.
Apostles' (Peter & Paul) Fast. By Monastic Charter: Food without Oil

Venerable Onuphrius the Great (400).
Venerable Peter of Mt. Athos (734).
Opening of the relics (1650) of St. Anna of Kashin (1338).
Venerable Arsenius, abbot of Konevits (1447).
Venerable Onuphrius, abbot of Malsk (Pskov) (1492).
Venerables Bassian and Jonah, monks, of Petroma (Solovki) (1561).
Venerables Onuphrius and Auxentius, monks, of Vologda (1521).
Venerable Stephen of Komel, abbot of Ozersk Monastery, Vologda (1542).
Venerables John, Andrew, Heraclemon, and Theophilus, hermits of Egypt (4th c.).
St. John the Soldier of Egypt (6th-7th c.).
Venerable Onuphrius, abbot of Katrom Monastery (Vologda) (16th c.).
St. Julian of Dagouta at Constantinople (Greek).
New Martyrs Onuphrius, bishop (1938), and with him: Anthony, Barsanuphius and Joseph (1937), and bishop Alexander Kharkovsky.
St. Olympius, bishop and confessor who suffered in Thrace (4th c.).
St. Timothy the Hermit of Egypt (4th c.).
St. Cunera, virgin-martyr of Rhenen (451) (Neth.).
Venerable John (Tornike) of Mt. Athos (998) (Georgia).
Finding of the relics (1672) of St. John of Moscow, fool-for-Christ (1589).
Synaxis of All Saints of St. Onuphrius Monastery at Jablechna (Poland).
Miracle-working icons of the Theotokos (14th c.) and St. Onuphrius (14th c.) at St. Onuphrius Monastery (Poland).

You can read the life of the saint in green, by click on the name.

THANK YOU, to all of you who have been able to contribute towards the purchase price of my new MacBook Air laptop. As you know, my five year old Mac was showing signs of failure, so with the help, guidance, and technical support of my friend, Father Photios Dumont, I am now able to continue this on-line ministry.
Abbot Tryphon

Donations can be made directly to the monastery through PayPal, or you may send donations to:

All-Merciful Saviour Monastery
PO Box 2420
Vashon Island, WA 98070-2420 USA

Romans 9:18-33

¹⁸ Therefore He has mercy on whom He wills, and whom He wills He hardens.

¹⁹ You will say to me then, “Why does He still find fault? For who has resisted His will?” ²⁰ But indeed, O man, who are you to reply against God? Will the thing formed say to him who formed it, “Why have you made me like this?” ²¹ Does not the potter have power over the clay, from the same lump to make one vessel for honor and another for dishonor?
²² What if God, wanting to show His wrath and to make His power known, endured with much longsuffering the vessels of wrath prepared for destruction, ²³ and that He might make known the riches of His glory on the vessels of mercy, which He had prepared beforehand for glory, ²⁴ even us whom He called, not of the Jews only, but also of the Gentiles?
²⁵ As He says also in Hosea:

“I will call them My people, who were not My people,
And her beloved, who was not beloved.”
²⁶ “And it shall come to pass in the place where it was said to them,
‘You are not My people,’
There they shall be called sons of the living God.”

²⁷ Isaiah also cries out concerning Israel:

“Though the number of the children of Israel be as the sand of the sea,
The remnant will be saved.
²⁸ For He will finish the work and cut it short in righteousness,
Because the Lord will make a short work upon the earth.”

²⁹ And as Isaiah said before:

“Unless the Lord of Sabaoth had left us a seed,
We would have become like Sodom,
And we would have been made like Gomorrah.”

Present Condition of Israel

³⁰ What shall we say then? That Gentiles, who did not pursue righteousness, have attained to righteousness, even the righteousness of faith; ³¹ but Israel, pursuing the law of righteousness, has not attained to the law of righteousness. ³² Why? Because they did not seek it by faith, but as it were, by the works of the law. For they stumbled at that stumbling stone. ³³ As it is written:
“Behold, I lay in Zion a stumbling stone and rock of offense,
And whoever believes on Him will not be put to shame.”

Matthew 11:2-15

² And when John had heard in prison about the works of Christ, he sent two of his disciples ³ and said to Him, “Are You the Coming One, or do we look for another?”

⁴ Jesus answered and said to them, “Go and tell John the things which you hear and see: ⁵ The blind see and the lame walk; the lepers are cleansed and the deaf hear; the dead are raised up and the poor have the gospel preached to them. ⁶ And blessed is he who is not offended because of Me.”

⁷ As they departed, Jesus began to say to the multitudes concerning John: “What did you go out into the wilderness to see? A reed shaken by the wind? ⁸ But what did you go out to see? A man clothed in soft garments? Indeed, those who wear soft clothing are in kings’ houses. ⁹ But what did you go out to see? A prophet? Yes, I say to you, and more than a prophet. ¹⁰ For this is he of whom it is written:

‘Behold, I send My messenger before Your face,
Who will prepare Your way before You.’

¹¹ “Assuredly, I say to you, among those born of women there has not risen one greater than John the Baptist; but he who is least in the kingdom of heaven is greater than he. ¹² And from the days of John the Baptist until now the kingdom of heaven suffers violence, and the violent take it by force. ¹³ For all the prophets and the law prophesied until John. ¹⁴ And if you are willing to receive it, he is Elijah who is to come. ¹⁵ He who has ears to hear, let him hear!

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