The Morning Offering

Love

Passing on the Gift of Love

 
My father was a golf pro in Spokane, Washington, during my grade and early middle school years, and the country club was the center of our family's social life. My brother, Dwayne, and I use to play an average of 18 to 36 holes of golf every day, during the summer months (when we weren't fly fishing in the Spokane River). Our whole family golfed together, although my mother's primary love was music. She was a church organist and choir director, and eventually became a piano and organ teacher.

My first job was to fill the coin operated water cooler, with bottles of soda pop. When we moved from Spokane, Washington, to Sandpoint, Idaho, where my dad became the pro for a small country club, I took on my second job, at the age of sixteen, driving the large tractor that was used to cut the grass for the fairways. Those early years were wonderful, and I often think of how lucky I was to have been blessed with such wonderful, loving, parents.

Our home in Sandpoint, was on the lake, with views of forested mountains off in the distance. Is it any wonder I am so happy living on an island, surrounded by forest, for the forests and lakes of Northern Idaho, were so prominent a part of the environment of my youth.

I was fortunate to have had a close relationship with both my father and mother during the last years of their lives. As an adult, I was gifted with enough time to have let both my parents know how much I loved them, and how I was a product of both their lives. I was able to tell my dad that I saw much of him, within myself. His humor, comfortableness with all kinds of people, joy of life, love of history, and, even his size (he was a big man), have been inherited by me, his son.

My mother's love of music, architecture and interior design, are also a part of me, leaving me with the skills to work with our architect on the design of this monastery, and to personally design all the interiors of our monastic buildings. I am clearly the inheritor of the best that my parents displayed in their lives, and I will forever be grateful to them.

Yet, the most important gift I received from my parents, was the gift of love. They loved me, and demonstrated their love for me throughout their lives. They also showed me how to love others, and that ability to be willing to be open to love, and to demonstrate love, eventually allowed me to love God. It was from my parents that I discovered that God was not simply there as a cosmic problem solver, or gift giver, or but was, like them, One Who loved me. God, like my parents, first loved me, and the lessons of love that I learned from my parents, enabled me to be open to the love of God. In turn, the gift of love that came from my parents, allowed me to see God as not my own private possession, but One Whom I wanted to share with others.

Love in Christ,
Abbot Tryphon

Saturday September 7, 2013 / August 25, 2013
11^th Week after Pentecost. Tone one.

Return of the relics of the Apostle Bartholomew from Anastasiopolis to Lipari (6th c.).
Holy Apostle Titus of the Seventy (1st c.).
Hieromartyr Moses (1931).
New Hieromartyr priest Vladimir Moschansky (1938).
Sts. Barses and Eulogius (386), bishops of Edessa, and St. Protogenes, bishop of Carrhae (4th c.), confessors.
St. Menas, patriarch of Constantinople (6th c.).
St. John the Cappadocian (520) and St. Epiphanius (535), patriarchs of Constantinople.
Synaxis of Hierarchs of Crete: Andrew the Wonderworker; Cyril, bishop of Gortyna; and Eumenius, bishop of Rome. (Greek).
St. Aredius of Limousin (591) (Gaul).
St. Gregory of Utrecht (775) (Neth.).
Translation of the relics of St. Hilda of Whitby (680) (Celtic & British).
St. Ebba the Elder, abbess of Coldingham, Northumbria, England (683) (Celtic & British). You can read the life of the saint in red, by clicking on the name.

THANKS to all of you who have been able to contribute towards the support of the monastery. These difficult times of economic hardship have impacted the monastery, and those of you who have been able to donate, have been our lifeline. May God bless you for your generosity, and kindness.

With love in Christ,  
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

The Scripture Readings for the Day

1 Corinthians 1:3-9

³ Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.

Spiritual Gifts at Corinth

⁴ I thank my God always concerning you for the grace of God which was given to you by Christ Jesus, ⁵ that you were enriched in everything by Him in all utterance and all knowledge, ⁶ even as the testimony of Christ was confirmed in you, ⁷ so that you come short in no gift, eagerly waiting for the revelation of our Lord Jesus Christ, ⁸ who will also confirm you to the end, that you may be blameless in the day of our Lord Jesus Christ. ⁹ God is faithful, by whom you were called into the fellowship of His Son, Jesus Christ our Lord.

Matthew 19:3-12

³ The Pharisees also came to Him, testing Him, and saying to Him, “Is it lawful for a man to divorce his wife for just any reason?”

⁴ And He answered and said to them, “Have you not read that He who made them at the beginning ‘made them male and female,’ ⁵ and said, ‘For this reason a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh’? ⁶ So then, they are no longer two but one flesh. Therefore what God has joined together, let not man separate.”
⁷ They said to Him, “Why then did Moses command to give a certificate of divorce, and to put her away?”
⁸ He said to them, “Moses, because of the hardness of your hearts, permitted you to divorce your wives, but from the beginning it was not so. ⁹ And I say to you, whoever divorces his wife, except for sexual immorality, and marries another, commits adultery; and whoever marries her who is divorced commits adultery.”
¹⁰ His disciples said to Him, “If such is the case of the man with his wife, it is better not to marry.”

Jesus Teaches on Celibacy

¹¹ But He said to them, “All cannot accept this saying, but only those to whom it has been given: ¹² For there are eunuchs who were born thus from their mother’s womb, and there are eunuchs who were made eunuchs by men, and there are eunuchs who have made themselves eunuchs for the kingdom of heaven’s sake. He who is able to accept it, let him accept it.”