Meditation for the Apostles Fast - June 28, 2025

 The whole person that I am is indeed a sinner. My innermost, God-given beauty only barely shines through, distorted as I am by my enslavement to passions, to my will, and my need for gratification. 

Only in giving myself over to God can I hope to attain my freedom. Only then will my inner self shine. Only then will I be fully alive to the Glory of God. Then, too, I will know this “self ” that I must care for diligently, with love and appropriate discipline. 

—Dr. Peter Bouteneff, How to Be a Sinner

Meditation for the Apostles Fast - June 27, 2025

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 In one day, my brother, you can gain all eternity. And in one day you can lose it. You are given thousands of days on earth to determine for yourself whether to pursue eternal salvation or damnation. 

But blessed a hundredfold be that day on which you repent of all your unclean works, your unclean words and thoughts, and turn to God with a cry for mercy! That day is worth more to you than a thousand other days.

—Bishop Nikolai Velimirovic, Prolog

Meditation for the Apostles Fast - June 26, 2025

 

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We are called to eternal life in the Kingdom of our Father which is in heaven. But entry into the Kingdom for created beings inevitably entails great suffering. Many decline the Father’s gift of love precisely because the utmost effort is required to assimilate it.

How many times did I say to myself at first, “Oh no … if that is the cost; I don’t want even this gift.” But strong are “the hands of the living God,” and “it is a fearful thing to fall into them” (cf. Heb 10.31).

—St. Sophony, On Prayer

Meditation for the Apostles Fast - June 25, 2025

 

Christ our God has loved his own to the uttermost. Because of love he created the world, because of love he took up our broken humanity into himself and made it his own. Because of love he identified himself with all our distress. Because of love he offered himself as a sacrifice, choosing at Gethsemane to go voluntarily to his Passion: “I lay down my life for my sheep…. No one takes it from me, but I lay it down of myself” (Jn. 10.15,18).

It was willing love, not exterior compulsion, that brought Jesus to his death. At his agony in the garden and at his Crucifixion the forces of darkness assail him with all their violence, but they cannot change his compassion into hatred; they cannot prevent his love from continuing to be itself.

—Metropolitan Kallistos Ware, The Orthodox Way

Meditation for Apostles Fast - June 24, 2025

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 Nativity of the Holy Glorious Prophet, Forerunner and Baptist, John

John also not merely bears witness, but when men were bringing the glory to him, he declined it: for it is one thing not to affect an honor which nobody thinks of offering, and another, to reject it when all men are ready to give it, and not only to reject it, but to do so with such humility.

—St. John Chrysostom, Homily XXIX on Acts XIII

Meditation for the Apostles Fast - June 18, 2025

 

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When God brings His hidden saints to light, it is in order that some may emulate them and others be without excuse. Those who wish to remain amid distraction as well as those who live a worthy life in communities, in mountains and in caverns (Heb. 11.38) are saved, and God bestows on them great blessings solely because they have faith in Him.

—St. Symeon the New Theologian, The Discourses

Meditation for the Apostles Fast - June 17, 2025

 

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God is indivisible in himself. When he comes, he comes wholly, as he is in his eternal Being. We do not contain him. He reveals himself to us at the “point” where we knock: “Knock, and it shall be opened unto you (Lk. 11.9). He speaks in brief dicta but life is not long enough to uncover their full content.

Reverently we sense his Fatherhood, his clemency. We see that he hungers to communicate to us his eternal life; to have us attain the perfection of his Son, who is the equal mold of the Father. Incomprehensible is his design for us. From “nothing” he creates gods like himself. And our whole being bows before him—not in dread before the stern Master but in humble love for the Father. 

—St. Sophrony, On Prayer: Reflections of a Modern Saint

Meditation for the Apostles Fast - June 16, 2025

 

Today is the beginning of the Apostles Fast. The length of this particular fast is ultimately determined by the date of Pascha, because this fast always begins eight days after Pentecost, the date of which is dependent on the date of Pascha for a given year. This year we are entering into a two-week fast that will culminate with the Feast of the Apostles Peter & Paul on Sunday, June 29. 

An Orthodox fast is basically vegan in its dietary discipline. There are exceptions, so please look at the Church calendar. This is a rather neglected fast, but it is my role to inform you of the fast, and your role to make some decisions about how you will observe the fast on some level.

In addition, I have "signed us up" to receive a meditation on a daily basis for the course of the Fast. This series of meditations is sponsored by St. Vladimir's Orthodox seminary. We begin with the following from Dr. Peter Bouteneff:

Beginning of the Apostles’ Fast

A healthy approach to yourself as sinner depends upon knowing something of God’s mercy. Without faith and trust in God—as merciful and loving beyond measure—our self-condemnation would be impossible to bear. It would be self-destructive. And there is no clearer portrait of God than the crucified Christ, who has voluntarily surrendered everything for us. The cross—the limitless self-giving, voluntary co-suffering that it represents, the extent of love and mercy that it conveys—reveals to us what it is to be God.

—Dr. Peter Bouteneff, How to Be a Sinner