A Message from Father David

Epistle and Gospel Readings

for Sunday, November 1

Food for the Soul

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A Message from Father David

“How did it happen that now he could see everything so clearly. Something had given him leave to live in the present. Not once in his entire life had he come to rest in the quiet center of himself but had forever cast himself from some dark past he could not remember to a future that did not exist. Not once had he been present for his life. So his life had passed like a dream. Is it possible for people to miss their lives the way one can miss a plane?”     

Walker Percy, “The Second Coming”

“To live in the past and future is easy. To live in the present is like threading a needle.”

Walker Percy, “Lancelot”

It is observed that we have a very difficult time living in the present moment. We can spend an enormous amount of energy focused on the past, filled with a guilt-producing regret for what could have or should have been. Or, we may long for the way “things used to be,” with a romanticized nostalgia. Perhaps we may have been deeply affected by past trauma, and the pain and scars from the past continue to hold us captive. At any rate, the past is just that – past. It is not where we live.

On the other hand, we also look to a future that does not yet exist, either with wistful hope that things will get better, or with fear and anxiety that things will get worse. But, like the past, we don’t live in the future. As the past is forever gone and we have no access to it, so also does the future not yet exist and always eludes us.

All of this is to say that all we truly have, in a very real sense, is the Present. The present moment is where we live and move and have our being. The Present is what is truly real for us. While the past and future may occupy our thoughts, they can easily prevent us from attending to the present, and thus as Percy puts it in the quote above, cause us to “miss our lives as one misses a plane.”

The Holy Scriptures address this dilemma quite directly.  St. Paul, in Philippians 3:13-15, writes, “One thing I do, forgetting those things which are behind and reaching forward to those things which are ahead, I press toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus.” In the Sermon on the Mount, our Lord tells us, “Therefore do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own.” 

The Lord meets us in the present moment, in the “now.” Christ is truly God with us, “everywhere present and filling all things” - each moment, each circumstance, each experience. Perhaps this is what St. Paul means when he tells us to pray without ceasing. Let us be attentive to the present. Let us be attentive to the Divine Presence.

Blessings,

Father David

Psalm 15.3,8

Among the saints who are in his land, 

the Lord has been wondrous.

Verse: I see the Lord before me continually.

The Epistle Reading is from St. Paul's

First Letter to the Corinthians 12:27-31; 13:1-8

Brethren, you are the body of Christ and individually members of it. And God has appointed in the church first apostles, second prophets, third teachers, then workers of miracles, then healers, helpers, administrators, speakers in various kinds of tongues. Are all apostles? Are all prophets? Are all teachers? Do all work miracles? Do all possess gifts of healing? Do all speak with tongues? Do all interpret? But earnestly desire the higher gifts. And I will show you a still more excellent way. If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. And if I have prophetic powers, and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but have not love, I am nothing. If I give away all I have, and if I deliver my body to be burned, but have not love, I gain nothing. Love is patient and kind; love is not jealous or boastful; it is not arrogant or rude. Love does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; it does not rejoice at wrong, but rejoices in the right. Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. Love never ends.



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The Gospel According to Luke 16:19-31

The Lord said, "There was a rich man, who was clothed in purple and fine linen and who feasted sumptuously every day. And at his gate lay a poor man named Lazaros, full of sores, who desired to be fed with what fell from the rich man's table; moreover the dogs came and licked his sores. The poor man died and was carried by the angels to Abraham's bosom. The rich man also died and was buried; and in Hades, being in torment, he lifted up his eyes, and saw Abraham far off and Lazaros in his bosom. And he called out, 'Father Abraham, have mercy upon me, and send Lazaros to dip the end of his finger in water and cool my tongue; for I am in anguish in this flame.' But Abraham said, 'Son, remember that you in your lifetime received your good things, and Lazaros in like manner evil things; but now he is comforted here, and you are in anguish. And besides all this, between us and you a great chasm has been fixed, in order that those who would pass from here to you may not be able, and none may cross from there to us.' And he said, 'Then I beg you, father, to send him to my father's house, for I have five brothers, so that he may warn them, lest they also come into this place of torment.' But Abraham said, 'They have Moses, and the prophets; let them hear them.' And he said, 'No, father Abraham; but if some one goes to them from the dead, they will repent.' He said to them, 'If they do not hear Moses and the prophets, neither will they be convinced if someone should rise from the dead.'"

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Food for the Soul



“Always remember that even the Son of God and all His friends

 entered His Kingdom through thorns and crosses.”

Saint Nicodemus the Hagiorite

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