Monday, March 7 : Saint John Cassian

We see some people who disdain very great riches in this world-and not only large sums of gold and silver but also magnificent properties-being disturbed over a penknife, a stylus, a needle, or a pen… And when they have given away all their wealth for the sake of Christ’s love, but still retain the heart’s old affection for the littlest things and are always quickly irritated because of them, they become in every respect fruitless and barren, like those who do not have the love of which the Apostle speaks. Foreseeing this in the Spirit, the blessed Apostle said: ‘If I gave all my goods to feed the poor and handed my body over to be burned, but I did not have love, it would profit me nothing.’ (1Co 13,3) Hence it is clearly proved that perfection is not immediately arrived at by being stripped and deprived of all one’s wealth or by giving up one’s honors, unless there is that love whose elements the Apostle describes, which consists in purity of heart alone. For what else does it mean not to be envious, not to be boastful, not to be angry, not to do evil, not to seek the things that are one’s own, not to rejoice over iniquity, not to think evil and all the rest, (1Co 13,4-5) if not always to offer God a perfect and utterly clean heart and to keep it unsullied by any passion? For the sake of this, then, everything is to be done and desired.

maronite readings – rosary,team