Saturday, August 26 : Saint John Cassian

     The tradition and the authority of Holy Scripture show us three renunciations… The first is that by which as far as the body is concerned we make light of all the wealth and goods of this world. By the second, we reject the fashions and vices and former affections of soul and flesh. By the third, we detach our soul from all present and visible things, and contemplate only things to come, and set our heart on what is invisible. We have to do all these three at once as the Lord charged Abraham to do, when he said to him “Get out from your country, and your kinsfolk, and your father’s house.”(Gn 12:1). First he said “from your country,” i.e., from the goods of this world, and earthly riches: secondly, “from your kinsfolk,” i.e., from this former life and habits and sins, which cling to us from our very birth and are joined to us as it were by ties of affinity and kinship: thirdly, “from your father’s house,” i.e., from all the recollection of this world, which the sight of the eyes can afford…      Let us contemplate, as the Apostle says, “not what is seen but what is unseen; for what is seen is transitory, but what is unseen is eternal” (2Co 4:18)… “Our citizenship is in heaven,..”(Ph 3:20)… We shall go forth from the house of our former parent, who was our father from our very birth, according to the old man, when we were “by nature children of wrath, like the rest”(Ep 2:3), and we will fix our whole mind and concentration on heavenly things… Then our soul will ascend towards unseen things by constant meditation on divine things and spiritual contemplation.

maronite readings – rosary,team