This  beautiful day is the Feast of St. Andrew the First-called.

Holy Andrew, who beheld the Messiah and the advent of salvation for all mankind, pray that we might see Him in life eternal. Holy First-called of Christ, pray that I might be among the first to fly to Him in prayer. You now bid us all, “Come, for we have found the Desired One!” Pray to God that we might desire Him as you did, running “athirst like a hart to the Wellspring of Life”. Pray that the Holy Spirit will fill us until His light shines from the ends of our hair, as it shone from yours in your death unto everlasting life. Pray to God for us, Holy Andrew, that our souls may be saved.

At the excellent site Mystagogy there is today a beautiful homily about this first follower of Christ, by St. John Chrysostom.

To uproot sin and the evil that is so embedded in our sinning can be done only by divine power, for it is impossible and outside man’s competence to uproot sin. To struggle, yes, to continue to fight, to inflict blows, and to receive setbacks is in your power. To uproot, however, belongs to God alone. If you could have done it on your own, what would have been the need for the coming of the Lord? For just as an eye cannot see without light, nor can one speak without a tongue, nor hear without ears, nor walk without feet, nor carry on works without hands, so you cannot be saved without Jesus nor enter into the Kingdom of Heaven.

St. Makarios

–St. Silouan the Athonite

And you should be aware of something else. Souls that have known pain and suffering and that are tormented by their passions win most especially the love and grace of God. It is souls such as these that become saints, and very often we pass judgment on them. Remember what Saint Paul says, Where sin abounded, grace flowed even more abundantly. When you remember this, you will feel that these people are more worthy than you and than me. We see them as weak, but when they open themselves to God they become all love and all divine eros. Whereas previously they had acquired different habits, they now give all the power of their soul to Christ and are set on fire by Christ’s love. That is how God’s miracle works in such souls, which we regard as ‘lost’.

We shouldn’t be discouraged, nor should we rush to conclusions, nor judge on the basis of superficial and external things. If, for example, you see a woman immodestly dressed, don’t have regard only for her outward appearance, but look more deeply into her soul. She may be a very good soul with an existential restlessness, which she expresses through her shocking appearance. She has a dynamism within her, the power of self-projection; she wishes to attract the eyes of others. But through lack of awareness she has distorted things. Think what would happen if she were to come to know Christ. She would believe and would turn all her passion towards Christ. She would do everything to attract the grace of God. She would become a saint.

It is a kind of self-projection of our own when we insist on other people becoming good. In reality, we wish to become good, but because we are unable to, we demand it of others and insist on this. And whereas all things are corrected through prayer, we often are distressed or become outraged and pass judgment on others.

Often through our anxieties and fears and our poor psychological state, without intending to and without being aware of it, we do harm to another person, even if we love him very much, as, for example, a mother loves her child. The mother transmits to the child all her anxiety about its life, about its health and about its progress, even if she doesn’t speak to the child and even if she doesn’t express what she has inside her. This love, this natural love, that is, can on occasion be harmful. This is not true, however, of the love of Christ that is combined with prayer and holiness of life. This love makes a person holy; it brings him peace, because God is love.

Let our love be only in Christ. In order to benefit others you must live in the love of God, otherwise you are unable to do good to your fellow man. You mustn’t pressurize any other person. His time will come, as long as you pray for him. With silence, tolerance, and above all by prayer we benefit others in a mystical way. The grace of God clears the horizon of his mind and assures him of His love. Here is the fine point. As soon as he accepts that God is love, then abundant light such as he has never seen will come upon him. Thus he will find salvation.

–Elder Porphyrios, Wounded by Love

That is why the glory of the All-holy Mother of God is so great. She is the point of contact between the created and the uncreated, the point where Life, incorruptibility and immortality, enters into all of creation. For this reason the Church sings, in the words of a theotokion by St. Andrew of Crete:

Hail thou God after God, who hast honors second after the Trinity, and, receiving the fullness of the gifts of God, thou transporteth them to all, to angels and to men; thou bride of the Father, spotless mother of the Son, and holy and all-illumined temple of the Spirit; all-pure one, the most purposeful and ultimate perfection of all creation, for whom the world was made. And in thy birthgiving, the eternal will of the Creator was fulfilled.

All angelic natures and the entire vastness of the universe are nourished by the life of the Mother of God who, for us creatures, is God after God, since it is through her that we receive the fullness of God’s gifts. She is the only creature who receives the energy of the Holy Trinity directly, and it is she who conducts that energy to all, to angels and men. She and the Word of God are the two persons who embrace and fulfill the mystery of the eternal will of the Creator, the two persons, one created and one uncreated, who gave to all of creation the endless sea of divine gifts. The Word gave on behalf of Divinity, and she received on behalf of creation. She gave all that she had, the human nature, to her Son, and He gave all that He had, divine life, to His mother. O the depth of divine love!

The unconfused union of the divine and human natures that took place in the womb of Mary, the humble virgin, is the source of our true nature. Because the image of God, after which we humans are made, is not some abstract idea, but a living thing: our Lord Jesus Christ, Who is the living image of the invisible God.

It is not possible for creatures to see God, to converse with Him, to taste of His Divine Life. But this is precisely what the purpose of the eternal will of God was. God’s desire was for all creatures to participate in the inner life of the Holy Trinity. God gave us by His grace that which He has by His nature. He invited us to become gods, to become just like Him, not to acquire His nature, of course, but to become like Him in all that His nature has. He invited us to become gods, not in nature but by grace. He made us co-inheritors with His Only-begotten Son. It means He gave us everything that belongs to the Son of God. And the Son of God has everything His Father has.

How could this be so if it is not possible for creatures to see the divine nature? It is not possible for creatures to see God and to live; nevertheless, the love of God found a way. He came to us, not with His own nature but with ours. He shared in our life and invited us to share in His. We saw the face of the Word of God in human appearance, we conversed together in human language, we sat at the same table, we fell into His arms, we heard the beating of His heart, we shared His food. The eyes of God Who became a man gazed deep into our eyes, and we into His. That is how we became acquainted with God person to person. We came face to face with God without being burned by the fire of Divinity.

The Son of God became a man in order to come into personal contact with His creatures, to establish a bond of friendship with them, and to transmit the Divine Life to what He had made. Thus He opened the path for each of us to enter into and live the Divine Life of the persons of the Holy Trinity as an equal among equals by granting to our nature His incorruptibility and His immortality. Man sits next to God now, at His right hand. Our true nature is there and so is our true fatherland. The Queen of the Heavens, the Mother of God and of us all in eternity, is there.

This is the true glory of man: he became God after God and has honors second after the Holy Trinity. And this is what we are called to: through her to become like her, to sit on the throne of God, by grace to commune as equals with the persons of the Holy Trinity. Because this is what the infinite love of God has desired.

—Dr. Alexander Kalomiros

KONTAKION OF THE FEAST

O wonder surpassing nature and creating wonder! Death, which of old was feared and hated, is a matter of praise and blessing. Of old it was the harbinger of grief, dejection, tears, and sadness, and now it is shown forth as the cause of joy and rejoicing. In the case of all God’s servants, whose death is extolled, His good pleasure is surmised from their holy end, and therefore their death is blessed. It shows them to be perfect, blessed and immoveable in goodness, as the proverb says: “Praise no man before his death.” This, however, we do not apply to thee. Thy blessedness was not death, nor was dying thy perfection, nor, again, did thy departure hence help thee to security. Thou art the beginning, middle, and end of all goods transcending mind, for thy Son in His conception and divine dwelling in thee is made our sure and true security. Thus thy words were true: from the moment of His conception, not from thy death, thou didst say all generations should call thee blessed. It was thou who didst break the force of death, paying its penalty, and making it gracious. Hence, when thy holy and sinless body was taken to the tomb, the choirs of angels bore it, and were all around, leaving nothing undone for the honour of our Lord’s Mother, whilst apostles and all the assembly of the Church burst into [168] prophetic song, saying: “We shall be filled with the good things of Thy house, holy is Thy temple, wonderful in justice.” And again: “The Most High has sanctified His tabernacle. The mountain of God is a fertile mountain, the mountain in which it pleased God to dwell.” The apostolic band lifting the true ark of the Lord God on their shoulders, as the priests of old the typical ark, and placing thy body in the tomb, made it, as if another Jordan, the way to the true land of the gospel, the heavenly Jerusalem, the mother of all the faithful, God being its Lord and architect. Thy soul did not descend to Limbo, neither did thy flesh see corruption. Thy pure and spotless body was not left in the earth, but the abode of the Queen, of God’s true Mother, was fixed in the heavenly kingdom alone.

St. John of Damascus

Heaven, for from thee hast dawned forth the Sun of Righteousness.
Paradise, for from thee bath blossomed forth the flower of immortality.
Virgin, for thou hast remained incorrupt.
Pure Mother, for thou hast held in thy holy embrace the Son, the God of all.
Do thou entreat Him to save our souls.

From the Service of the Hours

Do you see the difference in position? From this comprehend also the difference in the dignity of their station. The seraphim are round about God, but the only Queen of all is near beside Him. She is both wondered at and praised by God Himself, proclaiming her, as it were, by the mighty deeds enacted with respect to Him, and saying, as it is recorded in the Song of Songs, “How fair is my companion” (cf. Song of Songs 6:4), she is more radiant than light, more arrayed with flowers than the divine gardens, more adorned than the whole world, visible and invisible. She is not merely a companion but she also stands at Cod’s right hand, for where Christ sat in the heavens, that is, at the “right hand of majesty” (Heb. 1:3), there too she also takes her stand, having ascended now from earth into the heavens. Not merely does she love and is loved in return more than every other, according to the very laws of nature, but she is truly His Throne, and wherever the King sits, there His Throne is set also. And Isaiah beheld this throne amidst the choir of cherubim and called it “high” and “exalted” (Isaiah 6:1), wishing to make explicit how the station of the Mother of God far trancends that of the celestial hosts.

…

She is the cause of what came before her, the champion of what came after her and the agent of things eternal. She is the substance of the prophets, the principle of the apostles, the firm foundation of the martyrs and the premise of the teachers of the Church . She is the glory of those upon earth, the joy of celestial beings, the adornment of all creation. She is the beginning and the source and root of unutterable good things; she is the summit and consummation of everything holy.

St. Gregory Palamas,
A Homily on the Dormition of Our Supremely Pure Lady Theotokos and Ever-Virgin Mary

With most serious ailments,
And with the passions so dark,
I am being tested, O Virgin,
Come and bring help to me;
For I have known of you,
That you are without fail
the endless treasure of cures,
Only all‑blameless One.

Deliver us,
All of your servants, from danger, O Theotokos;
After God, we all flee to you,
For shelter and covering,
As an unshakable wall and our protection.

Turn to me,
In your good favor, all praise‑worthy Theotokos;
Look upon my grave illnesses,
Which painfully sting my flesh
and heal the cause of my soul’s pain and suffering.

From the Service of the Small Paraklesis