From: richarra@gmail.com   
      
   Admitting One's Weakness   
      
       "Remember, you will be faulted not because you are ignorant   
   against your will but because you neglect to seek out what it is that   
   makes you ignorant.   
       No one has ever been deprived of the ability to know the   
   importance of finding out what it is damaging to be ignorant of.   
   Neither have any been deprived of the ability to know that they should   
   confess their weakness."   
   --St. Augustine--Free Will 3, 19   
      
   Prayer:   
    I have gone astray, and I have remembered you. I heard your voice   
   behind me calling me to return. And now I return with excitement and   
   desire to your fountain.   
   --St. Augustine--Confessions 12, 10   
      
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   November 19th – St. Barlaam the Wilderness-Dweller, Monk,   
   And Joasaph the son of the Emperor of India, and his Father Abenner   
      
   The emperor Abenner ruled in India, which had once received the   
   Christian Faith through the evangelization of the holy Apostle Thomas.   
   He was an idol-worshipper and fierce persecutor of Christians. For a   
   long time he did not have any children. Finally, a son was born to the   
   emperor, and named Joasaph. At the birth of this son the wisest of the   
   emperor's astrologers predicted that the emperor's son would accept   
   the Christian Faith which was persecuted by his father. The emperor,   
   in an effort to prevent the prediction from being fulfilled, commanded   
   that a separate palace be built for his son. He also arranged matters   
   so that his son should never hear a single word about Christ and His   
   teachings.   
      
   When he was a young man, Joasaph asked his father's permission to go   
   out of the palace, and he saw such things as suffering, sickness, old   
   age and death. This led him to ponder the vanity and absurdity of   
   life, and to engage in some serious thinking.   
      
   At that time a wise hermit, St. Barlaam, lived in a remote wilderness.   
   Through divine revelation he learned about the youth agonizing in   
   search of truth. Forsaking his wilderness, St. Barlaam went to India   
   disguised as a merchant. After he arrived in the city where Joasaph's   
   palace was, he said that he had brought with him a precious stone,   
   endowed with wondrous powers to heal sickness. Brought before Joasaph,   
   he began to teach him the Christian Faith in the form of parables, and   
   then from the Holy Gospel and the Epistles. From the instructions of   
   St. Barlaam the youth reasoned that the precious stone is faith in the   
   Lord Jesus Christ, and he believed in Him and desired to accept holy   
   Baptism. Having made the Sign of the Cross over the youth, St. Barlaam   
   told him to fast and pray, and he went off into the wilderness.   
      
   The emperor, learning that his son had become a Christian, fell into   
   rage and grief. On the advice of one of his counsellors, the emperor   
   arranged for a religious debate between the Christians and the pagans,   
   at which the magician Nakhor appeared in the guise of Barlaam. In the   
   debate Nakhor was supposed to acknowledge himself beaten and thereby   
   turn the imperial youth away from Christianity.   
      
   St. Joasaph learned about the deception in a dream, and he threatened   
   Nakhor with a fearsome execution if he were beaten in the debate.   
   Nakhor not only defeated the pagans, but he himself came to believe in   
   Christ, and he repented and accepted holy Baptism and went off into   
   the wilderness.   
      
   The emperor also tried to turn his son away from Christianity by other   
   methods, but the youth conquered all the temptations. Then on the   
   advice of his counsellors, Abenner bestowed on his son half the realm.   
   When St. Joasaph became emperor, he restored Christianity in his   
   lands, rebuilt the churches, and finally, converted his own father   
   Abenner to Christianity.   
      
   The emperor Abenner died soon after Baptism, and St. Joasaph abdicated   
   his throne and went off into the wilderness in search of his teacher,   
   Elder Barlaam. For two years he wandered about through the wilderness,   
   suffering dangers and temptations, until he found the cave of St.   
   Barlaam, laboring in silence. The Elder and the youth began to   
   struggle together.   
      
   When St. Barlaam's death approached, he served the Divine Liturgy,   
   partook of the Holy Mysteries and communed St. Joasaph, then he   
   departed to the Lord. He lived in the wilderness for seventy of his   
   one hundred years. After he buried the Elder, St. Joasaph remained in   
   the cave and continued his ascetic efforts. He dwelt in the wilderness   
   for thirty-five years, and fell asleep in the Lord at the age of   
   sixty.   
      
   Barachias, St. Joasaph's successor as emperor, with the help of a   
   certain hermit, found the incorrupt and fragrant relics of both   
   ascetics in the cave, and he brought them back to his fatherland and   
   buried them in a church built by the holy Emperor Joasaph.   
      
      
   Saint Quote:   
   "The sign of purity is to rejoice with those who rejoice and weep with   
    those who weep; to be in pain with the sick and in anguish with the   
   sinners; to rejoice with the repentant and to participate in the agony   
   of those who suffer; to criticize no man and, in the purity of one's   
   own mind, to see all men as good an holy."   
   --St. Justin Popovich.   
      
   Bible Quote:   
   The single nation, mine, is Israel, those who cried out to God and   
   were saved. Yes, the Lord has saved his people, the Lord has delivered   
   us from all these evils, God has worked such signs and great wonders   
   as have never happened among the nations.  (Esther 10:3 )   
      
      
   <><><><>   
   On hearing of the word of God   
      
   Let us then also learn hence to consider all things secondary to the   
   hearing of the word of God, and to deem no season unseasonable, and,   
   though a man may even have to go into another person's house, and   
   being a person unknown to make himself known to great men, though it   
   be late in the day, or at any time whatever, never to neglect this   
   traffic. Let food and baths and dinners and other things of this life   
   have their appointed time; but let the teaching of heavenly philosophy   
   have no separate time, let every season belong to it. For Paul saith,   
   'In season, out of season, reprove, rebuke, exhort (2 Tim. 4:2); and   
   the Prophet too saith, 'In His law will he meditate day and night'   
   (Ps. 1:3).   
   --St. John Chrysostom.    
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)