Fourth Sunday of Great Lent: St John Climacus
Categories: hymns, parish-life, elections, feast-days, spiritual-journey
Date: 18 March 2007 07:24:46
Troparion:
Dweller of the desert and angel in the body,
you were shown to be a wonder-worker, our God-bearing Father John.
You received heavenly gifts through fasting, vigil, and prayer:
healing the sick and the souls of those drawn to you by faith.
Glory to Him who gave you strength!
Glory to Him who granted you a crown!
Glory to Him who through you grants healing to all!
Today, being the Fourth Sunday of Great Lent, we commemorate St John Climacus, perhaps most well-known in Orthodoxy for his The Ladder of Divine Ascent. While I have not yet finished reading the book, the several chapters I did read had such a great influence and effect on me that I took St John as my name saint when I was chrismated in December 2005.
While I may be rolling my eyes at the thought of the NSW election, one parishioner of ours is taking it quite seriously: he and his wife and kids became Australian citizens on January 26 (Australia Day), and as it is compulsory to vote here this will be the first time he has voted (having been born and raised in the US he admitted he never enrolled). He has done quite a bit of research about our parliament, at all levels, and also our voting method (which we call preferential, but seems to be known as Instant Run-Off at Wikipedia) and the parties we have in Australia and New South Wales. He had quite a bit of information which he had collected, and asked me to run my eyes over it to see if he understood. He does. And probably far better than me.
After church I visited with our priest for an hour or so at his place: we are, and I am, truly blessed to have the caring and compassionate priest we do have. He wanted to catch-up and see how I was doing, after the dramas of depression earlier in the year, and we chatted about all manner of things. He unfortunately is feeling poorly after a suspected case of food poisoning last night: please remember him in your prayers.