On Feasts

On worldly holidays what was gathered on working days is spent; on the feasts of the Church one can and should gather the spiritual riches of contemplative and active wisdom as abundantly as on ordinary days, or even more so. A feast is not there so that you put off your work and stay idle. A holiday is not idleness: a holy day is the joy of the soul in the awareness of God’s greatest mercy.

A feast without spiritual joy, without heartfelt participation in it, without inward feeling, is the same as a body without a soul.

For a Christian every time is a feast, because of the abundance of the gifts bestowed on him. A feast is the showing forth of good works, a godly disposition of soul and an orderly life. If you have these, you can always keep the feast.

If on feast days one must leave off one’s work and daily occupations, all the more must one avoid the things that are not permitted even on ordinary days. Are there not many among us who spend the morning hours of a feast asleep? And this after a night that has been turned into a day unworthy of the sun.

A feast is not there for us to indulge ourselves and multiply our sins, but for us to be cleansed even of those we have.

A beautiful holiday is a holiday from sin. For the sinner there is no feast. The bright days are bright only for a pure and spotless soul. He who keeps the feast with a pure heart keeps it together with the angels.