TUESDAY

usually at the Matins service. His spiritual advice—captured in a body of works known as the Discourses—often included encouragement not only to seek God but also to accept His love. He describes the astounding effects of divine love:

As soon as I called to mind the beauty of undefiled love, its light suddenly appeared in my heart. I have been ravished with its delight and have ceased to perceive outward things. . . . O all-desirable love, how happy is he who has embraced you, for he will no longer have a passionate desire to embrace any earthly beauty! Happy is he who is moved by divine love to cling to you! He will deny the whole world, yet as he associates with all men, he will be wholly untainted.

Upon meeting divine love, Symeon counts “the treasures of the world as nothing” and counts God alone as the font of “truly inexhaustible riches.”

Reflection: Let me count God as my prize possession and accept His love as I begin my interior Lenten pilgrimage.

Hymn from Vespers

Let us not pray like the Pharisee: He who exalts himself will be humbled! Let us prepare to humble ourselves by fasting. Let us cry aloud with the voice of the publican: O God, forgive us sinners.

Mark the Ascetic of Egypt commemorAted mArch 5/18

Saint Mark the Ascetic came from a very wealthy family of merchants in fifth-century Athens. His family valued intellectual thought and scholarship, and they lovingly supported Mark when he chose to pursue religious knowledge rather than the family business.

Mark had the best education possible, due to his family’s wealth and his outstanding academic ability. As he studied diligently and

excelled in all areas of theological knowledge, he came to the attention of St. John Chrysostom, archbishop of Constantinople, who tutored him extensively. It was reported that Mark knew the whole Bible by heart!

Nine of his thirty discourses have come down to us. Three of them are included in Volume I of the English Philokalia. The Byzantines had such a high regard for his writings that they said, “Sell everything and buy ‘Mark.’”

Mark’s one desire was to attain spiritual perfection. He gave up the comfort of his family’s wealth, loving support, and academic acclaim in order to seek union with God. He became an ascetic on a secluded mountaintop in Ethiopia, where he began to meditate, pray, fast, and write about religious concerns.

During sixty years of solitude and spiritual intensity, Mark became intimately attuned to the presence of the Holy Spirit and was completely filled with God’s joy and holy peace. He reposed in the Lord at age 120.