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Unmercenaries and Wonderworkers Cosmas and Damian · St Theodota, Mother of Cosmas and Damian

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We know that in the teaching about Christ, a wealth of grace was poured out on us from God. That is why, in a short time, the sermon spread around almost the entire universe; for abundant and generous grace was poured out on the preachers of the Gospel, whom the Scripture called the mouth of Christ. That is why the gospel sermon, in its own, despised by other sayings, contains much that is convincing and attracts to salvation. And every soul is conquered by immutable dogmas, being established by grace in unshakable faith in Christ, through whom, says the apostle, we have received grace and apostleship, so that in His name we might bring all nations under faith (Rom. 1:5). And one more thing: I have labored more than all of them: not I, however, but the grace of God, which is with me (1 Cor. 15:10) (2). He who receives the grace of God freely must give it freely, and not trade it according to his own whims (4). How can anyone, without love, acquire such faith as to move mountains, or to give all his possessions to the poor, or to give up his body to be burned (1 Cor. 13:2, 3)? If we remember the Lord who said: they do it so that people can see them (see Matt. 6:1), - and the Lord’s answer to those who said: Lord! God! Have we not prophesied in Your name? and was it not in Your name that they cast out demons? and did they not perform many miracles in Your name? (Matthew 7:22), to whom He says: I do not know you, where you are from (Luke 13:27), - not because they lied, but because they abused the grace of God according to their own desires (which is alien to the love of God), then we can easily understand what was said. And it is not at all strange for an unworthy person to receive the gift of God, or a gift, because God, in times of kindness and long-suffering, He commands His sun to rise on the evil and the good (Matthew 5:45). Often this happens to the benefit of either the person who receives the gift, lest he, ashamed of the goodness of God, turn to the care of pleasing Him, or others, according to what the Apostle said: some, indeed, out of envy and selfish ambition, but others with a good disposition preach Christ (Phil. 1:15), - to which he adds a little later: no matter how Christ is preached, feignedly or sincerely, I rejoice and will rejoice (Phil. 1:18) (5). What is talent and how can we increase it (Matthew 25)? I think that the parable is told about every gift of God, so that no matter what grace one receives from God, he may multiply it, turning it into a benefit and for the benefit of many, because no one is deprived of a share in God’s grace (5). We call every good thing that descends to us from God’s power the action of all-in-all productive grace, as the Apostle says: all this is produced by one and the same Spirit, dividing it out to each one individually, as He pleases (1 Cor. 12:11). But delving into whether the giving of goods began from the Holy Spirit alone and thus descends to the worthy, again, according to the instructions of the Scriptures, we believe that the Only Begotten God is the leader and author of the giving of goods that are revealed in us through the action of the Spirit (6). You might be interested in:
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