Celebrating June as Humility Month, and the Fast of the Holy Apostles

[The Liturgist]

One way in which we can assert that the sexual revolution has produced grave sin is its chief temporal celebration, that being Pride Month. Even a casual reading of Scripture will confirm that both pride and sexual perversion such as that being celebrated this month are viewed as dangerous sins which we must confess and struggle against through the grace of the Holy Spirit.

Therefore I propose henceforth all Nicene Christians of traditional moral theology observe the period from the second Sunday after Pentecost until the Feast of the Apostles Peter and Paul, which corresponds to the ancient Apostle’s Fast commemorated annually by the Oriental Orthodox and most Eastern Orthodox (the Syriac Orthodox commemorate it for three days immediately preceding the feast in the US, perhaps due to the use of the Revised Julian Calendar, which I believe can in some cases cause the Apostles Fast to disappear from some Orthodox calendars when Pascha and thus Pentecost are celebrated particularly late in the year). Alternately, the month of June could be chosen, but the period of time tends to be about a month if we use the Christian feasts as points of reference.

During this time, while some people choose to celebrate their sexual sins, we should humbly repent of our own, as we do in Lent and Advent (the Apostles Fast and the Dormition Fast are the two ancient fasts that were traditionally commemorated in the Summer months by the early church, balancing out the winter-beginning Nativity Fast, which is traditionally six weeks long except in the Roman Rite, where it has always been four weeks long, and thus the Protestant rites, but in the Ambrosian Rite of Milan celebrated a few hundred miles from Rome it has always been six weeks, and thus starts at the end of autumn, and Lent likewise begins in winter and ends in joyous Spring.

The Apostles Fast is dedicated to the memory of the Holy Apostles, Saints Peter and Paul in particular, and the working of the Holy Spirit through them. By making an example of ourselves through extreme Humility during Humility Month, reflecting on our own personal sins whether sexual or otherwise, we can witness against worldliness while evangelizing the world in an Apostolic manner, for the contrast could not be more striking than between the humble Apostles of Jesus Christ, who detested sexual immorality yet regarded themselves to be notorious sinners and never adopted a holier-than-thou attitude or took pride in their holiness in any sustained way after their conversion, for the Holy Spirit enabled them to challenge and overcome Pride, and those who take pride in those acts referred to in Scripture as abominations, and admonished in the canons of St. Basil, St Gregory of Nyssa and other Early Church Fathers, who were unwavering in their opposition to such sin, and who ultimately had implemented the Apostle’s Fast probably by the fifth or sixth century at the latest, based on the age of certain hymns.

 

[Gary K]

One way in which we can assert that the sexual revolution has produced grave sin is its chief temporal celebration, that being Pride Month. Even a casual reading of Scripture will confirm that both pride and sexual perversion such as that being celebrated this month are viewed as dangerous sins which we must confess and struggle against through the grace of the Holy Spirit.

Therefore I propose henceforth all Nicene Christians of traditional moral theology observe the period from the second Sunday after Pentecost until the Feast of the Apostles Peter and Paul, which corresponds to the ancient Apostle’s Fast commemorated annually by the Oriental Orthodox and most Eastern Orthodox (the Syriac Orthodox commemorate it for three days immediately preceding the feast in the US, perhaps due to the use of the Revised Julian Calendar, which I believe can in some cases cause the Apostles Fast to disappear from some Orthodox calendars when Pascha and thus Pentecost are celebrated particularly late in the year). Alternately, the month of June could be chosen, but the period of time tends to be about a month if we use the Christian feasts as points of reference.

During this time, while some people choose to celebrate their sexual sins, we should humbly repent of our own, as we do in Lent and Advent (the Apostles Fast and the Dormition Fast are the two ancient fasts that were traditionally commemorated in the Summer months by the early church, balancing out the winter-beginning Nativity Fast, which is traditionally six weeks long except in the Roman Rite, where it has always been four weeks long, and thus the Protestant rites, but in the Ambrosian Rite of Milan celebrated a few hundred miles from Rome it has always been six weeks, and thus starts at the end of autumn, and Lent likewise begins in winter and ends in joyous Spring.

The Apostles Fast is dedicated to the memory of the Holy Apostles, Saints Peter and Paul in particular, and the working of the Holy Spirit through them. By making an example of ourselves through extreme Humility during Humility Month, reflecting on our own personal sins whether sexual or otherwise, we can witness against worldliness while evangelizing the world in an Apostolic manner, for the contrast could not be more striking than between the humble Apostles of Jesus Christ, who detested sexual immorality yet regarded themselves to be notorious sinners and never adopted a holier-than-thou attitude or took pride in their holiness in any sustained way after their conversion, for the Holy Spirit enabled them to challenge and overcome Pride, and those who take pride in those acts referred to in Scripture as abominations, and admonished in the canons of St. Basil, St Gregory of Nyssa and other Early Church Fathers, who were unwavering in their opposition to such sin, and who ultimately had implemented the Apostle’s Fast probably by the fifth or sixth century at the latest, based on the age of certain hymns.

I just have to say I find the concept of a Humility Month very strange as Jesus humbled Himself to become human and even further to the death of the cross. Which death required Him to hang naked exposed for all the world to see just for people like you and me. To me that means we should dedicate ourselves to humility for our entire life not just one month of the year.