Serving the Lord

Tues­day. [Col. 1:1-2, 7-11; Luke 8:1-3] The Lord preach­es, the wo­men serve Him from their sub­stance, and are thus as par­tic­i­pants in his very preach­ing. It is not giv­en to ev­ery­one to preach the Gos­pels, but ev­ery­one can help spread them, and be par­tic­i­pants in this most im­por­tant mat­ter on the earth. There were man­y such par­tic­i­pants, both men and wo­men, at the time the ho­ly a­pos­tles preach­ed; and then at the time of their suc­ces­sors, and fi­nal­ly, through­out the en­tire his­to­ry of the Church. Such par­tic­i­pants ex­ist to this day. Our a­pos­tles in the Cau­ca­sus and in var­i­ous ar­eas of Si­be­ria la­bour zeal­ous­ly, suf­fer­ing ev­ery need and dep­ri­va­tion. They con­tin­ue the work of the Lord and the ho­ly A­pos­tles. Those men and wo­men who send them help join the ranks of the wo­men who served the Lord, and be­come wor­thy of e­qual rec­om­pense. The Lord said: He that re­ceiv­eth whom­so­ev­er I send re­ceiv­eth Me (John 13:20). This means that He e­quates Him­self with the one who is sent to preach; it would fol­low that He e­quates the ser­vice ren­der­ed to his mes­sen­gers with serv­ing Him. Ac­cord­ing to the law of His good­ness and truth, the way a per­son re­ceives one de­ter­mines the re­ward he will re­ceive (Matt. 10:41). This would seem to be suf­fi­cient in­cen­tive to keep giv­ing alms to help in the great work of preach­ing of the Gos­pels.