Glory to Jesus Christ. I'm Mother Natalia, a Byzantine Catholic nun from Christ to the Bridegroom

monastery and this is Pines with Aquinas. For those of us who are on either the Gregorian or the

revised Julian calendar, this past week we celebrated the

feast of the transfiguration of our Lord, the feast where he goes up onto

Mount Tabor with Peter, James, and John and he's transfigured, they see him in his glory, they fall

to the ground. You probably know the story, if you don't, you can look it up and, yeah, read the passage. But this is one of my favorite feasts of the year and I think part of that is just because of my love for the mountains but part of it is just ways that the Lord has spoken very particularly to me through this feast.

So I want to share two things that I have been praying with this week regarding the feast.

The first is that in the Eastern traditions

and I believe this used to be a tradition in the West as well. There is on the on the Feast of the Transfiguration,

August 6th, again, if you're on the Gregorian

or the revised Julian calendar,

we have the blessing of fruit at the divine liturgy.

So in the church at the end of liturgy, people bring baskets of the fruit from their gardens at this point, you know, people bring fruit from the store and that's fine too.

And we have fruit blessed.

And this is a very, very ancient tradition.

So the oldest known... And this is a very ancient tradition.

So the oldest known, as far as I know,

the oldest prayer for the blessing of fruit

is from the fourth century.

And then it was at the sixth Ecumenical Council in Constantinople,

which is seventh century, that it was prescribed that the new wheat and grapes were to be blessed in church on the

feast of the holy transfiguration. So this was this was prescribed at this ecumenical council in the seventh century so we've been doing it at least ever since then

...