Welcome back to Maxim Monday! I took last Monday off as I did some research to determine why there are some discrepancies on the lists I find online. There are 2 versions of the 55 Maxims floating around the web so I had to figure out why. All along I’ve had the actual transcript from Fr. Thomas’ podcast that he introduced this to us in. I have been going by this when I’ve been writing my posts but when it comes to #10 it just says in parenthesis “skipped”. I’ve also had a list I found from a church website in my computer files that I’ve been using as well, but this list is different from the one I printed 2 years ago and posted on my wall. So I dove in to find out why these 2 lists differ.
If you listen to the actual podcast and then follow along with the transcript, you hear Fr. Thomas Hopko completely skip over or rather, I think, forget #10. What I think happened from there is people interpreted what should be there. One list separates out #7 “Eat good foods in moderation. Fast on fasting days, and of course during Lent that’s an entire fast.” and makes it (7)“Eat good foods in moderation” and (8)“Keep the Church’s fasting rules”. Another list takes #8 “Practice silence, inner and outer. Just sit for a few minutes everyday in total silence.” and turns it into (8) “Practice silence, inner and outer.” And (9)“Sit in silence 20 to 30 minutes each day.”
For the purposes of my blog and printables, and in my own efforts to work these 55 Maxims into my life (a life long endeavor) I have chosen to work with the list that turns #7 into two separate numbers. To me it makes the most sense. In this case #7 and #8 are 2 distinct things we need to work on…(7)“Eat good foods in moderation” and (8)“Keep the Church’s fasting rules”. Whereas taking #8 and dividing are really rather similar in practice.
That being said, I’ve had to do some correcting on the printables we’ve done so far.
Here is the corrected #7 and #8. We talked about these both when we had week 7 and they were each on the one card.
Here is the corrected #9, which used to be #8 and we discussed 2 weeks ago: “Spend some time in silence every day.”
Today we will move on to Maxim #10!
“Do acts of mercy in secret.” I love this one! It is so fun to help people without them knowing it is you. To watch smiles and warmness from afar and know you helped create that.
Come, spend a week trying to do acts of mercy in secret. Help someone from afar and see how the world around you changes.
Kindler of Joy! 