Daily Devotional

Monday, May 11, 2020 (NS), April 28, 2020 (OS)

No Fasting.

Monday of the Fourth Week

The commemoration of the holy Nine Martyrs of Kyzicus, Theognis, Rufus, Antipater, Theostichos, Artemas, Magnos, Theodotos, Thavmasios, and Philemon (commemorated on Sl. calendar on the 29^th of April). The commemoration of the holy Apostles of the Seventy, Jason and Sosipater, and their companions (commemorated on Gk. calendar on the 29^th of April). The commemoration of the holy Martyrs Maximos, Quintillian, and Dada at Dorostolum (commemorated on Gk. calendar on the 13^th of April).

Jump to Prologue

Scripture Readings

Paschalion — Movable Calendar

Monday of the Fourth Week

Epistle

The Reading is from the Acts of the Apostles [§ 24]. In those days:

10 ¹There was a certain man in Cæsarea, by name Cornelius, a centurion from a cohort which is called Italic, ²a pious man and one who feared God with all his house, who both did many alms to the people and entreated God continually. ³He saw in a vision plainly, about the ninth hour of the day, an angel of God come in to him and say to him, “Cornelius.” ⁴And after he looked intently on him, he became afraid, and said, “What is it, Lord?” And he said to him, “Thy prayers and thine alms are gone up for a memorial before God. ⁵“And now send men to Joppa, and send for Simon, who is surnamed Peter. ⁶“This man is staying as a guest with one Simon a tanner, whose house is by the sea.” ⁷And when the angel who spoke to Cornelius departed, he called two of his household servants, and a pious soldier of those who remained in service to him. ⁸And after he related in full all things to them, he sent them forth to Joppa. ⁹And on the morrow, as they sojourned and drew near to the city, Peter went up on the housetop to pray, about the sixth hour. ¹⁰And he became very hungry, and was wishing to taste food. But while they prepared, a state of ecstasy fell upon him. ¹¹And he beholdeth the heaven having been opened, and a certain vessel descending upon him, as a great sheet bound at the four corners, and being let down upon the earth, ¹²in which were all the quadrupeds of the earth, and the beasts, and the creeping things, and the birds of the heaven. ¹³And there came a voice to him, “Rise up, Peter, slay and eat.” ¹⁴But Peter said, “Not at all, Lord; for I never ate anything common or unclean.” ¹⁵And a voice again came for the second time to him, “What God cleansed, cease thou making common.” ¹⁶And this took place thrice; and the vessel was taken up again into the heaven.

Gospel

The Reading is from the Holy Gospel according to Saint John [§ 24]. The Lord said to those Jews who had believed Him:

6 ⁵⁶“The one who eateth My flesh and drinketh My blood abideth in Me, and I in him. ⁵⁷“Even as the living Father sent Me forth, and I live because of the Father, also the one who eateth Me, even he shall live because of Me. ⁵⁸“This One is the bread, the One having come down out of the heavens—not as your fathers ate the manna, and died. The one who eateth this bread shall live forever.” ⁵⁹These things He said in the synagogue, as He taught in Capernaum.

⁶⁰Many of His disciples, therefore, after they heard this, said, “Hard is this saying; who is able to hear it?” ⁶¹But Jesus, knowing in Himself that His disciples were murmuring about this, said to them, “Doth this offend you? ⁶²“What if then ye should see the Son of Man ascending where He was before? ⁶³“It is the spirit that maketh alive; the flesh profiteth nothing. The words which I have spoken to you are spirit and life. ⁶⁴“But there are some of you who believe not.” For Jesus knoweth from the beginning who they are who believe not, and who is the one who shall deliver Him up. ⁶⁵And He was saying, “Therefore, I have told you, that no one is able to come to Me, except it be given to him from My Father.” ⁶⁶From this time on, many out of His disciples went away to the things left behind, and no longer walked about with Him. ⁶⁷Then said Jesus to the twelve, “Ye do not also wish to go away, do ye?” ⁶⁸Then Simon Peter answered Him, “Lord, to whom shall we go? Thou hast the words of eternal life; ⁶⁹“and we have believed and have come to know that Thou art the Christ, the Son of God, the living One.”

Menaion — Fixed Calendar

No readings given.

Lives of the Saints (Prologue)

May 11th – Civil Calendar
April 28th – Church Calendar

1. The Holy Apostles Jason and Sosipater, and the Virgin Kerkyra.

The first two were among the Seventy Apostles, and the last was the daughter of the king of the island of Corfu. The Apostle Paul mentions Jason and Sosipater (Rom. 16:21), and calls them his kinsmen. Jason was born in Tarsus, as was the Apostle Paul himself, and Sosipater in Achaea. The first was nominated by the apostles as Bishop of Tarsus and the second as Bishop of Iconium. Travelling and preaching the Gospel, these two apostles came to the island of Corfu, where they succeeded in building a church dedicated to St. Stephen the Protomartyr and in bringing some unbelievers to the Church. The king of the island threw them into prison, where there were seven robbers already imprisoned: Satorninus, Jakischolus, Faustian, Januarius, Marsalus, Evphrasius and Mamminus. The apostles brought all seven of them to the Christian Faith, making wolves into lambs. The king commanded that these seven be put to death in boiling pitch, and they thus received the wreath of martyrdom. Seeking to disgrace Jason and Sosipater, the king had them dragged through the streets by a horse at a speed calculated to be slow enough to bruise them without killing them. When the king’s daughter, Kerkyra, saw this, she looked upon the wretchedness of her father with disdain, and discovering the reason for it, she visited them in the prison, where she was converted. She gave all her jewels away to the poor and proclaimed herself a Christian to her father. The king was filled with wrath against his daughter and shut her up in a separate prison. Then, failing to turn her from Christ, he ordered that the prison be burned down. The prison burned to the ground, but the maiden remained alive. Seeing this wonder, many of the people were baptized. The furious king ordered that his daughter be bound to a tree and killed with arrows. Those who had come to believe in Christ fled from the terrible king to a nearby island and hid themselves. The king set off in a boat to arrest them, but his boat overturned in the sea and thus the unrighteous perished, as Pharaoh aforetime. The succeeding king, Donatios, continued in the persecution. He ordered Sosipater to be put to death. It was presumed that Jason would follow his comrade in death, but the king decided to question the surviving partner first. A gnawing sense of guilt precipitated the meeting of the two, at which Jason succeeded in converting Donatios to the Christian Faith. Not long after this, the twelve-year-old daughter of Donatios was stricken with a fatal illness, but was cured when Jason knelt in prayer on her behalf. Jason continued to work for our Savior until his death at the age of sixty on April 28th, the day on which Sosipater had died for Christ.

2. The Holy Martyrs Maximus, Dada and Quintillian.

Suffering in the time of Diocletian, they were condemned and tortured by the commander Tarquinius. After imprisonment and torture, they were beheaded.

3. The Holy Martyr Tibald.

A Slav from Pannonia, he was terribly tortured for the Faith in the time of Diocletian, and suffered in Tsibal.

FOR CONSIDERATION

The mystery of our salvation is fulfilled in God’s appearing among men in human flesh. Meliton of Sardis writes: ‘The works of Christ after His Baptism showed and demonstrated to the world that His divinity is hidden within His flesh. Being God, He was also perfect man. He revealed His two natures to us: His divinity by His miracles, performed in the three years after His Baptism, and His humanity through those thirty years when bodily nature hid the signs of His divinity, although He was truly the pre-eternal God.’ The means of uniting the divinity with the humanity is difficult to comprehend, but the event of the appearing of God among men is perfectly comprehensible from the point of view of God’s love for man. As an event, the world is not more comprehensible—it can be said to be even less comprehensible than the event of events, the incarnation of God.

Daily Prologue Readings taken from The Prologue of Ochrid, by Bishop Nikolai Velimirovic, translated by Mother Maria, published by Lazarica Press, Birmingham, England, copyright © 1985, all rights reserved. Edited by Dormition Skete.