Daily Devotional

Scripture Readings

Paschalion — Movable Calendar

Thursday of the Thirty-Second Week

Epistle

The Reading is from the General Epistle of Saint Iakovos [§ 56]. Brethren:

4 ⁷Be subject to God. Stand against the devil, and he will flee from you. ⁸Draw near to God, and He will draw near to you. Cleanse your hands, O sinners! And purify your hearts, O double-minded ones! ⁹Endure hardship, and mourn, and weep. Let your laughter be turned to mourning, and your joy to a downcast look expressive of sorrow. ¹⁰Humble yourselves before the Lord, and He shall exalt you. ¹¹Cease speaking against one another, brethren. He who speaketh against a brother, and judgeth his brother, speaketh against the law, and judgeth the law. But if thou judge the law, thou art not a doer of the law, but a judge. ¹²One is the Lawgiver and Judge, Who is able to save and to destroy. But who art thou who judgest another?

¹³Come now ye that say, “Today and tomorrow we will go into this city, and spend a year there, and trade and gain”; ¹⁴whereas ye know not the matter of tomorrow. For what is your life? For it is a vapor which for a little time appeareth, but then is made to disappear. ¹⁵Instead ye ought to say, “If the Lord will, we shall both live and do this or that.” ¹⁶But now ye boast in your false pretensions; all such boasting is evil. ¹⁷Therefore, to him who knoweth to do good, and doeth it not, to him it is sin.

5 ¹Come now ye rich, weep, cry aloud over your hardships that are coming upon you! ²Your wealth hath rotted, and your garments have become moth-eaten. ³Your gold and silver have become rusty, and their rust shall be for a testimony against you and shall eat your fleshy parts. As fire ye laid up treasure in the last days. ⁴Behold, the hire of the workers who reaped your fields, which hath been kept back by you, crieth out; and the shouts of those who harvested have entered into the ears of the Lord of Sabaoth. ⁵Ye lived luxuriously on the earth, and indulgently; ye nourished your hearts, as in a day of slaughter. ⁶Ye condemned, ye murdered the just One; He doth not resist you.

⁷Be long-suffering therefore, brethren, until the coming of the Lord. Behold, the farmer awaiteth the precious fruit of the earth, being long-suffering over it until it should receive the early and latter rain. ⁸Be ye also long-suffering. Make steadfast your hearts; for the coming of the Lord hath drawn near. ⁹Cease groaning against one another, brethren, in order that ye be not condemned. Behold, the Judge is standing before the door.

Gospel

The Reading is from the Holy Gospel according to Saint Mark [§ 57]. The Lord said:

12 ³⁸“Be wary of the scribes, who wish to walk about in full dress, and love salutations in the marketplaces, ³⁹“and chief seats in the synagogues, and chief places at the dinners, ⁴⁰“who devour the houses of the widows, and for a pretense offer long prayers! These shall receive greater judgment.”

⁴¹And Jesus sat down opposite the treasury and was beholding how the crowd cast money into the treasury. And many who were rich were casting in much. ⁴²And one poor widow came and cast in two lepta, which is a quadrans. ⁴³And He called to Himself His disciples, and saith to them, “Verily I say to you that this poor widow hath cast in more than all of those who cast into the treasury; ⁴⁴“for all cast in out of that which is superfluous to them, but she, out of her need, cast in as much as she had, her whole means of living.”

Menaion — Fixed Calendar

The commemoration of the holy Theophany of our Lord and God and Savior Jesus Christ.

Epistle

The Reading is from the Epistle of Saint Paul to Saint Titus [§ 302]. Child Titus:

2 ¹¹The grace of God which bringeth salvation appeared to all men, ¹²instructing us that, after we deny impiety and worldly lusts, we should live in the present age soberly and righteously and piously, ¹³waiting for the happy hope and appearance of the glory of our great God and Savior Jesus Christ, ¹⁴Who gave Himself for us, in order that He might ransom us for Himself from all lawlessness and might purify to Himself a people for a private possession, zealous of good works....

3 ⁴But when the kindness and the love of God our Savior toward mankind appeared— ⁵not by works which we did in righteousness, but according to His mercy—He saved us through the washing of regeneration and renewal by the Holy Spirit, ⁶Whom He poured out on us richly through Jesus Christ our Savior, ⁷that having been justified by the grace of this One, we should become heirs according to the hope of eternal life.

Gospel

In the Orthros

The Reading is from the Holy Gospel according to Saint Mark [§ 2]. In those days:

1 ⁹Jesus came from Nazareth of Galilee, and was baptized by John in the Jordan. ¹⁰And straightway, coming up from the water, He saw the heavens being parted, and the Spirit as a dove descending upon Him; ¹¹and there came to be a voice out of the heavens, “Thou art My Son, the Beloved, in Thee I am well pleased.”

In the Liturgy

The Reading is from the Holy Gospel according to Saint Matthew [§ 6]. At that time:

3 ¹³Jesus came from Galilee to John at the Jordan to be baptized by him. ¹⁴But John was trying to hinder Him, saying, “I have need to be baptized by Thee, and comest Thou to me?” ¹⁵But Jesus answered and said to him, “Let it be so now, for thus it is becoming for us to fulfill all righteousness.” Then he permitteth Him. ¹⁶And Jesus, having been baptized, went up straightway from the water; and behold, the heavens were opened to Him, and He saw the Spirit of God descending like a dove, and coming upon Him. ¹⁷And behold, there came to be a voice out of the heavens, saying, “This is My Son, the Beloved, in Whom I am well pleased.”

Lives of the Saints (Prologue)

January 19th – Civil Calendar
January 6th – Church Calendar

1. The Theophany.

When the Lord Jesus had lived for thirty years from His birth in the flesh, He began His teaching and saving work. He marked this very beginning of the beginning by His Baptism in the Jordan. St. Kyril of Jerusalem says: ‘The beginning of the world—water; the beginning of the Gospel—the Jordan.’ At the Baptism of the Lord in the water, that mystery was revealed to the world that was predicted in the Old Testament—the mystery of the Holy Trinity of God. The Father revealed Himself to the sense of hearing, the Spirit to the sense of sight and the Son, further beyond these, to the sense of touch. The Father gave His testimony of the Son, the Son was baptized in the waters and the Holy Spirit, in the form of a dove, hovered over the waters. And when John the Baptist bore witness of Christ and said: ‘Behold the Lamb of God Who taketh away the sin of the world’ (Jn. 1:29), and when he immersed the Lord in the Jordan and baptized Him, there were thus revealed both the mission of Christ in the world and the path of our salvation. That is to say: Christ takes upon Himself the sin of the whole human race. He dies under it (the immersion) and rises again (the coming up out of the water), and we must die to the old, sinful man and rise again, cleansed, renewed and reborn. Here is the Savior and here is the way of salvation. The Feast of the Theophany is also called the Feast of Lights. The word “Theophany” means “the revelation of God”.

FOR CONSIDERATION

In some periods the fables of heretics vexed the Church of God, but now she is vexed by the fables of unbelievers. By endurance in the Faith, by diligent prayer, by witness and even by martyrdom—only by these things will this new vexation be brought to naught. And the Church of God, the vessel of the truth of God, will triumph in the end, for the enemy will lose his weapons (Ps. 9:6). He who falls into heresy wanders through a dry desert, forsaking the one, true God. Separated from God, he seeks water in the arid wastes and moves into an uninhabited and thirsty land. The same can be said today of many who, studying hypotheses and theories, are guided by figments of their own imagination and not by the truth of God.

Daily Scripture Readings taken from The Orthodox New Testament, translated and published by Holy Apostles Convent, Buena Vista, Colorado, copyright © 2000, used with permission, all rights reserved.

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.