Daily Devotional

Scripture Readings

Paschalion — Movable Calendar

Tuesday of the Thirty-Eighth Week

Epistle

The Reading is from the Epistle of Saint Paul to the Colossians [§ 249].

For Gk. usage, see Col. 1:1-3, 6-11; for Sl. usage, Col. 1:1, 2, 7-11.

1 ¹Paul, an apostle of Jesus Christ by the will of God, and Timothy our brother, ²to the saints and faithful brethren in Christ at Colossæ: Grace to you, and peace, from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.

³We give thanks to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, praying always for you,... ⁶from the day in which ye heard and knew the grace of God in truth, ⁷even as ye also learned from Epaphras, our beloved fellow slave, who is a faithful minister of the Christ on your behalf, ⁸who also declared to us your love in the Spirit. ⁹On this account we also, from the day in which we heard it, cease not praying for you, and requesting that ye might be filled with the full knowledge of His will in all wisdom and spiritual understanding, ¹⁰so that ye might walk worthily of the Lord in everything pleasing, bearing fruit in every good work and increasing in the full knowledge of God, ¹¹being strengthened with all power, according to the might of His glory unto all patience and long-suffering with joy.

Gospel

The Reading is from the Holy Gospel according to Saint Luke [§ 44]. The Lord said to His disciples:

9 ²³“If anyone is willing to come after Me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross daily, and keep on following Me. ²⁴“For whosoever will save his life shall lose it; but whosoever will lose His life on account of Me, this same one shall save it. ²⁵“For what is a man profited, if he gaineth the whole world, but destroyeth or loseth himself? ²⁶“For whosoever is ashamed of Me and My words, of this one the Son of Man shall be ashamed, whenever He should come in His glory, and that of the Father, and of the holy angels. ²⁷“But of a truth I say to you, there are some of those standing here who in no wise shall taste of death, until they see the kingdom of God.”

Menaion — Fixed Calendar

The commemoration of the Afterfeast of the Meeting of the Lord, and our holy father, Parthenios, Bishop of Lampsakos on the Hellespont, and our holy Father Luke of Hellas.

No readings given.

Lives of the Saints (Prologue)

February 20th – Civil Calendar
February 7th – Church Calendar

1. St. Parthenios, Bishop of Lampsacus.

He was the son of a deacon from the city of Melitopolis. He knew the words of the Gospel by heart from his early youth, and strove to fulfill them. Settling beside a lake, he caught fish, sold them and shared the proceeds with the poor. By God’s providence, he was chosen as bishop of Lampsacus. He cleansed the city of paganism, closed the temples dedicated to idol-worship, built many churches and strengthened the faithful. He healed all manner of sickness through prayer, and was especially powerful over spirits. At one time when he was about to drive the evil spirit out of a madman, the evil spirit begged him not to. ‘I will give you another man, into whom you can enter and in whom you can dwell,’ Parthenios told him. ‘And who is that man?’ ‘I am he,’ replied the saint, ‘Come and make your abode in me’. Hearing this, the evil spirit fled as though burned by fire, crying out: ‘How can I enter into the house of God?’ St. Parthenios lived long and showed in his deeds the greatness of his love for God and man. He entered into the eternal peace of Christ in the 4th century.

2. Our Holy Father Luke of Hellas.

Luke was born in Castorius. Even as a child, he had no desire to taste meat, and spent the whole of his life with purity and prayer. One day he went to sow his field with wheat. On the way, he gave the greater part of the wheat to a poor man and the lesser part, which remained to him, he sowed. God provided that, from this small amount of seed, there came a greater harvest than had previously come from the whole amount. After that, Luke ran away from his mother and entered a monastery. His widowed mother prayed ardently to God to reveal to her where her son was to be found, and God heard her prayer. The abbot of that monastery dreamed three times in succession that a woman was vehemently accusing him of having taken her only son. The abbot then ordered Luke to return at once to his mother. Luke went and saw his mother, but once again left her, this time for good. He labored on a mountain called ‘John’s Mountain’. He prayed at night and worked in the gardens and fields by day, not for himself but for the poor and the visitors, himself living only on barley bread. He was endowed by God with wonder-working gifts, and entered peacefully into rest in the year 946. From time to time, myrrh flowed from his relics.

3. Our Holy Mother Mastridia.

She lived a life of great asceticism in Jerusalem. A young man who saw her began to pester her, so to save them both from sin she took some soaked beans in a basket and went off into the desert. There she spent seventeen years, during which time, by the power of God, the beans did not come to an end nor her clothing wear out. She entered peacefully into rest in about 580.

4. The Thousand and Three Martyrs of Nikomedia

They suffered in the reign of Diocletian.

FOR CONSIDERATION

Take on yourself some penance for the sin of others. If you have condemned or punished another, take some penance on yourself. Suffer a little, voluntarily, for the sins of sinners. That is pleasing to God. The saints knew this mystery when they condemned themselves for the sins of others. Even non-Christian peoples have some grasp of this. In China, for instance, there is the following custom: when the executioner beheads a criminal condemned to death, he goes to the judge and reports that the sentence has been carried out. The judge gives him a silver piece for killing the criminal, and orders that he receive forty strokes of the lash for killing a man. The Christian saints had a profound understanding of the mystery of sin and the unrighteousness of man. Each human sin had for them a history as long as that stretching back from us to Adam.

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.