Daily Devotional

Scripture Readings

Paschalion — Movable Calendar

Thursday of the Fifteenth Week

Epistle

The Reading is from the Epistle of Saint Paul to the Galatians [§§ 208, 209]. Brethren:

3 ²³Before faith came, we were being guarded under the law, having been closed up to the faith about to be revealed. ²⁴Therefore the law hath become our tutor until Christ, in order that we might be justified by faith. ²⁵But faith having come, we are no longer under a tutor. ²⁶For all are sons of God through faith in Christ Jesus. ²⁷For as many as were baptized into Christ, ye put on Christ. ²⁸There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is neither male and female; for ye are all one in Christ Jesus. ²⁹And if ye are Christ’s, then are ye Abraham’s seed, and heirs according to promise.

4 ¹Now I say, as long as the heir is an infant, he differeth nothing from a slave, though he is lord of all; ²but he is under guardians and stewards until the appointed time of the father. ³So we also, when we were infants, were enslaved under the elements of the world. ⁴But when the fullness of the time came, God sent forth His Son, born of a woman, born under the law, ⁵in order that He might redeem those under the law, that we might receive what is our due, the adoption as sons.

Gospel

The Reading is from the Holy Gospel according to Saint Mark [§ 25]. At that time:

6 ³⁰The apostles were gathered together to Jesus, and related to Him all things, both as much as they did and as much as they taught. ³¹And He said to them, “Come ye yourselves privately to a desolate place, and rest yourselves a little.” For those coming and those going were many, and they did not even have an opportunity to eat. ³²And they went away by the ship privately to a desolate place. ³³And the crowds saw them going, and many recognized Him, and ran together there on foot from all the cities, and went before them, and came together to Him. ³⁴And Jesus, after He came out, saw a great crowd and was moved with compassion toward them, because they were as sheep not having a shepherd; and He began to teach them many things. ³⁵And much time already having elapsed, His disciples came to Him and said, “The place is desolate, and already it is a late hour. ³⁶“Dismiss them in order that they might go away into the fields and villages round about, and buy bread for themselves; for they have not what they might eat.” ³⁷But He answered and said to them, “Give ye them to eat.” And they say to Him, “Shall we go away and buy bread worth two hundred denarii and give them to eat?” ³⁸But He saith to them, “How many loaves have ye? Go and see.” And having known, they say, “Five, and two fish.” ³⁹And He enjoined them to make all recline by companies upon the green grass. ⁴⁰And they laid back in rows, like beds in a garden, up to a hundred and up to fifty. ⁴¹And having taken the five loaves and the two fish, He looked up to the heaven and blessed and broke the loaves, and kept on giving them to His disciples that they might set them before them; and the two fish He divided to all. ⁴²And all ate and were filled. ⁴³And they took up twelve baskets full of fragments, and from the fish. ⁴⁴And they who ate of the loaves were five thousand men.

⁴⁵And straightway He constrained His disciples to embark into the ship, and to go before to the other side toward Bethsaida, until He should dismiss the crowd.

Menaion — Fixed Calendar

The commemoration of Hieromartyr Eftychios, disciple of St. John the Theologian.

No readings given.

Lives of the Saints (Prologue)

September 6th – Civil Calendar
August 24th – Church Calendar

1. The Hieromartyr Eftyches.

One of the lesser apostles, born in Sebastopol, he was a disciple and friend of the Apostles John the Theologian and Paul. Although he was not included in the Seventy, he was called an apostle by virtue of having been a disciple of the great apostles, and because he showed true apostolic zeal in the service of the Gospel. Consecrated as a missionary bishop, St. Eftyches travelled widely, having an angel as a companion, and he also received heavenly bread from an angel while in prison. When his body was flayed with serrated iron rods, his blood ran down mingled with a sweet myrrh. He was thrown into the flames and before wild beasts, and was finally beheaded with the sword in Sebastopol.

2. The Holy Martyr Tation.

Born in Mantinaeas near Claudioupolis in Bithynia, he suffered under Diocletian. After harsh torture, he was buried alive and thus gave his holy soul into God’s hands.

3. The Holy Martyr Syra.

A kinswoman of St. Golinduc (July 12th), she was a Persian, the daughter of an eminent priest of fire-worship. Brought up in paganism, the maiden Syra heard of Christ from some godly Christian woman, and her little heart became inflamed with love for the Lord. In a time of sickness, while still unbaptized, she begged dust from the church of the Christian priest, but he refused to give it to her in her unbaptized state. Then she, with great faith, touched the priest’s garments and was healed. This miraculous healing confirmed her yet more fully in the Christian Faith. Her soulless father put her to harsh torture, during which she received encouragement and support from heavenly visions. Cruelly strangled with a cord and then drowned, in 558 at the age of eighteen, in the time of the Persian King Chozroes I, this holy maiden thus gloriously finished her earthly course and entered into the heavenly community of the angels.

4. Our Holy Father Arseny of Komel.

Born in Moscow of noble parents, he received the monastic schema as a young man in the community of St. Sergius of Radonezh. A model monk, he was chosen as abbot, but he yearned for a life of prayerful solitude and withdrew to the forest of Komel, where he lived in asceticism till his death, fighting courageously with great diabolical temptations. He entered into rest in the Lord in 1550.

5. St. George Limniotes (“of the Lake”).

A confessor and a great ascetic of Olympus, he suffered in about 216, at the age of ninety-five.

In the Greek Great Synaxarion, St. Dionysius, Archbishop of Aegina, who died in 1624, is also commemorated (translation of his relics). Many miracles have been wrought over his relics.

FOR CONSIDERATION

If you ask many people why they do not go to church, they usually reply: ‘I haven’t got time; I must work.’ Look at these people, who only work and never go to church, devoting themselves only to their work, and compare them with people who set aside time both for work and for prayer, and you will soon be convinced that these latter are different. They are better-off, and which is more important, more contented. It is told of two neighbors who were tailors that they were very different in their work and in their prayer, in their possessions and in their contentment. One of them had a large family and the other was single. The first had the habit of going to church each morning, and the lone one never went to church. The first not only worked less, but was a less skilled workman than the other, but he had all he needed and the other was in straitened circumstances. The latter asked the former how it was that he had everything although he worked less. The prayerful man replied that he went to church every day, and found some gold on the way. He invited his neighbor to go with him to pray, promising that they would share the gold that they found. His neighbor began going regularly to church, and they both soon became one in their abundance and their contentment. They found no gold on the road, but the gold of God’s blessing increased the abundance of these true men of prayer. To those who ‘seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness,’ God will add the increase of all that is necessary to them for their bodily life.

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.