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 [§ 30]. At that time:

7 ²⁴Jesus went away into the borders of Tyre and Sidon. And He entered into the house and wished no one to know it, but it was not possible to escape notice. ²⁵For a woman whose little daughter had an unclean spirit heard about Him, and came and fell at His feet. ²⁶Now the woman was a Greek, a Syrophoenician by race; and she kept on asking Him that He would cast out the demon from her daughter. ²⁷But Jesus said to her, “Let the children first be filled; for it is not good to take the bread of the children and to cast it to the little dogs.” ²⁸And she answered and said to Him, “Yes, Lord; indeed, even the little dogs under the table eat from the little crumbs of the children.” ²⁹And He said to her, “For this utterance go thy way; the demon hath gone out of thy daughter.” ³⁰And having gone away to her house, she found the demon had gone out, and the little child had been put on the bed.

Menaion — Fixed Calendar

The commemoration of the Afterfeast of Theophany, and our father among the saints, Gregory, Bishop of Nyssa.

Epistle

The Reading is from the First Epistle of Saint Paul to the Corinthians [§ 151]. Brethren:

12 ⁷To each one the manifestation of the Spirit is given to the profit of all: ⁸for to one is given by the Spirit a word of wisdom; and to another a word of knowledge according to the same Spirit; ⁹and to another faith in the same Spirit; and to another free gifts of healings in the same Spirit; ¹⁰and to another operations of works of power; and to another prophecy; and to another discerning of spirits; and to another kinds of tongues; and to another interpretation of tongues; ¹¹but the one and the same Spirit energizeth all these things, distributing to each separately as He will.

Gospel

For the Mid-feast:

The Reading is from the Holy Gospel according to Saint Luke [§ 10]. At that time:

3 ¹⁹Herod the tetrarch, being reproved by John for Herodias, the wife of his brother Philip, and for all the evils which Herod did, ²⁰added also this above all, he even shut up John in the prison.

²¹Now it came to pass, as all the people were being baptized, Jesus also was baptized; and while He prayed, the heaven was opened. ²²And the Holy Spirit descended in a bodily shape as a dove upon Him; and there came to be a voice out of heaven, saying, “Thou art My Son, the Beloved; in Thee I am well pleased.”

For the Hierarch:

For Gk. usage, see hereunder:

The Reading is from the Holy Gospel according to Saint Matthew [§ 10]. At that time:

4 ²⁵Great crowds followed Jesus from Galilee, and Decapolis, and Jerusalem, and Judæa, and beyond the Jordan.

5 ¹And seeing the crowds, He went up into the mountain; and after He sat down, His disciples came to Him. ²And He opened His mouth and began to teach them, saying:

³“Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of the heavens.

⁴“Blessed are they who mourn, for they shall be comforted.

⁵“Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth.

⁶“Blessed are they who hunger and thirst after righteousness, for they shall be filled.

⁷“Blessed are the merciful, for they shall find mercy.

⁸“Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God.

⁹“Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called sons of God.

¹⁰“Blessed are they who have been persecuted on account of righteousness, for theirs is the kingdom of the heavens.

¹¹“Blessed are ye whenever they reproach you and persecute you, and say every evil word against you falsely on account of Me.

¹²“Be rejoicing and be exceedingly glad, for your reward is great in the heavens. For so they persecuted the prophets who were before you.”

For Sl. usage, see [Mt. 10:1, 5-8].

Lives of the Saints (Prologue)

January 23rd – Civil Calendar
January 10th – Church Calendar

1. St. Gregory, Bishop of Nyssa.

The brother of St. Basil the Great, he was at first a married priest, but when his wife, the blessed Theosevia, died, he was chosen and consecrated as Bishop of Nyssa. He was distinguished by great secular learning and spiritual experience, and was a great preacher, a translator of the Scriptures and a theologian. As a result of his opposition to the Arians, they did everything in their power to crush him, regarding him as their chief enemy. They were so successful in this that, in the reign of the Emperor Valens, their confederate, they managed to depose him from his episcopal seat and drive him into exile. This was in 376. The holy father spent several years in patient exile, enduring poverty and humiliation. In 381, he took part in the Second Ecumenical Council, and it is thought that he formulated the final part of the Creed concerning the Holy Spirit. Finally, finishing his life at a great age in about the year 395, he entered into the kingdom of God and has been commemorated through all succeeding ages as a great light in the Church.

2. Our Holy Father Ammon of Egypt.

He was an Egyptian ascetic. At the age of fourteen, he strove and prayed to God to kill all anger in him. He achieved such perfection of goodness that he was no longer aware of the existence of evil in the world. He was an outstanding expert in the Scriptures, and entered into rest at the beginning of the fifth century.

3. St. Marcian.

He was born in Rome, but lived as a priest in Constantinople to the end of his life, during the greater part of the reign of Marcian and Pulcheria. The inheritor of great wealth from his parents, he spent it unstintingly on two objects: the building or restoring of churches, and charity to the poor. He built two new churches in Constantinople dedicated to St. Anastasia and St. Irene and famed as beautiful and holy places. When asked why he spent so much of his wealth on churches, he replied, “If I had a daughter and was giving her in marriage to some nobleman, would I not expend much gold to adorn her as a worthy bride? Here, I am adorning the Church, the Bride of Christ.” This great man, while being so generous to the churches and the poor, was very hard towards himself, following the evangelical counsel: “Having food and raiment, let us therewith be content” (I Tim. 6:8). It was written of him: “He was utterly in God and God in him”, and he went to God, full of years and good works, in the year 471.

FOR CONSIDERATION

Vanity in dress has a particularly free reign in our day. He who has nothing else of which to be proud takes pride in his attire. He who might have something else, of more value than dress, in which to take pride, does not in fact do so. As gold is not found lying on the surface of the ground, so the spiritual worth of a man does not appear on the outside. There is a story of how a famous philosopher, on seeing a young man flaunting his attire, moved up to him and whispered in his ear: “You know, my boy, the ram got there first, with a fleece like that, but he’s still just a ram!” To be a Christian and take pride in one’s apparel is more foolish than to be a king and take pride in the dust beneath one’s feet. While St. Arsenius wore golden clothing in the royal palace, he never received the title ‘the Great’. He received it when he unhesitatingly gave himself to the service of God and clothed himself in tatters.

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.