| Previous day |    |
Next day |
| Old Style
June 23
|
Monday |
New Style
July 6
|
|
6th Week after Pentecost.
Tone 4.
Fast of the Holy Apostles. |
 Fish, wine and oil allowed.
|
Meeting of the Vladimir Icon of the Most Holy Theotokos (1480). 
Martyr Agrippina of Rome and her companions Paula, Bassa, and Agathonica (253-259). Synaxis of the Saints of Vladimir.
Martyrs Eustochius, Gaius, Proba, Lollia, and Urban, of Ancyra (4th c.). St. Artemius of Verkola (1545). Second translation of the relics of St. Herman, archbishop of Kazan (1714). Translation of the relics of St. Michael of Klops Monastery (Novgorod), fool-for-Christ (1482). St. Dionysius of Polotsk (1182). Sts. Joseph, founder (1612), Anthony, and Ioannicius, abbots, of Zaonikiev Monastery, Vologda (17th c.).
New Hieromartyrs Mitrophan (Krasnopolsky), archbishop of Astrakhan (1919), and Leontius (von Vimpfen), bishop of Enotaeva (1919).
Icons of the Most Holy Theotokos: “Umileniye” (“Of Tender Feeling”) of Pskov (1524), and “Zaonikiev.” (1588)
St. Etheldreda, foundress of Ely Monastery (England) (679). St. Nicetas of Thebes in Boetia and his disciples Theodore, Gregory, and Daniel (1079). Hieromartyrs Aristocleus, priest, Demetrian, deacon, and Athanasius, reader, at Salamis on Cyprus (306) (Gr. Cal).
Repose of Schemamonk Zosimas of Solovki (1855) and Ivan M. Kontzevitch, spiritual writer (1965).
Thoughts for Each Day of the Year
According to the Daily Church Readings from the Word of God
By St. Theophan the Recluse
Tuesday. [I Cor. 1:1-9; Matt. 13:24-30]
The good seed was sown, but the enemy came and sowed tares among the wheat. The tares in the Church are heresies and schisms, and in each of us they are bad thoughts, feelings, desires, and passions. A person accepts the good seed of the word of God, decides to live in a holy way, and begins to live in this way. When such a person falls asleep, that is, when his attention toward himself weakens, then the enemy of salvation comes and places evil ideas in him, which if not rejected at the start ripen into desires and dispositions, introducing their own spheres of activity, which mix themselves in with good deeds, feelings and thoughts. Both remain together this way until the harvest. This harvest is repentance. The Lord sends the angels—a feeling of contrition and the fear of God, and they come in like a sickle, then burn up all the tares in a fire of painful self-condemnation. Pure wheat remains in the grain-house of the heart, to the joy of the man, the angels, and the most Good God worshipped in the Trinity.
Monday. [Rom. 16:17-24; Matt. 13:10-23]
Why do many people not understand discussions about spiritual things? It is due to a thickening of their heart. When their heart is full of attachments to earthly things, it grows coarse, as is said, he grew fat, he grew thick, he waxed broad [Deut. 32:15]. In this state it gravitates downward like a heavy-weight, dragging and chaining the entire soul to the ground, together with the mind. Then, always churning in its circle of low objects, it becomes low in its thought and cannot soar up on high, like a bird weighed down with food. Churning there, it does not see the heavenly, and its entire disposition is against it… Heaven is an alien country to these people. Such a person has nothing within the sum total of his understanding and experience to which he could relate the heavenly, that he might be able to see it if only through a glass darkly [cf. Cor. 13:12]. That is why he won’t try to discuss it, nor does he wish to listen to others discussing it, and he won’t pick up any books written about it. Isn’t this why you’ll often find any number of secular magazines in people’s homes, but not a single spiritual periodical or book—not even the Gospels?