Hieromartyrs Dionysius the Areopagite (96), bishop of Athens, the priest Rusticus, and the deacon Eleutherius (96).
St. John the Chozebite, bishop of Caesarea in Palestine (532). Blessed Hesychius the Silent, of Mt. Horeb (6th c.). St. Dionysius, recluse of the Kiev Caves (15th c.). Uncovering of the relics of St. Joseph, elder, of Optina Monastery (1988).
New Hiero-confessor Agathangelus (Preobrazhensky), metropolitan of Yaroslavl (1928).
St. Jerome of Aegina (1966). Hieromartyrs Dionysius, bishop of Alexandria, and the deacons Gaius and Faustus (ca. 265).
Repose of Blessed Olga, fool-for-Christ, of Bogdanoya Bari and St. Petersburg (1960).
Friday. [Phil. 1:27-2:4; Luke 6:17-23]
The Lord blesses the poor, those who
hunger and weep, and the persecuted under the condition
that it is all for the sake of the Son of Man; this means
that He blesses a life which is surrounded by every kind
of need and deprivation. According to this saying,
pleasures, ease, honour are not something good; this is
the way it is indeed. But while a person rests in these
things, he does not realize this. Only when he frees
himself from their spell does he see that they are not the
good, but only phantoms. A soul cannot do without
consolations, but they are not of the senses; it cannot do
without treasures, but they are not in gold and silver,
not in luxurious houses and clothes, not in this external
fullness; it cannot get by without honor, but it lies not
in human servility. There are other pleasures, there is
other ease, other honour—spiritual, akin to the
soul. He who finds them does not want the external ones;
not only does he not want them, but he scorns and hates
them because they block off the spiritual, do not allow
one to see it, they keep a soul in darkness, drunkenness,
and phantoms. This is why such people prefer with all
their soul poverty, sorrow and obscurity, feeling good
within them, like behind some safe fence against the spell
of the deceptions of the world. What about those people
who have all these things without trying? They should
relate to all of these things, according to the word of
the holy Apostle, as one who possesses not (cf. 1Cor.
7:30).