ORTHODOX CHRISTIANITY Orthodox Calendar
ORTHODOX CHRISTIANITY Orthodox Calendar 2015
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Old Style
October 3
Friday
New Style
October 16
20th Week after Pentecost. Tone 2.
Fast Day.
Wine and oil allowed.

Совершается служба на шестьHieromartyrs 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).

Thoughts for Each Day of the Year
According to the Daily Church Readings from the Word of God
By St. Theophan the Recluse

St. Theophan the Recluse

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).

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