Translation of the relics of the Holy Wonderworking Unmercenaries and Martyrs Cyrus and John (412). Sts. Sergius and Herman, founders and abbots of Valaam (14th c.).
St. Xenophon, founder of Robeika Monastery (Novgorod) (1262). St. Paul the Physician, of Corinth (7th c.). St. Heliodorus, schema-archimandrite of Glinsk Hermitage (1879).
Icon of the Most Holy Theotokos “Of the Three Hands” of Hilandar, Mt. Athos (8th c.).
St. Senuphius the Standard-bearer, of Egypt (late 4th c.). St. Austell of Cornwall (6th c.). St. Sergius the Magistrate, of Paphlagonia, founder of the Nikitiatus Monastery in Nicomedia (866).
Repose of Archimandrite Sophrony (Sakharov) of Essex (1993) and Archimandrite Methodius (Popovich) of Jerusalem (1997).
Wednesday. [I Cor. 2:9-3:8; Matt. 13:31-36]
The kingdom is like a grain of mustard
seed and leaven. A small grain of mustard seed grows up
into a big bush; leaven penetrates the whole lump of dough
and makes it leavened. Here, on the one hand, is an image
for the Church, which in the beginning consisted only of
the apostles and several other people, then spread and
became most numerous, penetrating all of humanity; on the
other hand, it is an image of the spiritual life revealed
in every person. Its first seed is the intention and
determination to be saved through pleasing God, upon faith
in the Lord and Saviour. This determination, no matter how
firm, is like a tiny dot. In the beginning it embraces
only one’s consciousness and activities; then from
this all of the activity of a spiritual life develops. Its
movement and strength multiply and mature within its own
self, and it begins to penetrate all the powers of the
soul—the mind, will, feelings, then fills them with
itself, makes them leavened according to its spirit, and
penetrates the entire constitution of the human nature,
body, soul, and spirit in which it was engendered.
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.