ORTHODOX CHRISTIANITY Orthodox Calendar
Orthodox Calendar 2019
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Old Style
December 1
Saturday
New Style
December 14
26th Week after Pentecost. Tone 8.
Nativity Fast.
Fish, wine and oil allowed.

Cовершается служба, не отмеченная в Типиконе никаким знакомProphet Nahum (7th c. b.c.).

Righteous Philaret the Merciful, of Amnia in Asia Minor (792). Martyr Ananias of Persia.

New Hieromartyr Innocent (Letyaev), archbishop of Kharkov and Akhtyra (1937).

St. Eligius, bishop of Noyon (Neth.) (660). St. Botolph, abbot and confessor, of Ikanhoe, England (680). St. Anthony the New, monk, of Kios in Bithynia (865). St. Theoclites, bishop of Sparta (870). St. Onesimus, archbishop of Ephesus. Sts. Ananias and Solochonus, archbishops of Ephesus.

Repose of Righteous Virgin Barbara (Shulaeva) of Pilna (1980).

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

Saturday. [Eph. 1:16-23; Luke 12:32-40]

           Let your loins be girded about, and your lights burning. We must be ready at every hour—one does not know when the Lord will come, either for the Last Judgment, or to take you from here; they are the same for you. Death decides everything. After it comes the results of your life, you can be content with what you have sought to gain for all of eternity. If you sought what is good, your lot will be good; if you sought what is evil, then your lot will be evil. This is as true as it is true that you exist. All of this could be decided this moment—here at this very moment, as you read these lines, and then—the end to all: a seal will be set to your existence, which nobody can remove. This is something to think about! But one never ceases to be amazed at how little people think about it. What is this mystery wrought over us! We all know that death is around the corner, that it is impossible to escape it, but meanwhile almost nobody thinks about it—and it will come suddenly and seize us. Even then.… Even when a fatal disease seizes a person he still does not think that the end has come. Let psychologists decide this from a scientific aspect; from the moral aspect it is impossible not to see here an incomprehensible self-delusion, alien only to one who is heedful of himself.

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