| Previous day | 
|
Next day |
| Old Style
July 14
|
Tuesday |
New Style
July 27
|
| 6th Week after Pentecost. Tone 4. |  No fast.
|
Apostle Aquila of the Seventy (1st c.), and St. Priscilla (1st c.)
Martyr Justus, at Rome (1st c.). St. Onesimus, monk and wonderworker, of Magnesia (ca. 284-305). St. Ellius (Hellius) of Egypt (4th c.). St. Stephen, founder of Makhrishche Monastery (Vologda) (1406). St. Nicodemus of Mt. Athos, spiritual writer (1809). New Martyr John of Merv (Turkmenistan).
New Hieroconfessor Nicholas Poretsky, archpriest, of Vlakhernskoye (Moscow) (1933).
St. Heraclius, patriarch of Alexandria (246). St. Marcellinus, priest, of Utrecht (8th c.). St. Joseph the Confessor, archbishop of Thessalonica (832). St. Longinus, hieroschemamonk of Svyatogorsk Monastery (1882). Uncovering of the relics of St. Theophilus, fool-for-Christ, of Kiev (1993).
Thoughts for Each Day of the Year
According to the Daily Church Readings from the Word of God
By St. Theophan the Recluse
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.
Articles
 Martyr Justus at RomeThe Holy Martyr Justus was a Roman soldier, to whom the Life-Creating Cross of the Lord appeared in a vision. |
 Venerable Hellius of EgyptSaint Hellius lived and died in the fourth century. He was sent to a monastery when he was still a child. |
