ORTHODOX CHRISTIANITY Orthodox Calendar
Orthodox Calendar 2023
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Преподобный Савва
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Old Style
December 5
Monday
New Style
December 18
29th Week after Pentecost. Tone 3.
Nativity Fast.
Wine and oil allowed.

Совершается всенощное бдениеSt. Sabbas the Sanctified (532).

St. Karion (Cyrion) and his son St. Zachariah the Recluse, of Egypt (4th c.). St. Gurias, archbishop of Kazan (1563).

New Hieromartyrs Elias Chetverukhin, archpriest, of Moscow (1932) and Gennadius (Petlyuk), hieromonk of the Belogostitsky Monastery (Yaroslavl) (1941). New Hiero-confessor Sergius Pravdolyubov, archpriest, of Lebedyan (Ryazan) (1950).

Monk-martyr Justinian of Ramsey Island, South Wales (560). St. Nicetius, bishop of Trier (566). St. Cosmas of Vatopedi (1276) and the monks of Karyes, Mt. Athos, all martyred by the Latins (1283). St. Nectarius of Bitol (1500), and his elder, St. Philotheus (late 15th c.), of Karyes Skete, Mt. Athos.

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

Monday. [Heb. 3:5-11, 17-19; Luke 20:27–44]

           The Sadducees had an objection to the resurrection, which seemed to them irresolvable; but the Lord resolved it so clearly in several words that everyone understood and acknowledged the Sadducees as conquered by the truth of His word (Luke 20:27–40). What then were [called] Sadducees are now unbelievers of all sorts. They have heaped up for themselves a multitude of fantasised suppositions, set them forth as irrefutable truths, and magnify themselves with them, supposing that there is nothing to say against them. In reality they are so empty, that there is no point in speaking against them. All of their philosophizing is a house of cards: blow on it and it will scatter. There is no need to refute them in each part; it is enough to relate to them as to dreams. When speaking against dreams, people do set not about proving any incongruity in composition or in the parts of a dream; they simply say, “It is a dream”—and that says it all. Such precisely is the theory of the formation of the world from cloudy spots, with its props—the theory of spontaneous origination, of the Darwinian origin of genus and species, with his latest fantasy about the origin of man. It is all like the delirium of a sleeping man. Reading them, you walk in the midst of shadows. And scientists? What can you do with them? Their motto is: do not listen if you do not want to, but do not hinder us from telling lies.

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