Daily Devotional

Scripture Readings

Movable Calendar (Paschalion)

Friday of the Second Week of the Great Fast

There is No Divine Liturgy This Day Because of the Great Fast.

No readings given.

Menaion — Fixed Calendar

The commemoration of the holy Martyr Evdokia of Heliopolis.

No readings given.

Lives of the Saints (Prologue)

March 14th – Civil Calendar
March 1st – Church Calendar

1. Our Holy Mother, the Martyr Evdokia (Eudocia).

Living in Heliopolis, a city of Phoenicia, during the reign of Trajan, she was at first a great harlot, then a penitent, a nun and finally a martyr. She gained great wealth from her harlotry. The reversal of her life was brought about unintentionally through the providence of God by an elderly monk, Germanos. Coming to Heliopolis in the course of his work, Germanos stayed at the house of a Christian woman whose home abutted onto Evdokia’s. When at night he began, as was his monastic custom, to read the Psalter and a book on the Dreadful Judgement, Evdokia heard him and stood listening attentively to his every word until the end. Fear and dread took such hold on her that she remained awake until daybreak. As soon as it was dawn, she sent a servant to beg that monk to come to her. Germanos came and they began a long conversation on that which the old monk had been reading the previous night, and especially on faith and salvation. The result of these discussions was that Evdokia asked the local bishop to baptize her. After her Baptism, she gave all her goods to the church to be distributed to the poor, dismissed her servants and slaves, and retired to a women’s monastery. She so devoted herself to the monastic life—to obedience, patience, vigils, prayer and fasting—that after thirteen months she was chosen as abbess. She lived fifty-six years in the monastery and was worthy in the eyes of God to be given the gift of raising the dead. When a persecution of Christians arose under the governor, Vincent, holy Evdokia was beheaded. Here is a wonderful example of how a vessel of uncleanness can be purified, sanctified and filled with a precious, heavenly fragrance by the grace of the Holy Spirit.

2. Our Holy Father Agapios.

A novice with an elder near the monastery of Vatopedi, he was captured by pirates and sold as a slave in Magnesia. After twelve years he was miraculously freed and returned to Vatopedi by the aid of the most holy Mother of God. He baptized his former owner and became his confessor. Spending the rest of his life in asceticism at Vatopedi, he departed this life peacefully in the Lord.

3. The Holy Martyr Antonina.

Born in Nicaea, she was arrested and harshly tortured for the Christian Faith. She was finally sewn into a sack and thrown into a lake in 302, but God saved her soul and glorified her forever among the angels in heaven and among the faithful on earth.

FOR CONSIDERATION

Faithfulness and obedience to the will of God must adorn the life of every Christian. God glorifies the faithful and obedient, as is seen in the life of St. Agapios. This saint was captured by pirates as a young man, taken off to Asia and sold to an Arab. Agapios spent twelve whole years with this Arab, silent and obedient, and for twelve whole years he prayed to the most holy Mother of God to free him from slavery. One night the Mother of God appeared to him and told him to get up and go off without fear to his elder. Agapios got up and came to the Holy Mountain, to his elder. When the latter saw Agapios he was sorrowful, thinking that Agapios had escaped by himself from his owner, and he said to him: ‘My child, you have deceived your master, but you can in no wise deceive God. On the day of the Dreadful Judgement, you will have to answer for the money with which your owner bought you to serve him. So go back and serve your owner faithfully.’ Agapios, faithful and obedient, went back at once to Asia, presented himself to his owner and recounted to him all that had happened. The Arab, hearing all this, marveled at the virtuous Christians and desired to see Agapios’ elder. He took two of his sons with him to the Holy Mountain. There he and his sons were baptized, and all three became monks and remained till their death in asceticism, first under the guidance of Agapios’ elder and then under that of Agapios himself. And so the one-time harsh owner became the obedient disciple of his former slave, the faithful Agapios, himself obedient to the will of God.

Daily Scripture Readings taken from The Orthodox New Testament, translated and published by Holy Apostles Convent, Buena Vista, Colorado, copyright © 2000, used with permission, all rights reserved.

Daily Prologue Readings taken from The Prologue of Ochrid, by Bishop Nikolai Velimirovic, translated by Mother Maria, published by Lazarica Press, Birmingham, England, copyright © 1985, all rights reserved. Edited by Dormition Skete.