Daily Devotional

Scripture Readings

Movable Calendar (Paschalion)

Thursday of the Sixth 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 our venerable Father Hilarion the New, Abbot of Pelekete.

No readings given.

Lives of the Saints (Prologue)

April 10th – Civil Calendar
March 28th – Church Calendar

1. Our Holy Father, the Martyr Evstratius of the Kiev Caves.

He was very wealthy, but moved by the love of Christ, he gave away all his goods for His sake, entered the Monastery of the Caves and became a monk. When the Polovtsians conquered Kiev in 1097, they looted the monastery, slew many Christians and monks and gave Evstratius and other of the faithful as slaves to a certain Jew in the town of Khorsun. This Jew mocked the Christian Faith and tried to compel the Christians to convert to the Jewish faith. Seeing that they had no other alternative, they all decided to starve to death rather than deny the true Faith. Evstratius encouraged the Christians in this decision. They all perished from hunger, some after three days, some after four and some after seven days. Evstratius, accustomed to fasting, remained the only one alive, and survived fourteen days without food. Infuriated that he had lost the money he had paid for the slaves, the Jew took his revenge by having Evstratius nailed to a cross. But Evstratius gave thanks to God from the cross and predicted an imminent and vicious death for the Jew. Possessed by a furious anger, the Jew stabbed him with a spear. And thus the holy man of God gave his soul to his Savior. They cast his body into the sea, but it rose to the surface and many were the great miracles performed over it. Soon after this, the Byzantine emperor commanded that the Jews in Khorsun be punished for their wickedness towards the Christians, and the torturer of the Christians was hanged on a tree and received the wages of Judas.

2. Our Holy Father Hilarion the New, the Confessor.

He was abbot of the monastery of Pelekete near the Hellespont, and was irradiated like the sun with the spirit of God. He healed sicknesses among the people and drove out evil spirits. In the reign of Leo the Isaurian, the Iconoclast persecution began and this man of God suffered during it. He was exiled with his forty monks to a place near Ephesus, died there in prison in 754 and entered into the kingdom of Christ.

3. Our Holy Father Hesychios of Jerusalem.

A priest and a profound theologian, he was a disciple of St. Gregory the Theologian and a contemporary of St. Efthymios the Great. He entered peacefully into rest in about 451.

4. The Holy Martyr Boyan.

A prince of Bulgaria, he was the son of Krutogan and grandson of Grubosh. He confessed the Christian Faith while his brother, Milomir, remained a heathen. He was slain for the true Faith at the command of his brother in 827.

5. The Miraculous Experience of Taxiotis, a Soldier of Carthage.

He spent his entire life in grievous sins, but finally repented, left his military service and adopted a way of life pleasing to God. Once when he had gone with his wife to their property close to the city, he fell into adultery with the wife of his workman, and immediately after this a snake bit him and he died. He lay dead for six hours, and after that he arose, and on the fourth day, broke his silence and related how he had seen the torments of hell for sinning and how he was about to be punished for his adultery. He had fallen into the dark dwelling of the demons, but was then led out by an angel who vouched for him, and had returned to the body to repent of his last sin. He lived in penitence for forty days, going from church to church and striking his head against the doors and thresholds. Weeping incessantly, he spoke of the terrible torments in which sinners lived in that world, and implored people not to sin and to repent of sins already committed. On the fortieth day he went with joy to the kingdom of the merciful God.

FOR CONSIDERATION

Speaking of a handsome young man of twenty, George by name, who, having beauty and youth and living in the midst of the vanity of this world, knew the way of salvation and devoted himself to the pursuit of spiritual wisdom, St. Simeon the New Theologian concludes with these words: ‘Do you understand how youth does not hinder, nor age help, a man’s understanding and his fear of God?’ How did youth hinder John the Apostle in coming to faith in Christ the Lord, and how did age help the Jewish elders when they were blind in their minds, and in their blindness, condemned the Son of God to death? In no way. Their youth in no way hinders the young people of our own day from giving their faith and love to Christ, Who created them from love. And their age in no way helps the elders of our day if their hearts are closed to Christ by evil. A young or an old body is nothing other than the new or old clothing of the soul. The one or the other garment is able to cover a healthy or a sick soul. But our goal is a soul that is healthy and clean.

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.