Daily Devotional

Scripture Readings

Paschalion — Movable Calendar

Saturday of the Eighth Week

Epistle

The Reading is from the Epistle of Saint Paul to the Romans [§ 111]. Brethren:

13 ¹Let every soul be subject to authorities which govern. For there is no authority except from God; and the existing authorities have been appointed by God. ²So that the one who sets himself against the authority hath withstood the ordinance of God; and they who have withstood shall receive judgment to themselves. ³For the rulers are not a terror to good works, but to bad ones. And dost thou wish not to be afraid of the authority? Be doing that which is good, and thou shalt have praise from the same. ⁴For he is a minister of God to thee for the good. But if thou be doing evil, be afraid; for not in vain doth he bear the sword, for he is a minister of God, an avenger for wrath to the one who practiseth that which is bad. ⁵Wherefore it is necessary to be subject, not only because of the wrath, but also because of the conscience. ⁶For on this account ye also pay tributes; for they are public workers of God, persevering for this same thing. ⁷Render then to all their dues: to whom the tribute is due, the tribute; to whom the customs duty, the toll; to whom the fear, the fear; to whom the honor, the honor. ⁸Cease owing even one person even one thing, except to be loving one another. For the one who loveth the other hath fulfilled the law; ⁹to wit, “Thou shalt not commit adultery; thou shalt not murder; thou shalt not steal; thou shalt not covet [Ex. 20:13-17]”; and if there is any other commandment, it is summed up in this phrase, namely, “Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself [Lev. 19:18].” ¹⁰Love worketh no ill to a neighbor; therefore love is the filling up of the law.

Gospel

The Reading is from the Holy Gospel according to Saint Matthew [§ 47]. The Lord said:

12 ³⁰“The one who is not with Me is against Me; and the one who gathereth not with Me scattereth. ³¹“On this account I say to you every sin and blasphemy shall be forgiven to men, but the blasphemy against the Spirit shall not be forgiven to men. ³²“And whosoever shall speak a word against the Son of Man, it shall be forgiven him; but whosoever shall speak against the Holy Spirit, it shall not be forgiven him, neither in this age nor in the coming one. ³³“Either make the tree good and the fruit of it good, or make the tree rotten and the fruit of it rotten; for the tree is known from the fruit. ³⁴“O offspring of vipers, how are ye, being evil, able to speak good things? For out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaketh. ³⁵“The good man out of the good treasure of the heart bringeth forth good things; and the evil man out of the evil treasure bringeth forth evil things. ³⁶“But I say to you, that every idle word, whatsoever men shall speak, they shall render an account concerning it in the day of judgment. ³⁷“For by thy words thou shalt be justified, and by thy words thou shalt be condemned.”

Menaion — Fixed Calendar

The commemoration of the holy and glorious Prophet Elias the Thesbite.

Epistle

The Reading is from the General Epistle of Saint Iakovos [§ 57].

5 ¹⁰Brethren, take the prophets, who spoke in the name of the Lord, as an example of suffering ill and forbearance. ¹¹Behold, we deem happy those who endure. Ye heard of the patience of Job, and saw the end of the Lord, that the Lord is full of tender-heartedness and mercies.

¹²But above all things, my brethren, cease swearing, neither by the heaven, nor by the earth, nor by any other oath; but let your yes be yes, and your no, no, lest ye should fall into hypocrisy. ¹³Is anyone among you suffering ill? Let him keep on praying. Is anyone cheerful? Let him keep on chanting. ¹⁴Is anyone among you infirm? Let him call for the presbyters of the Church; and let them pray over him, having anointed him with oil in the name of the Lord. ¹⁵And the prayer of faith shall save the one who is sick, and the Lord shall raise him up; and if he be one who hath committed sins, it shall be forgiven him. ¹⁶Keep on confessing your transgressions to one another and praying for one another, that ye might be healed. The entreaty of a righteous man hath much strength when it is energized. ¹⁷Elias was a man of like feelings to us, and with prayer he prayed for it not to rain; and it did not rain upon the earth for three years and six months. ¹⁸And he prayed again, and the heaven gave rain, and the earth blossomed forth her fruit.

¹⁹Brethren, if anyone among you should be led astray from the truth, and someone should turn him around, ²⁰let him know that the one who turneth a sinner from the error of his way shall save a soul from death and shall cover a multitude of sins.

Gospel

In the Orthros and Liturgy

The Reading is from the Holy Gospel according to Saint Luke [§ 14]. At that time:

4 ²² The crowds were wondering at the words of grace which were proceeding out of Jesus’ mouth, and were saying, “This is the Son of Joseph, is it not?” ²³And He said to them, “No doubt, ye will say this parable to Me, ‘Physician, heal thyself; as much as we heard was done in Capernaum, do also here in Thy country.’” ²⁴And He said, “Verily I say to you that not one prophet is accepted in his own country. ²⁵“But in truth I say to you, many widows were in Israel in the days of Elias, when the heaven was shut up for three years and six months, when a great famine arose over all the land; ²⁶“and to not even one of them was Elias sent, except to Sarepta of Sidon, to a woman who was a widow. ²⁷“And many lepers were in Israel in the time of Elisaios the prophet, and not one of them was cleansed, except Neman the Syrian.” ²⁸And all in the synagogue were filled with anger when they heard these things. ²⁹And they rose up and cast Him outside of the city; and they led Him up to the brow of the hill on which their city had been built, in order to throw Him down headlong. ³⁰But He, having passed through the midst of them, kept going on His way.

Lives of the Saints (Prologue)

August 2nd – Civil Calendar
July 20th – Church Calendar

1. The Holy Prophet Elias (Elijah).

A man who saw God, a wonder-worker and a zealot for faith in God, Elias was of the tribe of Aaron, from the city of Tishba, whence he was known as ‘the Tishbite’. When Elias was born, his father Sabah saw angels of God around the child, swaddling it with fire and feeding it with flames. This was a foreshadowing of Elias’ fiery character and his God-given fiery powers. He spent his whole youth in prayer and meditation, withdrawing often to the desert to ponder and pray in tranquillity. At that time, the Jewish Kingdom was divided into two unequal parts: the Kingdom of Judah consisted only of the tribes of Judah and Benjamin, with its capital at Jerusalem, while the Kingdom of Israel consisted of the other ten tribes, with its capital at Samaria. The former kingdom was ruled by the descendants of Solomon, and the latter by the descendants of Jeroboam, a servant of Solomon’s. The prophet Elias came into the greatest conflict with the Israelite king, Ahab, and his evil wife Jezebel, for they worshipped idols and turned the people from the service of the one, living God. On top of this, Jezebel, being a Syrian, persuaded her husband to build a temple to the Syrian god, Baal, and appointed many priests to the service of this false god. Elias performed many miracles by the power of God: he closed the heavens, that no rain should fall for three years and six months; called down fire from heaven to consume the sacrifice to his God, while the priests of Baal were unable to do this; brought rain from the heavens at his prayers; miraculously multiplied grain and oil in the widow’s house at Sarepta (Zarephath), and restored her dead son to life; prophesied to Ahab that the dogs would lick up his blood, and to Jezebel that the dogs would devour her—which came to pass; and performed many other miracles and foretold many events. He talked with God on Horeb and heard His voice in the gentle breeze. At the time of his departure, he took Elissaios and appointed him his heir as a prophet; he parted the Jordan with his mantle and was finally borne to heaven in a fiery chariot drawn by fiery horses. He appeared together with Moses to our Lord Jesus Christ on Tabor. At the end of the world, Elias will come again, to break the power of Antichrist (Rev. 11).

Author’s note: In the Greek Lives of the Saints, the following miracle of the holy prophet Elias is recorded: a certain Paisius, abbot of the monastery of St. Elias in Jerusalem, went to Constantinople and from Constantinople to Belgrade at the time that Patriarch Paisius was staying there. At that time, there was an Orthodox Christian living in Belgrade, married to a Latin wife. On St. Elias’ day, the wife planned to make bread, but her husband said to her: ‘You must not work.’ His wife replied that the feast had been two days earlier (according to the Roman Calendar). And so a dispute arose between them. The stubborn woman kneaded the dough, but then a marvel! The dough became stone in her hands! At that, the neighbors gathered round, and each of them took a piece of the stone. Paisius took a piece of it, as a witness to God’s miracle, and took it with him to Jerusalem. He laid this piece of stone in front of the icon of the holy Prophet Elias in his monastery. (This is recorded in Dositheus Book XII, Ch. 11, Para. 2, p. 1192.)

2. St. Elias, Patriarch of Jerusalem, and St. Flavian, Patriarch of Antioch.

Great zealots for the Faith and defenders of Orthodoxy, they both died in exile, driven there by the heretical Emperor Anastasios. They foresaw precisely the death of Emperor Anastasios and their own deaths. They wrote to each other at the same time from widely different places: ‘Anastasios the emperor is dying today; let us go to God’s judgement with him.’ After two days, both these holy hierarchs died, in the year 518.

FOR CONSIDERATION

Writing about the life of his sister Makrina, St. Gregory of Nyssa refrained from enumerating her miracles, saying: ‘...that I may not bring weak men to the sin of unbelief’. He calls those weak who do not believe. And, indeed, there is none weaker than the man without faith. A man without faith believes in the power of dead things, but does not believe in the power of God or of the men of God. That is spiritual obtuseness, and that obtuseness is equivalent to spiritual death. Thus souls that believe are alive and those that do not are dead. Living souls believe in the mighty miracles of the Prophet Elias; these miracles delight and encourage them, for they know that they are revelations of the power of God. If God can reveal His power through dead things and elements, can He not reveal it through living and holy men? That which gives the greatest joy to the believer is that the Prophet Elias appeared alive on Mount Tabor at the time of the Lord’s Transfiguration. During his earthly life, this great prophet gave proofs of the existence of the one, living God, and several hundred years after his bodily translation, his appearing on Tabor gave to men a living proof of life beyond this world.

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.