Daily Devotional

Scripture Readings

Movable Calendar (Paschalion)

Wednesday 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 Apostles Archippos, Philemon, and Apfia, martyred at Colossae of Phrygia.

No readings given.

Lives of the Saints (Prologue)

March 4th – Civil Calendar: Non-Leap Year
March 3rd – Civil Calendar: Leap Year
February 19th – Church Calendar

1. The Holy Apostles Archippus, Philemon and Apphia.

Archippus was one of the Seventy. The Apostle Paul mentions him in his Epistles to the Colossians (4:17) and to Philemon (Philem. 2), calling him his fellow-soldier in the battle. The Christians’ gathering-place for prayer in the town of Colossae was in the house of Philemon. The Apostle Paul, writing to Philemon, calls this ‘the Church in thy house’. This was in the time when the apostles were consecrating their disciples to the episcopate—some to permanent sees and others as missionaries, travelling to various places. Philemon was one of these latter. Apphia, Philemon’s wife, remained to serve the house-church with fasting. At the time of a feast of the pagan goddess Artemis, all the faithful in Colossae were, as was their custom, gathered at prayer in the house of Philemon. The pagans came to hear of this gathering, rushed in on them and seized all the Christians. They flogged Archippus, Philemon and Apphia as their leaders, then buried them up to the waist in the ground and stoned them. Philemon and Apphia died of this, but they took Archippus out of the hole barely alive and left him for the children to play with. They took knives and stabbed him all over, and thus this fellow-soldier of Paul’s in the battle made a good end of his earthly road.

2. Our Holy Father Dositheos.

Dositheos was a disciple of the famous Abba Dorotheos, who lived with Saints Seridos, John and Barsanuphius the Great. He was kinsman to a general and traveled to Jerusalem to see the holy places. While he was looking at an icon of the Dreadful Judgement in some church, a woman in purple robes came up and explained many things to him. Finally, at parting, she told him that, if he sought salvation, he must fast and not eat meat, and pray frequently to God. This was the most holy Mother of God. The heart of the young Dositheos was set afire and he desired the monastic life. Dorotheos received him as his cell-servant and commanded him utterly to forsake his own will and obey his spiritual father. He left him for several days to eat as much as he wanted, then after a certain time cut his food down to a quarter, and after a while to a quarter of that, until he became accustomed to living on the smallest amount of food, always telling him: ‘Eating is a habit, and one eats what one is used to eating.’ He was saved and glorified by total obedience. He remains forever as an example of monastic obedience and devotion to one’s spiritual father. This young saint lived early in the 6th century.

FOR CONSIDERATION

St. Anthony teaches: ‘As a man comes forth naked from his mother’s womb, so the soul goes forth naked from the body. And one soul is pure and light, a second soiled by sin and a third blackened by many sins. If a body coming forth from an unhealthy womb cannot live, so also a soul; if it has not come to the knowledge of God through good conduct, it cannot be saved or be in communion with God. The organ of bodily vision is the eye; the organ of spiritual vision is the mind. As the body is blind without the eyes, so is the soul blind without a right mind and a right life.’

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.