Daily Devotional

Scripture Readings

Movable Calendar (Paschalion)

Tuesday of the Third 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 holy father among the saints, Tarasios, Archbishop of Constantinople.

No readings given.

Lives of the Saints (Prologue)

March 10th – Civil Calendar: Non-Leap Year
March 9th – Civil Calendar: Leap Year
February 25th – Church Calendar

1. St. Tarasios, Patriarch of Constantinople.

His predecessor, Patriarch Paul, secretly left the patriarchal throne, retired to a monastery and received the Great Habit. This was during the reign of Irene and Constantine. By Paul’s advice, Tarasios, a senator and advisor to the emperor, was chosen as patriarch in 784. He quickly passed through all the stages of ordination and became patriarch. A man of great physical stature and great zeal for Orthodoxy, Tarasios accepted this undesired state in order to help in the struggle of Orthodoxy against heresy, especially that of Iconoclasm. He was responsible for the summoning of the Seventh Ecumenical Council in Nicaea in 787, where the iconoclasts were condemned and the veneration of the holy icons was restored and confirmed. Tarasios was very compassionate to the poor and indigent, building them shelters and feeding them, but he was decisive with those in power in the defense of faith and morals. When the Emperor Constantine VI divorced his lawful wife, Maria, and took a kinswoman to live with him, seeking the patriarch’s blessing to remarry, Tarasios not only withheld his blessing, but first counseled and then reproached him, and finally excommunicated him. As death approached, those round him saw him answering the demons: ‘I am not guilty of that sin, nor of that one,’ until he was incapable of speech. He then began defending himself with his arms, driving them away from him. As he breathed his last, his face shone as with the light of the sun. This truly great hierarch entered into rest in 806. He had governed the Church for 22 years and four months.

2. Our Holy Father Paphnutios of Kephala.

This saint was a contemporary of St. Anthony the Great. It is said of him that he wore the same habit for eighty years. St. Anthony valued him highly and said to all that he was a true ascetic, able to heal and to save souls.

FOR CONSIDERATION

A Christian is like a betrothed girl. As a betrothed girl thinks constantly of her betrothed, so the Christian thinks of Christ. And if the betrothed is far away from her sight, it doesn’t matter; the girl behaves as though he were always there with her. She thinks about him, sings about him, speaks of him, dreams about him, prepares gifts for him. And the same goes for a Christian’s behavior towards Christ. As a betrothed girl knows that she must first leave the house of her birth to meet with and be one with her betrothed, so the Christian knows that he cannot be completely one with Christ until death separates him from the body; that is, from the material home in which his soul dwelt and grew from his birth.

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.