Daily Devotional

Scripture Readings

Movable Calendar (Paschalion)

Wednesday 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 the holy Martyr Chrysanthos, and his wife, the Martyr Dareia of Athens, and those with them at Rome.

No readings given.

Lives of the Saints (Prologue)

April 1st – Civil Calendar
March 19th – Church Calendar

1. The Holy Martyrs Chrysanthus and Daria, and others with them.

Chrysanthus was the only son of a great noble, Polemon, who moved from Alexandria to Rome. As the son of rich parents, Chrysanthus studied all the secular disciplines, having the most learned men as his teachers. But worldly wisdom confused him, and he was left ignorant of the truth. And he grieved over this. But God, Who provides for each and all, assuaged the grief of the young Chrysanthus by putting copies of the Gospels and the Acts of the Apostles into his hands. The truth was revealed to him in the reading of these. But he wanted a teacher, and found one in the person of Carpophorus, a priest, who instructed and baptized him. But this did not please his father, who did all in his power to turn him back from the Christian Faith. Then, in no way succeeding, the wicked father tried to corrupt him by shutting him up alone with shameless girls, but Chrysanthus gained the victory over himself in that, and preserved his virginity. Then his father compelled him to marry the pagan Daria, but Chrysanthus persuaded Daria to receive the Christian Faith and to live with him as his sister although appearing to be married. When his father died, Chrysanthus began openly to confess Christ and to live as a Christian, both he and his whole house. In the time of the Emperor Numerian, both he and Daria were terribly tortured for their faith. The torturer Claudius himself, though, seeing the endurance of these martyrs and the wonders that were revealed at their martyrdom, embraced the Christian Faith with all his house. For this, Claudius was drowned, both his sons were beheaded and his wife died on the gallows with prayer on her lips. Daria showed such endurance under martyrdom that the pagans cried out: ‘Daria is a goddess!’ Finally it was decreed that Chrysanthus and Daria be buried in a deep pit and covered with stones. A church was later built on the site. Near this pit was a cave, in which some Christians at one time met together for prayer and communion in memory of the holy martyrs Chrysanthus and Daria. Discovering this, the pagans rolled a stone across the entrance to the cave, and thus by death drove those Christians from this world into that better world where Christ the Lord reigns in eternity. These glorious martyrs, Chrysanthus and Daria and the others with them, among whom are Diodorus the priest and Marianus the deacon, suffered for Christ in Rome in 283 and 284.

2. The Holy Martyr Pancharius.

Born in Villach in Austria, he was a high-ranking official at the courts of Diocletian and Maximian. He first denied Christ, but at the persuasion of his mother and sister, returned to the Christian Faith, for which he was martyred in 302.

FOR CONSIDERATION

‘This mercy (God’s) that raises us up when we have sinned is greater than that which gave us being when we had no existence. Glory, O Lord, to Thine immeasurable mercy!’ So speaks St. Isaac the Syrian. He means here that God showed us greater mercy in saving us through Christ from the corruption of sin and death than when He created us out of nothing. And indeed it is so. Earthly parents show greater mercy to a dissolute and fallen son when they receive him again, forgive him everything, clean him and tidy him up, heal his hurts and make him their heir once more, than when they gave him birth. When the young Pancharius, surrounded by imperial honors, denied Christ, his mother wrote him a letter full of pain and grief: ‘You must not fear men,’ she wrote, ‘but you must fear the judgement of God. You should have confessed your faith in Christ before kings and princes, and not denied Him. Remember His words: “Whosoever shall deny Me before men, him will I also deny before My Father Who is in heaven” (Matt. 10:33)’. The son took his mother’s advice and was ashamed of himself, confessed his faith in Christ before the emperor and died a martyr’s death for Christ, to live eternally with Him. Thus his blessed mother brought about a new birth for her son, a spiritual birth more important than the first, physical 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.