Daily Devotional

Scripture Readings

Paschalion — Movable Calendar

Thursday of the Twenty-Third Week

Epistle

The Reading is from the First Epistle of Saint Paul to the Thessalonians [§ 265].

2 ⁹Brethren, ye remember our toil and travail; for laboring night and day in order not to burden any of you, we proclaimed to you the Gospel of God. ¹⁰Ye are witnesses, and God also, how holily and justly and blamelessly we were with you who believe; ¹¹even as ye know how I was to each one of you, as a father doth his own children, exhorting, and comforting, ¹²and testifying to you to walk worthily of God Who calleth you to His own kingdom and glory. ¹³For this we also give thanks to God unceasingly, that, after ye received word of the report of God from us, ye received it not as a word of men, but even as it is truly, God’s word, which also energizeth itself in you who believe. ¹⁴For ye, brethren, became imitators of the churches of God which are in Judæa in Christ Jesus. For ye also suffered the same things by your own countrymen, even as they have by the Jews.

Gospel

The Reading is from the Holy Gospel according to Saint Luke [§ 48]. At that time:

9 ⁴⁹One of the disciples came to Jesus and said to Him, “Master, we saw someone casting out the demons in Thy name, and we tried to hinder him, because he followeth not with us.” ⁵⁰And Jesus said to them, “Cease hindering him; for whosoever is not against us is for us.”

⁵¹And it came to pass, when the days were being fulfilled of the taking up of Him, He indeed set His face to go to Jerusalem; ⁵²and He sent forth messengers before His face. And they went and entered into a village of Samaritans, so as to make ready for Him. ⁵³And they did not receive Him, because His face was toward Jerusalem. ⁵⁴And after His disciples Iakovos and John saw this, they said, “Lord, dost Thou wish that we should command fire to come down from heaven, and consume them, even as Elias did?” ⁵⁵But He turned about and rebuked them, and said, “Ye know not of what manner of spirit ye are; ⁵⁶“the Son of Man came not to destroy men’s lives, but to save.” And they went to another village.

Menaion — Fixed Calendar

The commemoration of the holy Apostle Iakovos, the Brother of the Lord, first Bishop of Jerusalem.

Epistle

The Reading is from the Epistle of Saint Paul to the Galatians [§ 200].

1 ¹¹Brethren, I make known to you the Gospel which was preached as good tidings by me, that it is not according to man; ¹²for I neither received it from man, nor was I taught it, but by a revelation of Jesus Christ. ¹³For ye heard of my manner of life at one time in Judaism, that according to excess, I used to persecute the Church of God, and was ravaging her. ¹⁴And I kept on advancing in Judaism beyond many contemporaries in mine own race, being more exceedingly a zealot of the traditions of my fathers. ¹⁵But when it pleased God, Who separated me from my mother’s womb and called me by His grace, ¹⁶to reveal His Son in me, that I be preaching Him as good tidings among the nations, immediately I conferred not with flesh and blood, ¹⁷neither did I go up to Jerusalem to those who were apostles before me, but I went away into Arabia, and again returned to Damascus. ¹⁸Then after three years I went up to Jerusalem to visit Peter, and remained with him fifteen days; ¹⁹but of the other apostles I saw none, except Iakovos the brother of the Lord.

Gospel

The Reading is from the Holy Gospel according to Saint Matthew [§ 56]. At that time:

13 ⁵⁴After Jesus came into His own country, He was teaching the crowds in their synagogue, insomuch that they were astonished and said, “From what place hath this One this wisdom and the works of power? ⁵⁵“This is the carpenter’s Son, is it not? His Mother is called Mariam, is she not, and His brothers, Iakovos, and Joses, and Simon, and Judas? ⁵⁶“And His sisters are all with us, are they not? From what place then hath this One all these things?” ⁵⁷And they were offended in Him. But Jesus said to them, “A prophet is not without honor, except in his own country and in his own house.” ⁵⁸And He did not do many works of power there because of their unbelief.

Lives of the Saints (Prologue)

November 5th – Civil Calendar
October 23rd – Church Calendar

1. The Holy Apostle Iakovos, the Lord’s Brother.

He is called ‘the Lord’s brother’ because he was the son of righteous Joseph, the betrothed of the most holy Mother of God. When Joseph was dying, he shared out his goods among his sons and wanted to leave a share to the Lord Jesus, the Son of the most holy Virgin Mary, but his sons opposed this, not reckoning Jesus to be a brother of theirs. Iakovos, though, loved Jesus greatly and announced that he would include Him in his share, counting himself to be indeed brother to the Lord. Iakovos was, from the first, devoted to the Lord Jesus. According to tradition, he went to Egypt with the most holy Virgin and Joseph when Herod tried to kill the newborn King. As soon as he heard Christ’s teaching, he began to live by it. It is said that, during the whole of his life, he ate neither fat nor oil, but lived only on bread and water, and he was chaste to the end of his days. He often kept a vigil of prayer at night. The Lord included him among His Seventy apostles, appearing to him after His glorious Resurrection, as the Apostle Paul testifies (I Cor. 15:7). He was bishop in Jerusalem for thirty years, and governed the Church of God with zeal. On the Lord’s instructions, he composed the first Liturgy, which was far too long for later Christians and was shortened by St. Basil and St. John Chrysostom. He brought many Jews and Greeks to the Christian Faith, and even unbelieving Jews marveled at his justice, nicknaming him Iakovos the Just.

When Ananias became high priest, he decided, along with other of the Jewish elders, to kill Iakovos because he was a preacher of Christ. One day, on Pascha, when many people were gathered in Jerusalem, the elders told him to climb up onto a roof and speak a spiritual discourse. St. Iakovos climbed up there and began to speak to the people about Christ as the Son of God and the true Messiah, and of His Resurrection and eternal glory in heaven. The infuriated priests and elders cast him down from the roof, and he was badly injured though still alive. A man then ran up and gave him such a vicious blow on the head that his brains spilled out. Thus this glorious apostle of Christ died a martyr’s death and entered into the kingdom of his Lord. Iakovos was sixty-three years old when he suffered for Christ.

2. St. Ignatius (Ignatios), Patriarch of Constantinople.

Son of the Emperor Michael Rangabe, he became patriarch after St. Methodius, in 846, but was deposed in 858 and sent into exile. Photius, the emperor’s chief secretary, was made patriarch in his place, but when the Emperor Basil the Macedonian came to the throne, he re-instated Ignatius. St. Ignatius governed the Church with great zeal and wisdom, and built a monastery of the Holy Archangels, in which he entered into rest in the Lord in 877, at the age of eighty-nine.

3. The Holy Martyr Iakov of Borovitz.

About this saint, there is only known that which was revealed after his death in a vision to some people in Borovitz. His body was floating on a river near that town one day in 1540, and came to rest there. Many miracles were worked by his relics.

FOR CONSIDERATION

God’s is the grace and ours is the toil. Let no one, then, think that, as the holy apostles relied solely on the grace of God, it was easy for them: that they were able without effort to accomplish their great task in the world. Does not the Apostle Paul say, ‘I subdue my body...lest, when I have preached to others, I myself should become unapproved’ (I Cor. 9:27)? And, in another place, does he not describe how he spent his life in ‘perils, in weariness, in painfulness, in watchings, in hunger and thirst, in fastings, in cold, in nakedness’ (II Cor. 11:26-27)? The holy Apostle Iakovos ate only bread, and very little of that: he slept very little, and spent his nights in prayer. He knelt so much in prayer that the skin of his knees became as hard as that on the knees of a camel. This brother of the Lord prayed with tears and sighs, not only for the Church that he governed, but for the whole world. Even when he was thrown down from the roof of the Temple by the wicked Jews and terribly injured, the holy apostle did not for one moment forget his debt to God and man. Summoning his last strength, he pulled himself to his knees, stretched out his hands to heaven and prayed to God with all his heart, saying: ‘Lord, forgive them this sin; they don’t know what they are doing.’ While he was thus praying, evil men began stoning him on all sides. Seeing this, one man cried out: ‘Stop it; what are you doing? This just man is praying to God for you, and you’re killing him!’ but that shout from a single goodly soul could not hold back the accustomed evil-doing of the butchers from slaying the saint of God. The apostles, then, did not just lean on grace, but alongside it and interwoven with it, invested almost superhuman efforts in showing themselves worthy of God’s grace.

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.