Daily Devotional

Scripture Readings

Paschalion — Movable Calendar

Monday of the Twenty-Sixth Week

Epistle

The Reading is from the First Epistle of Saint Paul to Saint Timothy [§ 278].

1 ¹Paul, an apostle of Jesus Christ, according to a command of God our Savior, and of the Lord Jesus Christ, our hope, ²to Timothy, my genuine child in the faith: Grace, mercy, and peace from God our Father and Jesus Christ our Lord.

³As I besought thee to remain in Ephesus when I was going to Macedonia, it was so that thou mightest command some not to teach different doctrines, ⁴nor to give heed to fables and endless genealogies, which produce inquiries rather than the dispensation of God which is in faith. ⁵Now the end of the commandment is love out of a pure heart, and of a good conscience, and of faith without hypocrisy, ⁶which some, having missed the mark, turned aside to vain talking, ⁷wishing to be teachers of the law, understanding neither what they say, nor about what kind of things they are of which they affirm for themselves.

Gospel

The Reading is from the Holy Gospel according to Saint Luke [§ 97]. At that time:

19 ³⁷When Jesus drew near, already at the descent of the Mount of Olives, the whole multitude of the disciples began rejoicing and to be praising God with a loud voice for all the works of power which they saw, ³⁸saying, “Blessed is the King Who cometh in the name of the Lord [cf. Ps. 117(118):25(26)]; peace in heaven, and glory in the highest.” ³⁹And some of the Pharisees from the crowd said to Him, “Teacher, rebuke Thy disciples.” ⁴⁰And He answered and said to them, “I say to you that if these should keep silent, the stones will cry out.” ⁴¹And as He drew near, He saw the city and wept over it, ⁴²saying, “If thou knewest, even thou, and at least in this thy day, the things for thy peace! But now it is hidden from thine eyes. ⁴³“For the days shall come upon thee that thine enemies shall put a rampart around thee, and encompass thee and contain thee on every side, ⁴⁴“and dash to the ground thee and thy children within thee; and they shall not leave in thee a stone upon a stone, because thou knewest not the time of thy visitation.”

Menaion — Fixed Calendar

The commemoration of the holy, glorious, and all-famed Apostle Andrew the First-called.

Epistle

The Reading is from the First Epistle of Saint Paul to the Corinthians [§ 131]. Brethren:

4 ⁹I think that God showed forth us the apostles last, as condemned to death; for we became a spectacle to the world, both to angels and to men. ¹⁰We are fools for Christ’s sake, but ye are wise in Christ. We are weak, but ye are strong. Ye are held in honor, but we are dishonored. ¹¹Until the present hour, we both hunger and thirst, and are naked, and are being buffeted, and never at rest. ¹²And we toil working with our own hands. Being reviled, we bless; being persecuted, we bear up; ¹³being evilly spoken of, we beseech. We became as the filth of the world, the off-scouring of all until now. ¹⁴I do not write these things shaming you, but admonishing you as my beloved children. ¹⁵For if ye have myriads of tutors in Christ, yet ye have not many fathers; for in Christ Jesus I begot you through the Gospel. ¹⁶Therefore, I beseech you, keep on becoming imitators of me.

Gospel

The Reading is from the Holy Gospel according to Saint John [§ 4]. At that time:

1 ³⁵John was standing, and two of his disciples. ³⁶And having looked at Jesus walking, he saith, “Behold, the Lamb of God!” ³⁷And the two disciples heard Him speaking, and they followed Jesus. ³⁸And Jesus turned, and beheld them following, and saith to them, “What seek ye?” And they said to Him, “Rabbi” (which is to say, being interpreted, Teacher), “where art Thou staying?” ³⁹He said to them, “Come and see.” Then they went and saw where He was staying. And they stayed with Him that day; and it was about the tenth hour. ⁴⁰Andrew, the brother of Simon Peter, was one of the two who heard this from John, and followed Him. ⁴¹This same one first findeth his own brother Simon, and saith to him, “We have found the Messiah” (which is, being interpreted, the Christ), ⁴²and he led him to Jesus. And having looked at him, Jesus said, “Thou art Simon, the son of Jonas. Thou shalt be called Kephas” (which is interpreted, a stone).

⁴³On the morrow Jesus intended to go forth into Galilee; and He findeth Philip, and saith to him, “Follow thou Me.” ⁴⁴Now Philip was from Bethsaida, of the city of Andrew and Peter. ⁴⁵Philip findeth Nathanael, and saith to him, “We have found the One of Whom Moses in the law, and the prophets, wrote—Jesus the son of Joseph, Who is from Nazareth.” ⁴⁶And Nathanael said to him, “Out of Nazareth can there be any good thing?” Philip saith to him, “Come and see.” ⁴⁷Jesus saw Nathanael coming toward Him, and saith concerning him, “Behold, truly an Israelite in whom is no guile.” ⁴⁸Nathanael saith to Him, “From what place knowest Thou me?” Jesus answered and said to him, “Before Philip called thee, when thou wast under the fig tree, I saw thee.” ⁴⁹Nathanael answered, and saith to Him, “Rabbi, Thou art the Son of God; Thou art the King of Israel.” ⁵⁰Jesus answered and said to him, “Because I said to thee, ‘I saw thee underneath the fig tree,’ believest thou? Thou shalt see greater things than these.” ⁵¹And He saith to him, “Verily, verily, I say to thee, henceforth ye shall see the heaven having been opened, and the angels of God ascending and descending upon the Son of Man.”

Lives of the Saints (Prologue)

December 13th – Civil Calendar
November 30th – Church Calendar

1. The Holy Apostle Andrew the First-Called.

He was the son of Jonah and brother of Peter, born in Bethsaida and a fisherman by profession. He was first a disciple of St. John the Baptist, but when John pointed to the Lord Jesus and said: ‘Behold the Lamb of God’ (Jn. 1:36), St. Andrew left his first teacher and followed Christ. After that, Andrew brought his brother Peter to the Lord. After the descent of the Holy Spirit, it fell to the lot of the first of Christ’s apostles, St. Andrew, to preach the Gospel in Byzantium and Thrace, then in the lands along the Danube, in Russia and around the Black Sea, and finally in Epirus, Greece and the Peloponnese, where he suffered. In Byzantium he installed St. Stachys as its first bishop; in Kiev he raised the Cross on high and prophesied a Christian future for the Russian people; in Thrace, Epirus, Greece and the Peloponnese, he brought many people to the Faith and gave them bishops and priests. In the city of Patras he performed many wonders in the name of Christ and brought many to the Lord, among whom were the brother and wife of the imperial governor, Aegeatus. Aegeatus, infuriated by this, put Andrew to torture and then crucified him. While he was still alive on the cross, the apostle of Christ taught the Christians who were gathered round him. The people wanted to take him down from the cross, but he would not let them. Finally, the apostle prayed to God and a strange radiance surrounded him. This light lasted for half an hour, and when it disappeared, the apostle gave his holy soul into God’s hands. Thus the first-called apostle, who first of the twelve great apostles came to know the Lord and followed Him, finished his earthly course. St. Andrew suffered for his Lord in the year 62. His relics were translated to Constantinople, but his head was later taken to Rome and one hand to Moscow.

2. St. Frumentios, the Enlightener of Abyssinia.

In the time of the Emperor Constantine the Great, a learned man from Tyre called Meropios traveled to India. He took with him two young Christians, brothers called Edessios and Frumentios. On the journey, the ship foundered in a storm on the Abyssinian coast, and the wild Abyssinians killed all the people from the ship except these two brothers, Edessios and Frumentios. They lived in Abyssinia for several years and succeeded in entering the service of the king. Frumentios began to preach the Christian Faith, at first fairly cautiously, and became convinced that the land was ripe for such preaching. The two brothers then took ship, Edessios to Tyre to his parents and Frumentios to Alexandria, to Patriarch Athanasius the Great. Frumentios described the situation in Abyssinia to the patriarch and sought pastors to bring the people to the Faith. St. Athanasius consecrated Frumentios bishop, and he returned to Abyssinia where, by his zeal and his miracles, he brought the whole of Abyssinia to the Faith during his lifetime. This great pastor of Christ’s flock and enlightener of Abyssinia died peacefully in the year 370, and entered into the kingdom of his Lord.

FOR CONSIDERATION

‘All is given to the apostles,’ says St. John Chrysostom. This means: all gifts, all powers, all the fullness of the grace that God gives to all the faithful is given to the apostles. We see this in the life of the great Apostle Andrew the First-Called: how he is apostle and evangelist, prophet, pastor and teacher (Eph. 4:11). As an evangelist, he carried the good news of the Gospel to the four corners of the earth; as a prophet he prophesied the Baptism of the Russian people and the greatness of Kiev as a city and as a center of Christianity; as a pastor he founded and organized many churches; as a teacher he tirelessly taught right up to his crucifixion, and then on the cross till his last breath. And, on top of this, he was a martyr. This was by a gift of the Holy Spirit that is not given to all. We see in this apostle, as in all the others, the fullness of the grace of the Holy Spirit.

That every act performed by a follower of Christ must be supported by grace is testified to by St. Frumentios. When he returned to Abyssinia from Alexandria as a consecrated bishop, he began to perform great wonders, thus bringing the people to the Faith in great masses. The envious king then asked him: ‘You lived among us for so many years, and we never saw you work such wonders. Whence is it that you do so now?’ To this blessed Frumentios replied: ‘This is not my action, but that of the grace of the priesthood,’ and the saint then explained to the king how he had, for the sake of Christ, forsaken his parents, marriage and the whole world, and how he had, through consecration at the hands of St. Athanasius, received the grace of priesthood, the grace of wonder-working.

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.