Daily Devotional
Thursday, April 3, 2025 (NS)
March 21, 2025 (OS)
Commemorations
Pascalion — Movable Calendar
Thursday of the Fifth Week of the Great Fast
There is No Divine Liturgy This Day Because of the Great Fast.
Menaion — Fixed Calendar
The commemoration of our holy father among the saints, Iakovos the Confessor, Bishop of Catania.
Fasting Information
Fast day. No Meat, Fish, Dairy or Alcohol Allowed.
Holy & Great Fast
Scripture Readings
Movable Calendar (Pascalion)
Thursday of the Fifth 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, Iakovos the Confessor, Bishop of Catania.
No readings given.
Lives of the Saints
(Prologue)
April 3rd – Civil Calendar
March 21st – Church Calendar
1. St. Iakovos, Bishop and Confessor.
Neither his birthplace nor the place of his episcopate are known. It is known only that he
fulfilled the law of Christ, living in strict asceticism, in fasting and prayer and that, in the
time of Kopronymos, he endured much hardship and suffering at the hands of the iconoclasts:
hunger, imprisonment and ridicule of every sort. He finally gave his soul to God, Whom he had
faithfully served in this life. He lived and suffered in the eighth century.
2. Our Holy Father Cyril (Beryllus), Bishop of Catania in Sicily.
Born in Antioch and a pupil of the Apostle Peter, he governed Christ’s flock well. He
had the gift of working wonders by prayer: for example, by his prayers he turned some bitter and
undrinkable water—in a place where there was no other water in summer—into sweet, drinkable
water. He entered peacefully into rest.
3. St. Thomas, Patriarch of Constantinople.
He lived in the reigns of the Emperors Maurice and Phokas, and in the time of Patriarch John
the Faster and Patriarch Kyriakos. Singled out by St. John for his great devotion and zeal, he
was made patriarchal vicar by that saint, and after the death of Kyriakos, was chosen as
patriarch. In his time an unusual event occurred: once when there was a procession with crosses
carried, they began to sway and to hit against each other. The people marvelled at this; and when
the patriarch heard it attested, he asked Theodore the Sykeote, a famous ascetic and clairvoyant,
to explain what it forebode. Theodore prayed to God and revealed to the patriarch that it
indicated a great misfortune that would come on the Church and on the Greek state through
internal religious and political discord. Christians would fight and would exterminate each
other. And all this came quickly to pass. Thomas begged Theodore to pray to God for him, that God
would take him before this happened. ‘Do you command me to come to you, or shall we meet in
the other world before God?’ So wrote Theodore to the patriarch, indicating by this that
both he and the patriarch would die soon. And that same day the patriarch fell ill and died, and
St. Theodore died very soon after. St. Thomas died and went to the Lord in 610.
4. Our Holy Father Serapion.
A companion of St. Anthony the Great, he lived in the Nitrian desert, in charge of the
monastery of Arsina which contained 11,000 monks. Palladius and Sozomen gave him the title
‘the Great’. He entered into rest in about 366. St. Serapion wrote: ‘Do not
think that sickness is grave; only sin is grave.... Sickness leads us only to the tomb, but sin
follows the sinner beyond it’.
FOR CONSIDERATION
You will hear the following justification for enrichment from many who seek it: When you are
rich, you can do many good deeds! Do not believe them, for they delude both you and themselves.
St. John Climacus knew well the most hidden motives of the human soul when he said: ‘Love
of money begins with the assumption that it produces charity, and ends with hatred for the
poor.’ This is confirmed in every lover of money, both the very rich and the less rich.
People usually say: ‘If I had the money, I would do this and that good deed.’ Do not
believe them. Let them not believe themselves. Let them look, as in a mirror, at those who have
money and do not do this or that good deed. So would they be if they acquired money. The wise
John says again: ‘Do not say that you must collect (money) for the poor, that you may
attain to the kingdom of God through these alms. For the kingdom can be bought for two farthings.
Indeed the widow in the Gospel did buy it for two farthings, but the rich man, before whose door
Lazarus lay, was not able to buy it with all his wealth. If you have nothing to give to the
wretched, pray to God that He will give to them, and by that you give alms and purchase the
kingdom of heaven. When St. Basil the New prophesied to the empress, the wife of the Emperor
Constantine Porphyrogenitus, that she would bear first a daughter and then a son, the empress
offered him much gold. The saint refused it. But the empress swore in the name of the Holy
Trinity that he should take it. Then St. Basil took three gold pieces and gave them to Theodore,
his poor servant, saying: ‘We don’t want many of these thorns—they prick
horribly!’
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.
