Orthodox Calendar

Thursday, February 15, 2024
Thursday of the 37th week after Pentecost

No Fast

Scripture Readings

Commemorations

Scripture Readings

James 4.7-5.9 (Epistle)

7Be subject therefore to God. Resist the devil, and he will flee from you. 8Draw near to God, and he will draw near to you. Cleanse your hands, you sinners. Purify your hearts, you double-minded. 9Lament, mourn, and weep. Let your laughter be turned to mourning and your joy to gloom. 10Humble yourselves in the sight of the Lord, and he will exalt you.

11Don’t speak against one another, brothers. He who speaks against a brother and judges his brother, speaks against the law and judges the law. But if you judge the law, you are not a doer of the law but a judge. 12Only one is the lawgiver, who is able to save and to destroy. But who are you to judge another?

13Come now, you who say, “Today or tomorrow let’s go into this city and spend a year there, trade, and make a profit.” 14Yet you don’t know what your life will be like tomorrow. For what is your life? For you are a vapor that appears for a little time and then vanishes away. 15For you ought to say, “If the Lord wills, we will both live, and do this or that.” 16But now you glory in your boasting. All such boasting is evil. 17To him therefore who knows to do good and doesn’t do it, to him it is sin.

1Come now, you rich, weep and howl for your miseries that are coming on you. 2Your riches are corrupted and your garments are moth-eaten. 3Your gold and your silver are corroded, and their corrosion will be for a testimony against you and will eat your flesh like fire. You have laid up your treasure in the last days. 4Behold, the wages of the laborers who mowed your fields, which you have kept back by fraud, cry out; and the cries of those who reaped have entered into the ears of the Lord of Armies. 5You have lived in luxury on the earth, and taken your pleasure. You have nourished your hearts as in a day of slaughter. 6You have condemned and you have murdered the righteous one. He doesn’t resist you.

7Be patient therefore, brothers, until the coming of the Lord. Behold, the farmer waits for the precious fruit of the earth, being patient over it, until it receives the early and late rain. 8You also be patient. Establish your hearts, for the coming of the Lord is at hand.

9Don’t grumble, brothers, against one another, so that you won’t be judged. Behold, the judge stands at the door.

Philemon 1-25 (Epistle, St Onesimus)

1Paul, a prisoner of Christ Jesus, and Timothy our brother, to Philemon, our beloved fellow worker, 2to the beloved Apphia, to Archippus our fellow soldier, and to the assembly in your house: 3Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.

4I thank my God always, making mention of you in my prayers, 5hearing of your love and of the faith which you have toward the Lord Jesus and toward all the saints, 6that the fellowship of your faith may become effective in the knowledge of every good thing which is in us in Christ Jesus. 7For we have much joy and comfort in your love, because the hearts of the saints have been refreshed through you, brother.

8Therefore though I have all boldness in Christ to command you that which is appropriate, 9yet for love’s sake I rather appeal to you, being such a one as Paul, the aged, but also a prisoner of Jesus Christ. 10I appeal to you for my child Onesimus, whom I have become the father of in my chains, 11who once was useless to you, but now is useful to you and to me. 12I am sending him back. Therefore receive him, that is, my own heart, 13whom I desired to keep with me, that on your behalf he might serve me in my chains for the Good News. 14But I was willing to do nothing without your consent, that your goodness would not be as of necessity, but of free will. 15For perhaps he was therefore separated from you for a while that you would have him forever, 16no longer as a slave, but more than a slave, a beloved brother—especially to me, but how much rather to you, both in the flesh and in the Lord.

17If then you count me a partner, receive him as you would receive me. 18But if he has wronged you at all or owes you anything, put that to my account. 19I, Paul, write this with my own hand: I will repay it (not to mention to you that you owe to me even your own self besides). 20Yes, brother, let me have joy from you in the Lord. Refresh my heart in the Lord.

21Having confidence in your obedience, I write to you, knowing that you will do even beyond what I say.

22Also, prepare a guest room for me, for I hope that through your prayers I will be restored to you.

23Epaphras, my fellow prisoner in Christ Jesus, greets you, 24as do Mark, Aristarchus, Demas, and Luke, my fellow workers.

25The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with your spirit. Amen.

Mark 11.27-33 (Gospel)

27They came again to Jerusalem, and as he was walking in the temple, the chief priests, the scribes, and the elders came to him, 28and they began saying to him, “By what authority do you do these things? Or who gave you this authority to do these things?”

29Jesus said to them, “I will ask you one question. Answer me, and I will tell you by what authority I do these things. 30The baptism of John—was it from heaven, or from men? Answer me.”

31They reasoned with themselves, saying, “If we should say, ‘From heaven;’ he will say, ‘Why then did you not believe him?’ 32If we should say, ‘From men’”—they feared the people, for all held John to really be a prophet.

33They answered Jesus, “We don’t know.” Jesus said to them, “Neither will I tell you by what authority I do these things.”

Commemorations

Apostle Onesimus of the Seventy

He was a Phrygian by birth, a slave of Philemon, to whom the Apostle Paul addressed his epistle. Onesimos escaped from Philemon and fled to Rome, where he was converted to the Faith by St Paul. St Paul sent him back to his master, who at St Paul’s urging gave him his freedom. He served the Church for many years before dying a martyr, beaten to death with clubs.

Saint Onesimos is also commemorated on November 22, with Sts Philemon, Archippus and Aphia; and on January 4 at the Synaxis of the Seventy Disciples.

Our Venerable Father Dalmatius of Siberia (1697)

Saint Dalmatius is venerated as a pioneer of the movement that took many ascetics to dwell in the wilderness of Siberia, establishing a new company of Desert Fathers and causing the Russian Far North to be called the ‘Northern Thebaid.’ He was born in Tobolsk and reared in piety by his family, recently-converted Tatars. When grown, he entered the imperial army as a Cossack and served with such distinction that the Tsar awarded him a noble title. He married and lived in Tobolsk in comfort and prosperity. One day — after the destruction of Tobolsk in a great fire in 1643 — struck by a realization of the vanity of worldly things, he left family, wealth and property and went to a monastery in the Ural Mountains, taking with him only an icon of the Dormition of the Theotokos.

He was tonsured a monk with the name of Dalmatius, and devoted himself to prayer and ascesis with such fervor that, a short time later, the brethren elected him Abbot. Fearing pride and fleeing honor, Dalmatius fled with his icon of the Theotokos to a remote cave, where he lived a life of silence and continual prayer. His presence did not long remain secret in that sparsely-settled region, and soon Christians were coming from far and wide to ask his prayer and counsel; many pagans came to him for holy Baptism. Soon his habitation became too small for those who had chosen to stay as his disciples, and the Saint received a blessing from the Bishop of Tobolsk to build a wooden chapel and some cells. This was the beginning of the great Monastery of the Dormition (also called the Monastery of St Dalmatius).

Over the years the brethren endured many tribulations. Once the Tatar Prince of the region, provoked by false rumors, planned to destroy the monastery and kill all the monks. The night before the attack, the holy Mother of God appeared to the prince in resplendent clothes, holding a flaming sword in one hand and a scourge in the other. She forbade the Prince to harm the monastery or the brethren, and commanded him to give them a permanent concession over the region. Convinced by this vision, the Prince made peace with the monks and became the Monastery’s protector, though he was a Muslim.

In the succeeding years the Monastery was repeatedly burned down by the fierce pagan tribes which inhabited the area; once all the monks except St Dalmatius himself were butchered, but always the monastery was rebuilt. The Saint reposed in peace in 1697, and was succeeded as abbot by his own son Isaac, who built a stone shrine at the Monastery to house the relics of the Saint and the icon of the Mother of God which he had kept with him throughout his monastic life.

Our Venerable Father Anthimos of Chios (1960)

He was born in 1869 to devout peasants on Chios; he left elementary school early to become a shoemender. At the age of nineteen he visited a monastery (founded by the monk Pachomios, who had been the spiritual counsellor of St Nektarios); he was so moved by the monks’ ‘angelic life’ that on returning home he built himself a small hut and dwelt in it. His only ‘help’ in his spiritual contests was an icon of the Mother of God, which soon began to work miracles, drawing many to his hermitage. After a time he retired to a monastery where he was tonsured under the name Anthimos. He fell ill there, and his abbot sent him home to his parents for the sake of his health. At home, despite the fact that he was caring for his aged parents and practicing his shoemender’s trade, he continued to live as a monk, spending nights on end in prayer and sometimes living only on bread and water for extended periods.

Increasing numbers of visitors came to his hermitage and wonder-working icon of the Theotokos, and in 1910 he received the Great Schema. The people of Chios wanted him to be ordained to the priesthood, but his bishop refused due to the Saint’s lack of education. At the prompting of Anthimos’ godfather, the Bishop of Smyrna ordained him instead. After a pilgrimage to Mt Athos, he returned to Chios, where he became chaplain to a leper hospital. Soon the hospital, which had fallen into corruption, became a spiritual center, as much like a monastery as a hospital. Saint Anthimos tended many of the sickest with his own hands, working many miracles of healing; some of his recovered patients became monks or nuns.

With the notorious ‘Exchange of Populations’ of 1922-1924, refugees poured into Chios, many of them destitute nuns and girls. In response to a vision of the Mother of God, St Anthimos built a monastery, which opened with thirty nuns and grew rapidly, despite the opposition of many who said that setting up such a community was out of date (in 1924!). The monastery soon housed eighty nuns and was known througout Greece as a model of monastic life. Father Anthimos served as priest to the nuns, and continued to receive the many faithful — often sixty or seventy per day — who came to him for prayer or counsel. He carried on this ministry for more than thirty years, working many miracles of healing. When he was too old to work with his hands, he retired to his cell and prayed that he be enabled to serve his neighbor until his last breath. He reposed in peace at the age of ninety-one, mourned and revered by the whole island of Chios.