James 4.7-5.9 (Epistle)

7Submit yourselves therefore to God. Resist the devil, and he will flee from you. 8Draw nigh to God, and he will draw nigh to you. Cleanse your hands, ye sinners; and purify your hearts, ye double minded. 9Be afflicted, and mourn, and weep: let your laughter be turned to mourning, and your joy to heaviness. 10Humble yourselves in the sight of the Lord, and he shall lift you up. 11Speak not evil one of another, brethren. He that speaketh evil of his brother, and judgeth his brother, speaketh evil of the law, and judgeth the law: but if thou judge the law, thou art not a doer of the law, but a judge. 12There is one lawgiver, who is able to save and to destroy: who art thou that judgest another?

13Go to now, ye that say, To day or to morrow we will go into such a city, and continue there a year, and buy and sell, and get gain: 14Whereas ye know not what shall be on the morrow. For what is your life? It is even a vapour, that appeareth for a little time, and then vanisheth away. 15For that ye ought to say, If the Lord will, we shall live, and do this, or that. 16But now ye rejoice in your boastings: all such rejoicing is evil. 17Therefore to him that knoweth to do good, and doeth it not, to him it is sin.

1Go to now, ye rich men, weep and howl for your miseries that shall come upon you. 2Your riches are corrupted, and your garments are motheaten. 3Your gold and silver is cankered; and the rust of them shall be a witness against you, and shall eat your flesh as it were fire. Ye have heaped treasure together for the last days. 4Behold, the hire of the labourers who have reaped down your fields, which is of you kept back by fraud, crieth: and the cries of them which have reaped are entered into the ears of the Lord of sabaoth. 5Ye have lived in pleasure on the earth, and been wanton; ye have nourished your hearts, as in a day of slaughter. 6Ye have condemned and killed the just; and he doth not resist you.

7Be patient therefore, brethren, unto the coming of the Lord. Behold, the husbandman waiteth for the precious fruit of the earth, and hath long patience for it, until he receive the early and latter rain. 8Be ye also patient; stablish your hearts: for the coming of the Lord draweth nigh. 9Grudge not one against another, brethren, lest ye be condemned: behold, the judge standeth before the door.

Mark 11.27-33 (Gospel)

27And they come again to Jerusalem: and as he was walking in the temple, there come to him the chief priests, and the scribes, and the elders, 28And say unto him, By what authority doest thou these things? and who gave thee this authority to do these things? 29And Jesus answered and said unto them, I will also ask of you one question, and answer me, and I will tell you by what authority I do these things. 30The baptism of John, was it from heaven, or of men? answer me. 31And they reasoned with themselves, saying, If we shall say, From heaven; he will say, Why then did ye not believe him? 32But if we shall say, Of men; they feared the people: for all men counted John, that he was a prophet indeed. 33And they answered and said unto Jesus, We cannot tell. And Jesus answering saith unto them, Neither do I tell you by what authority I do these things.

Our Venerable Father Maximos the Confessor (662)

He was born to a noble family in Constantinople in 580. (But, according to a recently-discovered account, he may have been born in Palestine.) He showed uncommon piety and depth of theological understanding from an early age, and wrote some of the Church’s most profound theological works. He became the chief secretary of the Emperor Heraclius and his grandson Constans. But when the Monothelite heresy took hold in the royal court, Maximos could not bear to be surrounded by this error and left for the Monastery at Chrysopolis, where he later became abbot. From the monastery, he battled Monothelitism in homilies and treatises that exercised a considerable influence; so much so that the Emperor Constans ordered him either to accept Monothelite belief or keep silence. Maximos refused to do either, and he was arrested. His tongue was torn out, his right hand cut off, and he was sentenced to exile. He died of his wounds and torments while still in prison awaiting deportation, at the age of eighty-two, in the year 662. The Great Horologion comments that “at that time only he and his few disciples were Orthodox in the East.” Nonetheless, his lonely and costly stand, whose fruit he did not see in his own lifetime, preserved the Orthodox Faith when emperors and patriarchs alike had fallen away.

Saint Maximos’ right hand is venerated today at the Monastery of St Paul on Mt Athos.

Holy Martyr Agnes of Rome (ca. 304)

She was a virgin of noble birth who lived in Rome during the reign of Diocletian. She was martyred at the age of twelve. From an early age she loved chastity (“Agne”, the origin of her name, means “pure” or “chaste” in Greek.) Her purity became so well known that she was sought out by many women of Rome, whom she exhorted to accept Christ as the one true God, and to honor him with their chastity. For this she was in time arrested and brought before the City Prefect. When she refused to deny Christ, the Prefect had her handed over to a brothel; but everyone who attempted to violate her was mysteriously prevented, and one especially vicious and lewd attacker was miraculously struck dead. In front of the Prefect’s soldiers, Agnes prayed to God and the dead man was restored to life. Many pagan spectators, and the Prefect himself, cried “Great is the power of the Christians!” But others claimed that Agnes had performed this wonder by sorcery and should be killed. The Prefect ordered that she be burned to death. She gave up her life serenely and with prayers on her lips. Some Christians gathered her relics and placed them in a tomb where a magnificent church was later built. Saint Agnes’ holy relics remain a source of healing to this day.

Our Holy Father Maximos the Greek (1556)

He was born Michael Tivolis in 1470. In his early youth he traveled to Italy, where many scholars had fled to preserve Hellenic culture despite the fall of Constantinople. After completing his studies in Florence, he went to the Holy Mountain in 1507 and entered Vatopedi Monastery, where he received the name of Maximos. Ten years later he was sent to Russia in answer to a request of Grand Prince Basil Ivanovich, who sought someone to translate works of the Holy Fathers on the Psalter, as well as other Church books, into Slavonic. Maximos completed this work with such success that he was made to stay in Russia to correct the existing translations (from Greek to Slavonic) of the Scriptures and liturgical books, and to preach. His work aroused the jealousy of some native monks, and Maximos was falsely accused of plotting against the Prince. In 1525 he was condemned as a heretic by a church court and banished to the Monastery of Volokolamsk, where he lived as a prisoner, not only suffering cold and extreme physical privation but being denied Holy Communion and the use of books.

One day an angel appeared to him and said ‘Have patience: You will be delivered from eternal torment by sufferings here below.’ In thanks for this divine comfort, St Maximus wrote a canon to the Holy Spirit on the walls of his cell in charcoal, since he was denied the use of paper and pen. (This canon is sung on Pentecost Monday in some Russian and Serbian Monasteries). Six years later he was tried again and condemned to indefinite imprisonment in chains at a monastery in Tver. Happily, the Bishop of Tver supported him, and he was able to continue his theological work and carry on a large correspondence despite his confinement. He endured these grim conditions for twenty years. Toward the end of his life, he was finally freed by the Tsar in response to pleas on his behalf by the Patriarchs of Constantinople and Alexandria and the intervention of pious Russian nobles. He was received with honor in Moscow, and allowed to carry on his theological work at the Lavra. The Tsar Ivan IV came to honor him highly, partly because the Saint had foretold the death of the Tsar’s son. When the Tsar called a Church Council to fight the doctrines of some who had brought the Calvinist heresy into Russia, he asked St Maximos to attend. Too old and weak to travel, the Saint sent a brilliant refutation of the heresy to the Council; this was his last written work. He reposed in peace in 1556, aged eighty-six. Not long after his death, he was glorified by the Church in Greece as a Holy Confessor and ‘Enlightener of Russia.’ In 1988 (!) he was added to the calendar of Saints by the Moscow Patriarchate.