Romans 6.11-17 (Epistle)

11Thus consider yourselves also to be dead to sin, but alive to God in Christ Jesus our Lord.

12Therefore don’t let sin reign in your mortal body, that you should obey it in its lusts. 13Also, do not present your members to sin as instruments of unrighteousness, but present yourselves to God as alive from the dead, and your members as instruments of righteousness to God. 14For sin will not have dominion over you, for you are not under law, but under grace.

15What then? Shall we sin because we are not under law but under grace? May it never be! 16Don’t you know that when you present yourselves as servants and obey someone, you are the servants of whomever you obey, whether of sin to death, or of obedience to righteousness? 17But thanks be to God that, whereas you were bondservants of sin, you became obedient from the heart to that form of teaching to which you were delivered.

Matthew 8.14-23 (Gospel)

14When Jesus came into Peter’s house, he saw his wife’s mother lying sick with a fever. 15He touched her hand, and the fever left her. So she got up and served him. 16When evening came, they brought to him many possessed with demons. He cast out the spirits with a word, and healed all who were sick, 17that it might be fulfilled which was spoken through Isaiah the prophet, saying, “He took our infirmities and bore our diseases.”

18Now when Jesus saw great multitudes around him, he gave the order to depart to the other side.

19A scribe came and said to him, “Teacher, I will follow you wherever you go.”

20Jesus said to him, “The foxes have holes and the birds of the sky have nests, but the Son of Man has nowhere to lay his head.”

21Another of his disciples said to him, “Lord, allow me first to go and bury my father.”

22But Jesus said to him, “Follow me, and leave the dead to bury their own dead.”

23When he got into a boat, his disciples followed him.

Prophet Elisha

The disciple and spiritual heir of the Prophet Elijah (July 20), his story can be found in II Kings. Unlike most of the Old Testament prophets, he was granted the gift of working many miracles. He reposed in peace at a great age. The Fathers tell us that he was anointed by Elijah in the year 908 BC and reposed in peace at a great age in 839 BC. He was buried in Samaria. Even after his death, miracles of wonderworking were performed through his relics.

St Methodios, Patriarch of Constantinople (847)

He was born to wealthy parents in Syracuse of Sicily. He entered monastic life and in time became a priest in the service of Patriarch Nikephoros. Because of his great and well-known zeal for the holy icons, he was cruelly persecuted by a succession of iconoclast emperors. Around 815, he was sent as an ambassador to Rome on behalf of the Patriarch, who had been exiled by the Emperor Leo the Armenian. When he returned to Constantinople upon Leo’s death, he was immediately exiled and imprisoned by Leo’s successor, Michael the Stutterer. Upon Michael’s death he was freed for a short time, but soon the Emperor Theophilus had him exiled to an island where, says the Prologue, “he spent seven years in prison with two common robbers, in damp conditions, without light and without sufficient food, as if in a grave.” When the pious Empress Theodora restored the Empire to Orthodoxy, he was freed and elevated to Patriarch of Constantinople. On the Sunday of Orthodoxy, we commemorate the restoration of the Holy Icons by Theodora and Methodios. Despite many attacks by heretics while he was Patriarch, he served faithfully and reposed in peace.

St John Mavropos, Metropolitan of Euchaïta(1100)

He is commemorated today on the Slavic Calendar; for his life, see October 5, his commemoration on the Greek Calendar.