2 Corinthians 12.20-13.2 (Epistle)

20For I am afraid that perhaps when I come, I might find you not the way I want to, and that I might be found by you as you don’t desire, that perhaps there would be strife, jealousy, outbursts of anger, factions, slander, whisperings, proud thoughts, or riots, 21that again when I come my God would humble me before you, and I would mourn for many of those who have sinned before now, and not repented of the uncleanness, sexual immorality, and lustfulness which they committed.

1This is the third time I am coming to you. “At the mouth of two or three witnesses shall every word be established.” 2I have warned previously, and I warn again, as when I was present the second time, so now, being absent, I write to those who have sinned before now and to all the rest that if I come again, I will not spare,

Mark 4.24-34 (Gospel)

24He said to them, “Take heed what you hear. With whatever measure you measure, it will be measured to you; and more will be given to you who hear. 25For whoever has, to him more will be given; and he who doesn’t have, even that which he has will be taken away from him.”

26He said, “God’s Kingdom is as if a man should cast seed on the earth, 27and should sleep and rise night and day, and the seed should spring up and grow, though he doesn’t know how. 28For the earth bears fruit by itself: first the blade, then the ear, then the full grain in the ear. 29But when the fruit is ripe, immediately he puts in the sickle, because the harvest has come.”

30He said, “How will we liken God’s Kingdom? Or with what parable will we illustrate it? 31It’s like a grain of mustard seed, which, when it is sown in the earth, though it is less than all the seeds that are on the earth, 32yet when it is sown, grows up and becomes greater than all the herbs, and puts out great branches, so that the birds of the sky can lodge under its shadow.”

33With many such parables he spoke the word to them, as they were able to hear it. 34Without a parable he didn’t speak to them; but privately to his own disciples he explained everything.

Hieromartyr Eutyches (1st c.)

He was a disciple and friend of St John the Theologian, and worked with the Apostle Paul, and is himself named as an Apostle though he is not one of the Seventy. He travelled widely in the ministry of the Gospel of Christ, suffering many imprisonments and tortures. He died in Sebastia, the place of his birth. The Prologue says that he was beheaded, the Great Horologion that he reposed in peace “in deep old age.”

Trans. Rel. Peter, Metr. Kiev

See December 21 for his life.

New Hieromartyr Kosmas of Aitolia, Equal-to-the-Apostles (1779)

This recent Equal to the Apostles was born in Mega Dendron (Great Tree) in Aetolia. He became a monk on Mt Athos, where he lived and prayed for many years. But he was troubled by the ignorance of the Gospel that had fallen on many of the Orthodox people, living under the oppression of the Ottoman Turks. He went to Constantinople, where he studied the rhetorical arts and received the blessing of Patriarch Seraphim II to preach the Gospel. He travelled throughout Greece, Macedonia, Serbia and Albania, preaching at every town he visited. Often not only Greeks but many Muslims would come to hear him, so great was his reputation for holiness. Though he always sought the blessing of the local bishop and the local Turkish governor before he preached in an area, his strong condemnations of dishonest business practices aroused the enmity of Orthodox Christian and Jewish merchants, who falsely accused him to the authorities. He was strangled by the Turks and thrown into a river in Albania, but his wonderworking relics were preserved. He reposed at the age of sixty-five.