James 3.11-4.6 (Epistle)

11Does a spring send out from the same opening fresh and bitter water? 12Can a fig tree, my brothers, yield olives, or a vine figs? Thus no spring yields both salt water and fresh water.

13Who is wise and understanding among you? Let him show by his good conduct that his deeds are done in gentleness of wisdom. 14But if you have bitter jealousy and selfish ambition in your heart, don’t boast and don’t lie against the truth. 15This wisdom is not that which comes down from above, but is earthly, sensual, and demonic. 16For where jealousy and selfish ambition are, there is confusion and every evil deed. 17But the wisdom that is from above is first pure, then peaceful, gentle, reasonable, full of mercy and good fruits, without partiality, and without hypocrisy. 18Now the fruit of righteousness is sown in peace by those who make peace.

1Where do wars and fightings among you come from? Don’t they come from your pleasures that war in your members? 2You lust, and don’t have. You murder and covet, and can’t obtain. You fight and make war. You don’t have, because you don’t ask. 3You ask, and don’t receive, because you ask with wrong motives, so that you may spend it on your pleasures. 4You adulterers and adulteresses, don’t you know that friendship with the world is hostility toward God? Whoever therefore wants to be a friend of the world makes himself an enemy of God. 5Or do you think that the Scripture says in vain, “The Spirit who lives in us yearns jealously”? 6But he gives more grace. Therefore it says, “God resists the proud, but gives grace to the humble.”

Mark 11.22-26 (Gospel)

22Jesus answered them, “Have faith in God. 23For most certainly I tell you, whoever may tell this mountain, ‘Be taken up and cast into the sea,’ and doesn’t doubt in his heart, but believes that what he says is happening, he shall have whatever he says. 24Therefore I tell you, all things whatever you pray and ask for, believe that you have received them, and you shall have them. 25Whenever you stand praying, forgive, if you have anything against anyone; so that your Father, who is in heaven, may also forgive you your transgressions. 26But if you do not forgive, neither will your Father in heaven forgive your transgressions.”

Ven. Martinian of Caesarea

“The life of this saint is wonderful beyond measure and is worth reading in full. What did he not endure to fulfil the Law of God? At the age of eighteen, he went off into a mountain in Cappadocia called the Ark and spent 25 years in fasting, vigils and prayer, and struggling with manifold temptations. When a woman came to tempt him and he saw that he would fall into sin with her, he leapt barefoot into the fire and stood in it until the pain brought forth tears from his eyes and he had killed all lust within himself. When other temptations arose, he fled to a lonely rock in the sea and lived there. When, though, in a shipwreck, a woman swam to the rock, he leapt into the sea intending to drown himself. But a dolphin took him upon its back and brought him, by God’s providence, to the shore. He then decided to make nowhere his permanent home but to travel incessantly. Thus he passed through 164 towns in two years, exhorting and advising the people. He finally arrived in Athens, where he died in 422.” (Prologue)

Holy Apostles and Martyrs Priscilla and Aquila

Aquila and his wife Priscilla (or Prisca) were Jews from Pontus who settled in Rome, where they worked as tent-makers. When the Emperor Claudius expelled all Jews from Rome in 49-50, they moved to Corinth. (They may already have been Christians; at that time the Empire made no distinction between Christians and Jews.) In Corinth they hosted the Apostle Paul, who lived and worked with them for awhile (Acts 18:1-3). They worked diligently with the Apostle, traveled with him, and were considered worthy to bring Apollos (December 8) to a full knowledge of the Faith (Acts 18:26)

Priscilla and Aquila returned to Rome around 58, and later went to Ephesus; they were living there when St Paul asked his disciple Timothy, Bishop of Ephesus, to greet them (2 Tim. 4:19). It was probably in Ephesus that they were martyred by the pagans.

St Symeon the Myrrh-streamer, founder of the Chilandar Monastery (1200)

He was born in 1114. In the world, he ruled the kingdom of Serbia as Stephen Nemanja; after ruling wisely and mercifully for many years, he renounced all worldly wealth and glory in 1196 to become a monk. Traveling to the Holy Mountain, he took for his spiritual father his own son Sava, who had preceded him in renouncing royal honor for a life of prayer. Together Symeon (as he was named in monastic life) and his son founded Hilandar monastery. His wife Anna became a nun, taking the name Anastasia; she is also commemorated as a saint of the Church. After his repose, St Symeon’s relics exuded a fragrant and healing myrrh. Saint Sava brought his father’s holy relics back to Serbia. The Synaxarion says “From Saint Symeon’s empty tomb at Chilandar, a vine miraculously sprang up whose dried grape seeds are to this day sent all over the world as a blessing for childless married couples.”