James 3.1-10 (Epistle)

1Let not many of you be teachers, my brothers, knowing that we will receive heavier judgment. 2For we all stumble in many things. Anyone who doesn’t stumble in word is a perfect person, able to bridle the whole body also. 3Indeed, we put bits into the horses’ mouths so that they may obey us, and we guide their whole body. 4Behold, the ships also, though they are so big and are driven by fierce winds, are yet guided by a very small rudder, wherever the pilot desires. 5So the tongue is also a little member, and boasts great things. See how a small fire can spread to a large forest! 6And the tongue is a fire. The world of iniquity among our members is the tongue, which defiles the whole body, and sets on fire the course of nature, and is set on fire by Gehenna. 7For every kind of animal, bird, creeping thing, and sea creature is tamed, and has been tamed by mankind; 8but nobody can tame the tongue. It is a restless evil, full of deadly poison. 9With it we bless our God and Father, and with it we curse men who are made in the image of God. 10Out of the same mouth comes blessing and cursing. My brothers, these things ought not to be so.

Mark 11.11-23 (Gospel)

11Jesus entered into the temple in Jerusalem. When he had looked around at everything, it being now evening, he went out to Bethany with the twelve.

12The next day, when they had come out from Bethany, he was hungry. 13Seeing a fig tree afar off having leaves, he came to see if perhaps he might find anything on it. When he came to it, he found nothing but leaves, for it was not the season for figs. 14Jesus told it, “May no one ever eat fruit from you again!” and his disciples heard it.

15They came to Jerusalem, and Jesus entered into the temple and began to throw out those who sold and those who bought in the temple, and overthrew the money changers’ tables and the seats of those who sold the doves. 16He would not allow anyone to carry a container through the temple. 17He taught, saying to them, “Isn’t it written, ‘My house will be called a house of prayer for all the nations’? But you have made it a den of robbers!”

18The chief priests and the scribes heard it, and sought how they might destroy him. For they feared him, because all the multitude was astonished at his teaching.

19When evening came, he went out of the city. 20As they passed by in the morning, they saw the fig tree withered away from the roots. 21Peter, remembering, said to him, “Rabbi, look! The fig tree which you cursed has withered away.”

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.

Ven. Xenophon and Mary

Xenophon was a wealthy senator in Constantinople during the reign of Justinian. He and his wife Mary had two sons, Arcadius and John, to whom they gave every advantage of education. When they were of age, Xenophon sent them both to study law in Berytus (Beirut). But the ship on which they set out was wrecked in a storm, and the two brothers were cast ashore, alive but separated, neither knowing whether the other had survived.

Both brothers gave thanks to God for their salvation and, newly conscious of the vanity of earthly things, both became monks: John in Tyre and Arcadius in Jerusalem. Two years later, having heard no news from his sons, Xenophon made inquiries and found that they had never arrived at Beirut, and that they had seemingly perished in a shipwreck. Giving thanks to God, who gives and takes away, both Xenophon and his wife Mary put on coarse garments and went on pilgrimage to the Holy Land. In Jerusalem, they met the spiritual father of Arcadius, who told them that both their sons were alive and that they would soon see them.

By God’s providence, John and Arcadius met one another at Golgotha and, joyfully reunited, spent some time serving Arcadius’ holy Elder. Two days later Xenophon and Mary, visiting the Elder, spent time with their two sons but did not recognize them until the Elder revealed their identity. The parents wept for joy and decided immediately to take up the monastic life themselves. Giving away their considerable wealth, the two entered monasteries in the Holy Land. Both parents and sons went far in the life of prayer, being granted the power to work miracles and foreknow future events.

St Ammonas of Egypt, disciple of St Anthony the Great (350)

“Saint Ammonas was a disciple of Saint Antony the Great and became his successor at the head of the hermits of the outer mountain of Pispir, after having spent fourteen years at Scetis in ceaseless prayer to the Lord to be granted victory over anger. He was afterwards consecrated bishop, probably by Saint Athanasius the Great. He possessed impassibility to the extent of being as though ignorant of the existence of evil, and incapable of passing judgment on anyone.

“One day some people came to ask him to settle a difference among them. The Saint responded by pretending to be insane, and answered a woman who treated him as a madman: ‘You don’t realize how much trouble I’ve given myself in the desert to acquire this madness and I have lost it today because of you!’ On another occasion when he was taken to visit a brother with a bad reputation, he sat on the barrel where [the erring brother’s] concubine was hiding while his accusers searched his cell in vain. Then, taking his leave of the unfortunate man, he simply said: ‘Brother, have a care for yourself!’

“When he was asked which deeds of ascesis are most pleasing to God, he replied: ‘Just sit in your cell and eat a little every day, always keeping the prayer of the Publican in your heart (Luke 18:13), and you can be saved.’ He also said that the fear of God begets moans and tears and these cause joy to arise in the soul, filling it with divine strength to do what is pleasing to God, and that this power from on high establishes us in the company of the Angels. Raised thus from height to height as we humbly pray to be delivered from sin, we shall (he said) receive as if of itself, revelation of the mysteries of God.” (Synaxarion)

Our Holy Mother Paula of Rome (404)

She was born in 347 to a noble family in Rome, and at age sixteen married Toxotius, a prominent nobleman. Though her husband was a pagan, he was devoted to her and gave her freedom to keep a Christian home and rear her children as Christians. They were blessed with five children. When she was thirty-two her husband died suddenly, and Paula resolved to turn her large house in Rome into a monastery. Later she traveled to the Holy Land with her spiritual father St Jerome (June 15). In Bethlehem she established two monasteries, one for women (where she dwelt) and one for St Jerome and his companions. Every day the nuns chanted the entire Psalter, which they were required to learn by heart. Paula was exceptionally austere in her fasting and lavish in her almsgiving, often giving away to the poor even the goods needed by her community for subsistence. She aided her spiritual father and brother Jerome in his controversies with Origen’s followers: St Jerome himself was hot-tempered, and St Paula often exhorted him to confront his enemies with patience and humility.

When she was fifty-six years old, she felt her death approaching, and heard Christ say to her ‘Rise up, my love, my fair one, and come away; for lo, the winter is past, the rain is over and gone’ (Song of Songs 2:10-11). To this she replied ‘The time of harvest has come. I shall truly see the good things of the Lord in the land of the living,’ and gave up her soul joyfully. Her funeral was attended by throngs of monks, nuns and poor people, all of whom revered her as their mother and benefactress.