2 Corinthians 9.12-10.7 (Epistle)

12For this service of giving that you perform not only makes up for lack among the saints, but abounds also through much giving of thanks to God, 13seeing that through the proof given by this service, they glorify God for the obedience of your confession to the Good News of Christ and for the generosity of your contribution to them and to all, 14while they themselves also, with supplication on your behalf, yearn for you by reason of the exceeding grace of God in you. 15Now thanks be to God for his unspeakable gift!

1Now I Paul, myself, entreat you by the humility and gentleness of Christ, I who in your presence am lowly among you, but being absent am bold toward you. 2Yes, I beg you that I may not, when present, show courage with the confidence with which I intend to be bold against some, who consider us to be walking according to the flesh. 3For though we walk in the flesh, we don’t wage war according to the flesh; 4for the weapons of our warfare are not of the flesh, but mighty before God to the throwing down of strongholds, 5throwing down imaginations and every high thing that is exalted against the knowledge of God and bringing every thought into captivity to the obedience of Christ, 6and being in readiness to avenge all disobedience when your obedience is made full.

7Do you look at things only as they appear in front of your face? If anyone trusts in himself that he is Christ’s, let him consider this again with himself, that even as he is Christ’s, so we also are Christ’s.

Mark 3.19-27 (Gospel)

19and Judas Iscariot, who also betrayed him. Then he came into a house. 20The multitude came together again, so that they could not so much as eat bread. 21When his friends heard it, they went out to seize him; for they said, “He is insane.” 22The scribes who came down from Jerusalem said, “He has Beelzebul,” and, “By the prince of the demons he casts out the demons.”

23He summoned them and said to them in parables, “How can Satan cast out Satan? 24If a kingdom is divided against itself, that kingdom cannot stand. 25If a house is divided against itself, that house cannot stand. 26If Satan has risen up against himself, and is divided, he can’t stand, but has an end. 27But no one can enter into the house of the strong man to plunder unless he first binds the strong man; then he will plunder his house.

Miracle of Archangel Michael at Colossae

In Colossae in Phrygia there were a church and a holy spring dedicated to the Archangel Michael. Malicious pagans diverted the course of two rivers so that they would inundate the church. But the Archangel appeared, bringing with him an earthquake that shook the whole area and opened a fissure into which the waters plunged, sparing the church. The place was thereafter called “Chonae” Greek for “funnels” instead of Colossae.

Holy Prophet Zacharias and Righteous Elizabeth (1st c.), parents of St John the Forerunner.

The story of the holy parents of the Forerunner is told in the first chapters of Luke’s Gospel. Several of the Fathers say that Zacharias is the one who, the Lord said, was slain between the temple and the altar (Matthew 23:35); because he continued to call the Mary the Mother of God a virgin even after she bore Christ; and because his son had escaped the slaughter of the innocents ordered by Herod. St Elizabeth had hidden him in a cave in the desert; he remained in the wilderness from that time until he began to preach by the Jordan.

St Maxim (Sandovich), martyr of Lemkos, Czechoslovakia (1914) (August 24 OC)

St Maxim was born in the Austro-Hungarian Empire in 1888. At this time all Orthodox Churches had been captured and subjected to the “Unia,” by which, though keeping the Orthodox liturgical rites, they were united to the Roman Catholic Church. Many of the Carpatho-Russian people were ignorant of the change and what it meant; others were unhappy with it but, in their subject condition, saw no alternative. Maxim’s farmer parents, at great personal sacrifice, obtained an education for him that enabled him to study for the priesthood at the Basilian seminary in Krakow. Here he discerned the un-Orthodox nature of the “Greek Catholic” training there and traveled to Russia, where he became a novice at the Great Lavra of Pochaev and met Archbishop Anthony (Khrapovitsky), who encouraged him in his quest for Orthodoxy. (Archbishop Anthony, after the Russian Revolution, became the first Metropolitan of the Russian Orthodox Church Abroad). He entered seminary in Russia in 1905 and was ordained to the Priesthood in 1911.Metropolitan Anthony, knowing the hardships and persecutions that awaited any Orthodox priest in Austro-Hungary, offered to find Maxim a parish in Russia. But Maxim was already aware of the hunger for Orthodoxy among many of the Carpatho-Russian people; several people from his village had travelled to America and while there had attended Orthodox Churches and confessed to Orthodox priests. They begged him to return to his country and establish an Orthodox parish there.

When he returned to his native village of Zhdynia, the polish authorities, seeing him in the riassa, beard and uncut hair of an Orthodox priest, mocked him, saying “Look, Saint Nicholas has come to the Carpathians!” But the people of nearby Hrab sent a delegation asking him to set up an Orthodox parish in their village. This he did, setting up a house-church in the residence that the people gave him. Almost immediately, he and his people began to be harassed and persecuted, first at the instigation of “Greek Catholic” priests, then of the government. His rectory/church was closed, and he and several of his parishioners were repeatedly jailed, sometimes on trumped-up charges of sedition. (The Carpatho-Russian people were always suspected of pro-Russian political sympathies by the Austrian and Polish authorities).

Despite these persecutions, through Fr Maxim’s labors a wave of desire for Orthodoxy spread through the region, with many Carpatho-Russians openly identifying themselves as Orthodox. The government issued orders to regional mayors to forbid those who had identified themselves as Orthodox to gather and, in 1913, appointed a special commissioner whose task was to force the people to return to Catholicism.

In 1914, war broke out between Russia and Austro-Hungary. Despite lack of any evidence that Fr Maxim had engaged in pro-Russian political activity — he once said “My only politics is the Gospel” — he was arrested and executed on September 6 by the Papal calendar, August 24 by the Church Calendar. He was denied any form of Church burial, and his father buried him with his own hands.

Following the First World War, Orthodoxy became legal in the new Polish Republic, and a monument was placed over Fr Maxim’s grave in his home town of Zhdynia. In 1994, the Orthodox Church of Poland officially glorified St Maxim.