Philippians 2.16-23 (Epistle)

16holding up the word of life, that I may have something to boast in the day of Christ that I didn’t run in vain nor labor in vain. 17Yes, and if I am poured out on the sacrifice and service of your faith, I am glad and rejoice with you all. 18In the same way, you also should be glad and rejoice with me.

19But I hope in the Lord Jesus to send Timothy to you soon, that I also may be cheered up when I know how you are doing. 20For I have no one else like-minded, who will truly care about you. 21For they all seek their own, not the things of Jesus Christ. 22But you know that he has proved himself. As a child serves a father, so he served with me in furtherance of the Good News. 23Therefore I hope to send him at once, as soon as I see how it will go with me.

Luke 11.34-41 (Gospel)

34The lamp of the body is the eye. Therefore when your eye is good, your whole body is also full of light; but when it is evil, your body also is full of darkness. 35Therefore see whether the light that is in you isn’t darkness. 36If therefore your whole body is full of light, having no part dark, it will be wholly full of light, as when the lamp with its bright shining gives you light.”

37Now as he spoke, a certain Pharisee asked him to dine with him. He went in and sat at the table. 38When the Pharisee saw it, he marveled that he had not first washed himself before dinner. 39The Lord said to him, “Now you Pharisees cleanse the outside of the cup and of the platter, but your inward part is full of extortion and wickedness. 40You foolish ones, didn’t he who made the outside make the inside also? 41But give for gifts to the needy those things which are within, and behold, all things will be clean to you.

Ven. Joannicus the Great

He was born in Bithynia of peasant stock. He worked as a swineherd, then became an officer in the Imperial army, where he served with such distinction in the war against the Bulgars that the Emperor Constantine VI wanted to take him into his personal service. “But the sight of massacres and horrors of war had brought home to him the vanity of this life. He asked leave of the Emperor to retire from the service, in order to wage unseen warfare in the ranks of the angelic army” (Synaxarion). In the coming years he traveled widely, sometimes living as a hermit, sometimes living in monasteries, more than once founding a monastic community. Wherever he went he lived in stillness, solitude and strict asceticism. He was famed for his spiritual counsel, his prophecies, his many miracles of healing ailments bodily and spiritual, and for his friendship with animals. Once a monk who doubted the Saint’s miracles was eating at table with him when a large bear burst in upon them. Joannicius called the bear and it came and lay at his feet; he then told it to lie at the feet of his frightened guest and said “At their creation, the animals looked with veneration on man, who is made in the image of God, and he had no fear of them. We are afraid of them now because we have transgressed God’s commandments. If we love the Lord Jesus and keep his commandments, no animal will be able to do us any harm.” The monk departed greatly edified.

In the last years of Joannicius’ life, when he was about ninety years old, the Emperor Theophilus sought his counsel on the veneration of icons. The Saint’s answer was pointed: “Whoever refuses due honor to the images of Christ, of the Mother of God and of the Saints, will not be received into the Kingdom of Heaven, even if he has lived an otherwise blameless life.”

Once Joannicius traveled to Constantinople to aid the Patriarch in some matters concerning the order of the Church. When he returned to his hermitage, he found that some jealous monks had set it on fire. Knowing who they were, he nevertheless addressed them kindly and invited them to share with him some food that he had managed to salvage from the fire. He did not attempt to rebuild his hermitage, but, taking the fire as a sign of his impending departure from this life, he traveled to the monastery of Antidion, where he had first entered into the monastic life and there, having predicted the day of his death, he reposed in peace. At the moment of his death, the monks of Mt Olympus saw a pillar of fire ascending from the earth to the sky.

The Saint’s relics have been the source of many miracles. His skull is kept and venerated at the Monastery of the Pantocrator on Mt Athos. The widely-used prayer “My hope is the Father; my refuge is the Son; my shelter is the Holy Spirit; O Holy Trinity, glory be to Thee!” is attributed to St Joannicius.