21Beloved, if our hearts don’t condemn us, we have boldness toward God;
22so whatever we ask, we receive from him, because we keep his commandments and do the things that are pleasing in his sight.
23This is his commandment, that we should believe in the name of his Son, Jesus Christ, and love one another, even as he commanded.
24He who keeps his commandments remains in him, and he in him. By this we know that he remains in us, by the Spirit which he gave us.
1Beloved, don’t believe every spirit, but test the spirits, whether they are of God, because many false prophets have gone out into the world.
2By this you know the Spirit of God: every spirit who confesses that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is of God,
3and every spirit who doesn’t confess that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is not of God; and this is the spirit of the Antichrist, of whom you have heard that it comes. Now it is in the world already.
4You are of God, little children, and have overcome them, because greater is he who is in you than he who is in the world.
5They are of the world. Therefore they speak of the world, and the world hears them.
6We are of God. He who knows God listens to us. He who is not of God doesn’t listen to us. By this we know the spirit of truth, and the spirit of error.
1 John 4.11-16 (Vespers)
11Beloved, if God loved us in this way, we also ought to love one another.
12No one has seen God at any time. If we love one another, God remains in us, and his love has been perfected in us.
13By this we know that we remain in him and he in us, because he has given us of his Spirit.
14We have seen and testify that the Father has sent the Son as the Savior of the world.
15Whoever confesses that Jesus is the Son of God, God remains in him, and he in God.
16We know and have believed the love which God has for us. God is love, and he who remains in love remains in God, and God remains in him.
1 John 4.20-5.5 (Vespers)
20If a man says, “I love God,” and hates his brother, he is a liar; for he who doesn’t love his brother whom he has seen, how can he love God whom he has not seen?
21This commandment we have from him, that he who loves God should also love his brother.
1Whoever believes that Jesus is the Christ has been born of God. Whoever loves the Father also loves the child who is born of him.
2By this we know that we love the children of God, when we love God and keep his commandments.
3For this is loving God, that we keep his commandments. His commandments are not grievous.
4For whatever is born of God overcomes the world. This is the victory that has overcome the world: your faith.
5Who is he who overcomes the world, but he who believes that Jesus is the Son of God?
John 20.1-10
(7th Matins Gospel)
1Now on the first day of the week, Mary Magdalene went early, while it was still dark, to the tomb, and saw that the stone had been taken away from the tomb.
2Therefore she ran and came to Simon Peter and to the other disciple whom Jesus loved, and said to them, “They have taken away the Lord out of the tomb, and we don’t know where they have laid him!”
3Therefore Peter and the other disciple went out, and they went toward the tomb.
4They both ran together. The other disciple outran Peter and came to the tomb first.
5Stooping and looking in, he saw the linen cloths lying there; yet he didn’t enter in.
6Then Simon Peter came, following him, and entered into the tomb. He saw the linen cloths lying,
7and the cloth that had been on his head, not lying with the linen cloths, but rolled up in a place by itself.
8So then the other disciple who came first to the tomb also entered in, and he saw and believed.
9For as yet they didn’t know the Scripture, that he must rise from the dead.
10So the disciples went away again to their own homes.
Acts 11.19-26, 29-30 (Epistle)
19They therefore who were scattered abroad by the oppression that arose about Stephen traveled as far as Phoenicia, Cyprus, and Antioch, speaking the word to no one except to Jews only.
20But there were some of them, men of Cyprus and Cyrene, who, when they had come to Antioch, spoke to the Hellenists, preaching the Lord Jesus.
21The hand of the Lord was with them, and a great number believed and turned to the Lord.
22The report concerning them came to the ears of the assembly which was in Jerusalem. They sent out Barnabas to go as far as Antioch,
23who, when he had come, and had seen the grace of God, was glad. He exhorted them all, that with purpose of heart they should remain near to the Lord.
24For he was a good man, and full of the Holy Spirit and of faith, and many people were added to the Lord.
25Barnabas went out to Tarsus to look for Saul.
26When he had found him, he brought him to Antioch. For a whole year they were gathered together with the assembly, and taught many people. The disciples were first called Christians in Antioch.
29As any of the disciples had plenty, each determined to send relief to the brothers who lived in Judea;
30which they also did, sending it to the elders by the hands of Barnabas and Saul.
1 Corinthians 4.9-16
(Epistle, St Simeon)
9For I think that God has displayed us, the apostles, last of all, like men sentenced to death. For we are made a spectacle to the world, both to angels and men.
10We are fools for Christ’s sake, but you are wise in Christ. We are weak, but you are strong. You have honor, but we have dishonor.
11Even to this present hour we hunger, thirst, are naked, are beaten, and have no certain dwelling place.
12We toil, working with our own hands. When people curse us, we bless. Being persecuted, we endure.
13Being defamed, we entreat. We are made as the filth of the world, the dirt wiped off by all, even until now.
14I don’t write these things to shame you, but to admonish you as my beloved children.
15For though you have ten thousand tutors in Christ, you don’t have many fathers. For in Christ Jesus, I became your father through the Good News.
16I beg you therefore, be imitators of me.
John 4.5-42 (Gospel)
5So he came to a city of Samaria called Sychar, near the parcel of ground that Jacob gave to his son Joseph.
6Jacob’s well was there. Jesus therefore, being tired from his journey, sat down by the well. It was about the sixth hour.
7A woman of Samaria came to draw water. Jesus said to her, “Give me a drink.”
8For his disciples had gone away into the city to buy food.
9The Samaritan woman therefore said to him, “How is it that you, being a Jew, ask for a drink from me, a Samaritan woman?” (For Jews have no dealings with Samaritans.)
10Jesus answered her, “If you knew the gift of God, and who it is who says to you, ‘Give me a drink,’ you would have asked him, and he would have given you living water.”
11The woman said to him, “Sir, you have nothing to draw with, and the well is deep. So where do you get that living water?
12Are you greater than our father Jacob, who gave us the well and drank from it himself, as did his children and his livestock?”
13Jesus answered her, “Everyone who drinks of this water will thirst again,
14but whoever drinks of the water that I will give him will never thirst again; but the water that I will give him will become in him a well of water springing up to eternal life.”
15The woman said to him, “Sir, give me this water, so that I don’t get thirsty, neither come all the way here to draw.”
16Jesus said to her, “Go, call your husband, and come here.”
17The woman answered, “I have no husband.” Jesus said to her, “You said well, ‘I have no husband,’
18for you have had five husbands; and he whom you now have is not your husband. This you have said truly.”
19The woman said to him, “Sir, I perceive that you are a prophet.
20Our fathers worshiped in this mountain, and you Jews say that in Jerusalem is the place where people ought to worship.”
21Jesus said to her, “Woman, believe me, the hour is coming when neither in this mountain nor in Jerusalem will you worship the Father.
22You worship that which you don’t know. We worship that which we know; for salvation is from the Jews.
23But the hour comes, and now is, when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth, for the Father seeks such to be his worshipers.
24God is spirit, and those who worship him must worship in spirit and truth.”
25The woman said to him, “I know that Messiah is coming, he who is called Christ. When he has come, he will declare to us all things.”
26Jesus said to her, “I am he, the one who speaks to you.”
27Just then, his disciples came. They marveled that he was speaking with a woman; yet no one said, “What are you looking for?” or, “Why do you speak with her?”
28So the woman left her water pot, went away into the city, and said to the people,
29“Come, see a man who told me everything that I have done. Can this be the Christ?”
30They went out of the city, and were coming to him.
31In the meanwhile, the disciples urged him, saying, “Rabbi, eat.”
32But he said to them, “I have food to eat that you don’t know about.”
33The disciples therefore said to one another, “Has anyone brought him something to eat?”
34Jesus said to them, “My food is to do the will of him who sent me and to accomplish his work.
35Don’t you say, ‘There are yet four months until the harvest’? Behold, I tell you, lift up your eyes and look at the fields, that they are white for harvest already.
36He who reaps receives wages and gathers fruit to eternal life, that both he who sows and he who reaps may rejoice together.
37For in this the saying is true, ‘One sows, and another reaps.’
38I sent you to reap that for which you haven’t labored. Others have labored, and you have entered into their labor.”
39From that city many of the Samaritans believed in him because of the word of the woman, who testified, “He told me everything that I have done.”
40So when the Samaritans came to him, they begged him to stay with them. He stayed there two days.
41Many more believed because of his word.
42They said to the woman, “Now we believe, not because of your speaking; for we have heard for ourselves, and know that this is indeed the Christ, the Savior of the world.”
Matthew 13.54-58
(Gospel, St Simeon)
54Coming into his own country, he taught them in their synagogue, so that they were astonished and said, “Where did this man get this wisdom and these mighty works?
55Isn’t this the carpenter’s son? Isn’t his mother called Mary, and his brothers James, Joses, Simon, and Judas?
56Aren’t all of his sisters with us? Where then did this man get all of these things?”
57They were offended by him. But Jesus said to them, “A prophet is not without honor, except in his own country and in his own house.”
58He didn’t do many mighty works there because of their unbelief.
Commemorations
Apostle Simon Zelotes
He was one of the Twelve. He was born in Cana of Galilee; some accounts say that he was the bridegroom at the wedding at Cana, where the Lord Jesus performed his first sign (John ch. 2). After receiving the Holy Spirit at Pentecost, he preached the Gospel in Africa; he was privileged to die by crucifixion, like his Lord.
Holy Martyrs Alphaeus, Philadelphus and Cyprinus of Sicily (251)
They were brothers living in southern Italy, of noble family and devout faith in Christ. (They were the sons of Vitalius, a pagan governor.) Arrested for their confession of Christ, they were taken before a series of judges, subjected to torture each time. Finally they were taken to Sicily and tortured to death there, during the reign of Licinius. Their incorrupt relics were found in 1517. They once appeared in a vision to St Euthalia (March 2).
St Isidora the Fool of Tabenna (Egypt) (4th c.)
She was a nun in a monastery in Egypt, and pretended madness and mental weakness in order to hide her virtues and her ascetic life. She did the dirtiest jobs, lived on scraps from the nuns’ tables, and was despised by her sisters. An angel appeared to the ascetic Pitirim and revealed Isidora’s true sanctity to him. He came to the monastery and, seeing Isidora, prostrated himself before her, at which she prostrated before him. When the sisters told him that she was mad, he answered “It is you who are mad: she is greater before God than either you or me. I only beg God to give me also that which is destined for her at the dreadful Judgement.” At this, the sisters’ eyes were opened, and they began to treat Isidora with honor. But she, to avoid being honored by anyone, fled the monastery and was not heard from again.
Blessed Thaïs (Taïsia) of Egypt (4th c.)
“Thaïs was a rich maiden, a Christian in Egypt. She decided not to marry, but to give her possessions to the hermit monks. But, when she had given away all her goods, she gave herself to a life of debauchery. Hearing of this, the hermits begged Abba John the Dwarf to do something, and he went to Alexandria and began to weep in Thaïs’ hearing. When she heard the old man weeping for her sins, she repented at once, left her house and everything she had and went into the desert after the saint. One night when she was sleeping and John was standing in prayer, he saw an angel in a nimbus of light coming down to take Thaïs’ soul. And John saw that her sudden but deep repentance was more pleasing to God than the years-long but shallow repentance of many of the hermits.” (Prologue)