Joel 2.12-26 (Sixth Hour)

12Now therefore, says the Lord your God, turn to me with all your heart, and with fasting, and with weeping, and with lamentation: 13and rend your hearts, and not your garments, and turn to the Lord your God: for he is merciful and compassionate, longsuffering, and plenteous in mercy, and repents of evils. 14Who knows if he will return, and repent, and leave a blessing behind him, even a meat-offering and a drink-offering to the Lord your God? 15Sound the trumpet in Sion, sanctify a fast, proclaim a solemn service: 16gather the people, sanctify the congregation, assemble the elders, gather the infants at the breast: let the bridegroom go forth of his chamber, and the bride out of her closet. 17Between the porch and the altar let the priests that minister to the Lord weep, and say, Spare your people, O Lord, and give not your heritage to reproach, that the heathen should rule over them, lest they should say among the heathen, Where is their God? 18But the Lord was jealous of his land, and spared his people. 19And the Lord answered and said to his people, Behold, I will send you corn, and wine, and oil, and you⌃ shall be satisfied with them: and I will no longer make you a reproach among the Gentiles. 20And I will chase away from you the northern adversary, and will drive him away into a dry land, and I will sink his face in the former sea, and his back parts in the latter sea, and his ill savor shall come up, and his stink come up, because he has wrought great things. 21Be of good courage, O land; rejoice and be glad: for the Lord has done great things. 22Be of good courage, you⌃ beasts of the plain, for the plains of the wilderness have budded, for the trees have borne their fruit, the fig tree and the vine have yielded their strength. 23Rejoice then and be glad, you⌃ children of Sion, in the Lord your God: for he has given you food fully, and he will rain on you the early and the latter rain, as before. 24And the floors shall be filled with corn, and the presses shall overflow with wine and oil. 25And I will recompense you for the years which the locust, and the caterpillar, and the palmerworm, and the cankerworm have eaten, even my great army, which I sent against you. 26And you⌃ shall eat abundantly, and be satisfied, and shall praise the name of the Lord your God for the things which he has wrought wonderfully with you: and my people shall not be ashamed for ever.

Joel 3.12-21 (Vespers)

12Let them be aroused, let all the nations go up to the valley of Josaphat: for there will I sit to judge all the Gentiles round about. 13Bring forth the sickles, for the vintage is come: go in, tread the grapes, for the press is full: cause the vats to overflow; for their wickedness is multiplied. 14Noises have resounded in the valley of judgment: for the day of the Lord is near in the valley of judgment. 15The sun and the moon shall be darkened, and the stars shall withdraw their light. 16And the Lord shall cry out of Sion, and shall utter his voice from Jerusalem; and the heaven and the earth shall be shaken, but the Lord shall spare his people, and shall strengthen the children of Israel. 17And you⌃ shall know that I am the Lord your God, who dwell in Sion my holy mountain: and Jerusalem shall be holy, and strangers shall not pass through her anymore. 18And it shall come to pass in that day that the mountains shall drop sweet wine, and the hills shall flow with milk, and all the fountains of Juda shall flow with water, and a fountain shall go forth of the house of the Lord, and water the valley of flags. 19Egypt shall be a desolation, and Idumea shall be a desolate plain, because of the wrongs of the children of Juda, because they have shed righteous blood in their land. 20But Judea shall be inhabited for ever, and Jerusalem to all generations. 21And I will make inquisition for their blood, and will by no means leave it unavenged: and the Lord shall dwell in Sion.

Apostle Onesimus of the Seventy

He was a Phrygian by birth, a slave of Philemon, to whom the Apostle Paul addressed his epistle. Onesimos escaped from Philemon and fled to Rome, where he was converted to the Faith by St Paul. St Paul sent him back to his master, who at St Paul’s urging gave him his freedom. He served the Church for many years before dying a martyr, beaten to death with clubs.

Saint Onesimos is also commemorated on November 22, with Sts Philemon, Archippus and Aphia; and on January 4 at the Synaxis of the Seventy Disciples.

Our Venerable Father Dalmatius of Siberia (1697)

Saint Dalmatius is venerated as a pioneer of the movement that took many ascetics to dwell in the wilderness of Siberia, establishing a new company of Desert Fathers and causing the Russian Far North to be called the ‘Northern Thebaid.’ He was born in Tobolsk and reared in piety by his family, recently-converted Tatars. When grown, he entered the imperial army as a Cossack and served with such distinction that the Tsar awarded him a noble title. He married and lived in Tobolsk in comfort and prosperity. One day — after the destruction of Tobolsk in a great fire in 1643 — struck by a realization of the vanity of worldly things, he left family, wealth and property and went to a monastery in the Ural Mountains, taking with him only an icon of the Dormition of the Theotokos.

He was tonsured a monk with the name of Dalmatius, and devoted himself to prayer and ascesis with such fervor that, a short time later, the brethren elected him Abbot. Fearing pride and fleeing honor, Dalmatius fled with his icon of the Theotokos to a remote cave, where he lived a life of silence and continual prayer. His presence did not long remain secret in that sparsely-settled region, and soon Christians were coming from far and wide to ask his prayer and counsel; many pagans came to him for holy Baptism. Soon his habitation became too small for those who had chosen to stay as his disciples, and the Saint received a blessing from the Bishop of Tobolsk to build a wooden chapel and some cells. This was the beginning of the great Monastery of the Dormition (also called the Monastery of St Dalmatius).

Over the years the brethren endured many tribulations. Once the Tatar Prince of the region, provoked by false rumors, planned to destroy the monastery and kill all the monks. The night before the attack, the holy Mother of God appeared to the prince in resplendent clothes, holding a flaming sword in one hand and a scourge in the other. She forbade the Prince to harm the monastery or the brethren, and commanded him to give them a permanent concession over the region. Convinced by this vision, the Prince made peace with the monks and became the Monastery’s protector, though he was a Muslim.

In the succeeding years the Monastery was repeatedly burned down by the fierce pagan tribes which inhabited the area; once all the monks except St Dalmatius himself were butchered, but always the monastery was rebuilt. The Saint reposed in peace in 1697, and was succeeded as abbot by his own son Isaac, who built a stone shrine at the Monastery to house the relics of the Saint and the icon of the Mother of God which he had kept with him throughout his monastic life.

Our Venerable Father Anthimos of Chios (1960)

He was born in 1869 to devout peasants on Chios; he left elementary school early to become a shoemender. At the age of nineteen he visited a monastery (founded by the monk Pachomios, who had been the spiritual counsellor of St Nektarios); he was so moved by the monks’ ‘angelic life’ that on returning home he built himself a small hut and dwelt in it. His only ‘help’ in his spiritual contests was an icon of the Mother of God, which soon began to work miracles, drawing many to his hermitage. After a time he retired to a monastery where he was tonsured under the name Anthimos. He fell ill there, and his abbot sent him home to his parents for the sake of his health. At home, despite the fact that he was caring for his aged parents and practicing his shoemender’s trade, he continued to live as a monk, spending nights on end in prayer and sometimes living only on bread and water for extended periods.

Increasing numbers of visitors came to his hermitage and wonder-working icon of the Theotokos, and in 1910 he received the Great Schema. The people of Chios wanted him to be ordained to the priesthood, but his bishop refused due to the Saint’s lack of education. At the prompting of Anthimos’ godfather, the Bishop of Smyrna ordained him instead. After a pilgrimage to Mt Athos, he returned to Chios, where he became chaplain to a leper hospital. Soon the hospital, which had fallen into corruption, became a spiritual center, as much like a monastery as a hospital. Saint Anthimos tended many of the sickest with his own hands, working many miracles of healing; some of his recovered patients became monks or nuns.

With the notorious ‘Exchange of Populations’ of 1922-1924, refugees poured into Chios, many of them destitute nuns and girls. In response to a vision of the Mother of God, St Anthimos built a monastery, which opened with thirty nuns and grew rapidly, despite the opposition of many who said that setting up such a community was out of date (in 1924!). The monastery soon housed eighty nuns and was known througout Greece as a model of monastic life. Father Anthimos served as priest to the nuns, and continued to receive the many faithful — often sixty or seventy per day — who came to him for prayer or counsel. He carried on this ministry for more than thirty years, working many miracles of healing. When he was too old to work with his hands, he retired to his cell and prayed that he be enabled to serve his neighbor until his last breath. He reposed in peace at the age of ninety-one, mourned and revered by the whole island of Chios.