12And it shall come to pass, when the Lord shall have finished doing all things on Mount Sion and Jerusalem, that I will visit upon the proud heart, even upon the ruler of the Assyrians, and upon the boastful haughtiness of his eyes.
13For he said, I will act in strength, and in the wisdom of my understanding I will remove the boundaries of nations, and will spoil their strength.
14And I will shake the inhabited cities: and I will take with my hand all the world as a nest: and I will even take them as eggs that have been left; and there is none that shall escape me, or contradict me.
15Shall the axe glorify itself without him that hews with it? or shall the saw lift up itself without him that uses it, as if one should lift a rod or staff? but it shall not be so;
16but the Lord of hosts shall send dishonor upon your honor, and burning fire shall be kindled upon your glory.
17And the light of Israel shall be for a fire, and he shall sanctify him with burning fire, and it shall devour the wood as grass.
18In that day the mountains shall be consumed, and the hills, and the forests, and fire shall devour both soul and body: and he that flees shall be as one fleeing from burning flame.
19And they that are left of them shall be a small number, and a child shall write them.
20And it shall come to pass in that day that the remnant of Israel shall no more join themselves with, and the saved of Jacob shall no more trust in, them that injured them; but they shall trust in the Holy God of Israel, in truth.
Genesis 7.6-9 (Vespers)
6And Noe was six hundred years old when the flood of water was upon the earth.
7And then went in Noe and his sons and his wife, and his sons' wives with him into the ark, because of the water of the flood.
8And of clean flying creatures and of unclean flying creatures, and of clean cattle and of unclean cattle, and of all things that creep upon the earth,
9pairs went in to Noe into the ark, male and female, as God commanded Noe.
Proverbs 9.12-18 (LXX) (Vespers)
12Son, if you be wise for yourself, you shall also be wise for your neighbors; and if you should prove wicked, you alone will bear the evil. He that stays himself upon falsehoods, attempts to rule the winds, and the same will pursue birds in their fight: for he has forsaken the ways of his own vineyard, and he has caused the axles of his own husbandry to go astray; and he goes through a dry desert, and a land appointed to drought, and he gathers barrenness with his hands.
13A foolish and bold woman, who knows not modesty, comes to lack a morsel.
14She sits at the doors of her house, on a seat openly in the streets,
15calling to passers by, and to those that are going right on their ways;
16saying, Whoso is most senseless of you, let him turn aside to me; and I exhort those that lack prudence, saying,
17Take and enjoy secret bread, and the sweet water of theft.
18But he knows that mighty men die by her, and he falls in with a snare of hell. But hasten away, delay not in the place, neither fix your eye upon her: for thus shall you go through strange water; but do you abstain from strange water, and drink not of a strange fountain, that you may live long, and years of life may be added to you.
Commemorations
St James the Confessor of Catania
His birthplace and the place of his episcopate are unknown. He was a monk of the Studion monastery in Constantinople, and a disciple of St Theodore the Studite. As a bishop he was severely persecuted by the iconoclasts in the time of the Emperor Constantine Copronymus, enduring hunger, imprisonment and mocking, thus earning the title “Confessor.” Saint Theodore wrote a homily in honor of him.
Our Holy Father Serapion (366)
‘A companion of St Antony the Great, he lived in the Nitrian desert, in charge of the monastery of Arsina which contained 11,000 monks. Palladius and Sozomenes gave him the title “the Great”. He entered into rest in about 366. St Serapion wrote: “Do not think that sickness is grave; only sin is grave… Sickness leads us only to the tomb, but sin follows the sinner beyond it”.’ (Prologue)
Saint Seraphim of Vyritsa (1949) (March 21 OC)
Born in 1866, he married and had three children. In 1920, at the age of 54, he and his wife quietly separated and each entered monastic life. Eventually he became the spiritual father of the St. Alexander Nevsky Lavra in St. Petersburg, where, as a clairvoyant staretz, he also confessed thousands of laity. He said, “I am the storage room where people’s afflictions gather.” In imitation of his patron saint, he prayed for a thousand nights on a rock before an icon of St. Seraphim of Sarov. He reposed in the Lord in 1949 and the Church of Russia glorified him in August of 2000. Thus his whole life as a monk was spent under Communist persecution.