2nd Sunday after Pentecost

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Apostles Fast — Fish, Wine and Oil are Allowed Tone 1

Apostles' Fast, day 7

All Saints of America, All Saints of Russia

Saints commemorated

Martyr Julian of Tarsus

Julian (†c. 305) was a martyr of Cilicia, in the south-east of Asia Minor — a young man of senatorial family from Anazarbus who confessed Christ in the Great Persecution under the Roman governor and, after a year of being dragged from city to city and tortured, was sewn into a sack filled with sand and venomous vipers and scorpions and cast into the sea. The waves bore his body to the Cilician shore (the tradition says to Alexandria), whence his relics were gathered and at last enshrined at Antioch. There, some ninety years later, John Chrysostom preached a celebrated homily in his honour, which remains the chief witness to his martyrdom. He is commemorated on March 16.
Our Holy Fathers Julius and Julian (5th c.)

Julius and Julian were brothers, a presbyter and a deacon, Greeks by birth who in the fourth or fifth century carried the Gospel into the north Italian lake country and spent their lives throwing down the altars of the old religion and raising churches in their place — a hundred of them, the tradition says, the last of which Julius built on the island in Lake Orta that has borne his name ever since. Their memory is Western in its soil and Eastern in its calendar: the Latin Church keeps Julius at Novara on January 31 and Julian at Gozzano, while the Byzantine books commemorate the two brothers together on June 21, and the Slavonic synaxarion tells their story at length. Both reposed in peace and are honoured as venerable rather than as martyrs.
Ananias the Iconographer

Ananias was a monk of the Monastery of Saint Antony the Roman at Novgorod and a painter of icons, remembered for two things: the beauty of the images he made of the holy wonderworkers, and the fact that for thirty-three years he never once passed outside the monastery walls. He reposed in the sixteenth century — the year is given variously as 1521, 1561 and 1581 — and was buried in the monastery, at a place no longer known. He is commemorated on June 21, and again with the Synaxis of the Saints of Novgorod on the third Sunday after Pentecost.
Anastasia of Serbia

Anastasia — Ana in the world — was the wife of the Serbian Grand Prince Stefan Nemanja and the mother of the three men who made mediaeval Serbia: Stefan the First-Crowned, Vukan, and Rastko, who became Sabbas of Serbia. In 1196, when Nemanja abdicated at the council of Ras, the two took the monastic habit on the same day and by the same act — he as Symeon, she as Anastasia — and she withdrew to the monastery of the Theotokos, where she reposed in 1200. She is venerated as venerable in the Serbian Church, the mother of a saint and herself a monastic, and her relics rest at Studenica. She is commemorated on June 21.
Aphrodisius of Cilicia

Aphrodisius is a martyr of Cilicia — of Tarsus, where the tradition that names a city at all places him — commemorated by the Greek books on June 21, the day of his fellow-Cilician Julian of Tarsus. His notice is one of the shortest in the calendar: a name, a rank, and a province. No passion, no date, no emperor, no manner of death and no companions have come down with him, and this entry does not supply what the record does not contain. He is honoured as one of the many whose names the Church of Cilicia kept when their histories were lost.
Archil II of Georgia

Archil (†744) was a king of the Chosroid house, a descendant of Mirian's line, who ruled in Kartli and Kakheti during the catastrophic Arab invasion led by the commander the Georgian chronicles call Murvan the Deaf. He rebuilt what the invaders had razed, and when a second Arab army came he went into their camp to sue for peace for his people. Required to renounce Christ and accept Islam, the old king answered that he would not forsake the true God; he was imprisoned, tortured, and at last beheaded on 20 March 744, being about eighty years of age. His body was carried secretly to the church at Notkora in Kakheti, which he himself had built. Georgia keeps him with the later martyr-king Luarsab II on June 21.
Luarsab II of Georgia

Luarsab II (1587–1622), of the Bagrationi house, was king of Kartli from boyhood, a ruler remembered for learning and piety as much as for the victory his small army won over a far larger Ottoman force at Kvenadkotsi in 1609. Caught between the Ottoman and the Safavid empires, he was summoned by Shah Abbas I of Persia, went to him rather than let his country be laid waste, and refused both to break the fast at the Shah's table and to accept Islam. He was carried to Persia and held seven years in the fortress of Gulab-Kala near Shiraz, beaten and pressed to apostatise, and at last strangled with a bowstring in 1622, at thirty-five, two of his servants dying with him. Georgia keeps him with the eighth-century martyr-king Archil II on June 21.
Maximus the Greek

Maximus the Greek (c. 1470 – 1556) was an Athonite scholar-monk sent from Vatopedi to Muscovite Russia as a translator, who became one of the most learned men of his age and a confessor imprisoned for decades. Born Michael Trivolis at Arta in Epirus and educated in Renaissance Italy — Florence, Venice, Padua — he returned to Orthodoxy and became a monk on Mount Athos. Summoned to Moscow in 1516 to translate and correct the Slavonic service-books and Scriptures, he laid the foundations of Russian humanist learning; but his rebukes of injustice and avarice, his links to the "non-possessor" party, and errors seized upon from his corrections brought him, at councils of 1525 and 1531, condemnation on charges of heresy, sorcery, and treason. He was imprisoned in the monasteries of Volokolamsk and Tver for more than twenty years, cut off for long stretches from the sacraments, yet never ceased to write. Released at the last to the Trinity–St Sergius Lavra, he reposed there on January 21, 1556, and was glorified by the Russian Church in 1988.
Nicetas of Nisyros

Nicetas was a boy of Mandraki, on the volcanic island of Nisyros in the Dodecanese, whose father — a notable of the town — escaped execution for a crime by turning Muslim, and carried his household with him; the child, renamed Mehmed, was raised in Islam without knowing that he had ever been baptised. Learning the truth from a taunt, he fled to Chios, was received back into the Church with holy chrism at the monastery of Nea Moni, and, counselled that a Christian who has denied Christ must confess Him where he denied Him, went of his own will to declare himself before the Turkish judge. After ten days of prison and torture he was beheaded on 21 June 1732, at seventeen. His head is kept at Iviron on Mount Athos and his relics at the church that bears his name on Nisyros.
Terence of Iconium

Terence, bishop of Iconium in Lycaonia, is commemorated on June 21 as a hieromartyr of the first century — one of the earliest successors of the apostles in a see founded by the preaching of Paul and Barnabas. The whole of his surviving notice is a single line: that he governed the church of Iconium, was tortured for the confession of Christ, and was beheaded. The Slavonic books identify him with the apostle of the Seventy Tertius, the scribe who wrote out the Epistle to the Romans and who is elsewhere named second bishop of Iconium; the Greek books keep the June 21 hieromartyr under his own name and make no such equation. The identification is the one substantial question his entry raises.

British Isles and Ireland

St. Mewan (617)
St. Corbmac, abbot of Durrow (590)
St. Engelmund, abbot and missionary (c.739)

Troparia & kontakia

Apolytikion — Tone 8 (common of a venerable monastic)

In thee, O Father, was the image of God preserved unimpaired; for taking up the Cross thou didst follow Christ, and by thy deeds thou didst teach us to despise the flesh, which passeth away, but to care for the soul, a thing immortal. Wherefore, O venerable Ananias, thy spirit rejoiceth with the angels.

Apolytikion — Tone 8 (common of a venerable woman)

In thee, O Mother, was the image of God preserved unimpaired; for taking up the Cross thou didst follow Christ, and by thy deeds thou didst teach us to despise the flesh, which passeth away, but to care for the soul, a thing immortal. Wherefore, O venerable Anastasia, thy spirit rejoiceth with the angels.

Apolytikion — Tone 8 (common of venerable monastics)

In you, O Fathers, was the image of God preserved unimpaired; for taking up the Cross you followed Christ, and by your deeds you taught us to despise the flesh, which passes away, but to care for the soul, a thing immortal. Wherefore, O venerable Julius and Julian, your spirits rejoice with the angels.

Apolytikion — Tone 4 (common of a hieromartyr)

As a sharer in the ways and a successor to the thrones of the Apostles, O divinely-inspired one, thou didst find in contemplation the means to ascend to divine heights; rightly dividing the word of truth, thou didst struggle for the faith even unto blood, O hieromartyr Terence: intercede with Christ God that our souls may be saved.

Troparion — Tone 4 (common of a martyr)

Thy martyr Aphrodisius, O Lord, in his contest received an incorruptible crown from thee, our God; for possessing thy strength, he cast down the tyrants and shattered the feeble insolence of the demons. By his intercessions save our souls.

Troparion — Tone 4 (common of a martyr)

Thy martyr Archil, O Lord, in his contest received an incorruptible crown from thee, our God; for possessing thy strength, he cast down the tyrants and shattered the feeble insolence of the demons. By his intercessions save our souls.

Troparion — Tone 4 (common of a martyr)

Thy martyr Julian, O Lord, in his contest has received from thee our God the crown of incorruption; for having thy strength, he cast down the tyrants and shattered the impotent insolence of the demons. By his supplications, O Christ God, save our souls.

Troparion — Tone 4 (common of a martyr)

Thy martyr Luarsab, O Lord, in his contest received an incorruptible crown from thee, our God; for possessing thy strength, he cast down the tyrants and shattered the feeble insolence of the demons. By his intercessions save our souls.

Troparion — Tone 4 (common of a martyr)

Thy martyr Nicetas, O Lord, in his contest received an incorruptible crown from thee, our God; for possessing thy strength, he cast down the tyrants and shattered the feeble insolence of the demons. By his intercessions save our souls.

Readings

Vespers

Isaiah 43.9-14

⁹Let all the nations be gathered together, and let the people be assembled: who among them can declare this, and shew us former things? let them bring forth their witnesses, that they may be justified: or let them hear, and say, It is truth. ¹⁰Ye are my witnesses, saith the LORD, and my servant whom I have chosen: that ye may know and believe me, and understand that I am he: before me there was no God formed, neither shall there be after me. ¹¹I, even I, am the LORD; and beside me there is no saviour. ¹²I have declared, and have saved, and I have shewed, when there was no strange god among you: therefore ye are my witnesses, saith the LORD, that I am God. ¹³Yea, before the day was I am he; and there is none that can deliver out of my hand: I will work, and who shall let it? ¹⁴Thus saith the LORD, your redeemer, the Holy One of Israel; For your sake I have sent to Babylon, and have brought down all their nobles, and the Chaldeans, whose cry is in the ships.

Wisdom of Solomon 3.1-9

¹But the souls of the righteous are in the hand of God, and there shall no torment touch them. ²In the sight of the unwise they seemed to die: and their departure is taken for misery, ³And their going from us to be utter destruction: but they are in peace. ⁴For though they be punished in the sight of men, yet is their hope full of immortality. ⁵And having been a little chastised, they shall be greatly rewarded: for God proved them, and found them worthy for himself. ⁶As gold in the furnace hath he tried them, and received them as a burnt offering. ⁷And in the time of their visitation they shall shine, and run to and fro like sparks among the stubble. ⁸They shall judge the nations, and have dominion over the people, and their Lord shall reign for ever. ⁹They that put their trust in him shall understand the truth: and such as be faithful in love shall abide with him: for grace and mercy is to his saints, and he hath care for his elect.

Wisdom of Solomon 5.15-6.3

¹⁵But the righteous live for evermore; their reward also is with the Lord, and the care of them is with the most High. ¹⁶Therefore shall they receive a glorious kingdom, and a beautiful crown from the Lord’s hand: for with his right hand shall he cover them, and with his arm shall he protect them. ¹⁷He shall take to him his jealousy for complete armour, and make the creature his weapon for the revenge of his enemies. ¹⁸He shall put on righteousness as a breastplate, and true judgment instead of an helmet. ¹⁹He shall take holiness for an invincible shield. ²⁰His severe wrath shall he sharpen for a sword, and the world shall fight with him against the unwise. ²¹Then shall the right aiming thunderbolts go abroad; and from the clouds, as from a well drawn bow, shall they fly to the mark. ²²And hailstones full of wrath shall be cast as out of a stone bow, and the water of the sea shall rage against them, and the floods shall cruelly drown them. ²³Yea, a mighty wind shall stand up against them, and like a storm shall blow them away: thus iniquity shall lay waste the whole earth, and ill dealing shall overthrow the thrones of the mighty. ¹Hear therefore, O ye kings, and understand; learn, ye that be judges of the ends of the earth. ²Give ear, ye that rule the people, and glory in the multitude of nations. ³For power is given you of the Lord, and sovereignty from the Highest, who shall try your works, and search out your counsels.

2nd Matins Gospel

Mark 16.1-8

¹And when the sabbath was past, Mary Magdalene, and Mary the mother of James, and Salome, had bought sweet spices, that they might come and anoint him. ²And very early in the morning the first day of the week, they came unto the sepulchre at the rising of the sun. ³And they said among themselves, Who shall roll us away the stone from the door of the sepulchre? ⁴And when they looked, they saw that the stone was rolled away: for it was very great. ⁵And entering into the sepulchre, they saw a young man sitting on the right side, clothed in a long white garment; and they were affrighted. ⁶And he saith unto them, Be not affrighted: Ye seek Jesus of Nazareth, which was crucified: he is risen; he is not here: behold the place where they laid him. ⁷But go your way, tell his disciples and Peter that he goeth before you into Galilee: there shall ye see him, as he said unto you. ⁸And they went out quickly, and fled from the sepulchre; for they trembled and were amazed: neither said they any thing to any man; for they were afraid.

Epistle

Romans 2.10-16

¹⁰But glory, honour, and peace, to every man that worketh good, to the Jew first, and also to the Gentile: ¹¹For there is no respect of persons with God. ¹²For as many as have sinned without law shall also perish without law: and as many as have sinned in the law shall be judged by the law; ¹³(For not the hearers of the law are just before God, but the doers of the law shall be justified. ¹⁴For when the Gentiles, which have not the law, do by nature the things contained in the law, these, having not the law, are a law unto themselves: ¹⁵Which shew the work of the law written in their hearts, their conscience also bearing witness, and their thoughts the mean while accusing or else excusing one another;) ¹⁶In the day when God shall judge the secrets of men by Jesus Christ according to my gospel.

Hebrews 11.33-12.2 (Saints)

³³Who through faith subdued kingdoms, wrought righteousness, obtained promises, stopped the mouths of lions, ³⁴Quenched the violence of fire, escaped the edge of the sword, out of weakness were made strong, waxed valiant in fight, turned to flight the armies of the aliens. ³⁵Women received their dead raised to life again: and others were tortured, not accepting deliverance; that they might obtain a better resurrection: ³⁶And others had trial of cruel mockings and scourgings, yea, moreover of bonds and imprisonment: ³⁷They were stoned, they were sawn asunder, were tempted, were slain with the sword: they wandered about in sheepskins and goatskins; being destitute, afflicted, tormented; ³⁸(Of whom the world was not worthy:) they wandered in deserts, and in mountains, and in dens and caves of the earth. ³⁹And these all, having obtained a good report through faith, received not the promise: ⁴⁰God having provided some better thing for us, that they without us should not be made perfect. ¹Wherefore seeing we also are compassed about with so great a cloud of witnesses, let us lay aside every weight, and the sin which doth so easily beset us, and let us run with patience the race that is set before us, ²Looking unto Jesus the author and finisher of our faith; who for the joy that was set before him endured the cross, despising the shame, and is set down at the right hand of the throne of God.

Gospel

Matthew 4.18-23

¹⁸And Jesus, walking by the sea of Galilee, saw two brethren, Simon called Peter, and Andrew his brother, casting a net into the sea: for they were fishers. ¹⁹And he saith unto them, Follow me, and I will make you fishers of men. ²⁰And they straightway left their nets, and followed him. ²¹And going on from thence, he saw other two brethren, James the son of Zebedee, and John his brother, in a ship with Zebedee their father, mending their nets; and he called them. ²²And they immediately left the ship and their father, and followed him. ²³And Jesus went about all Galilee, teaching in their synagogues, and preaching the gospel of the kingdom, and healing all manner of sickness and all manner of disease among the people.

Matthew 4.25-5.12 (Saints)

²⁵And there followed him great multitudes of people from Galilee, and from Decapolis, and from Jerusalem, and from Judaea, and from beyond Jordan. ¹And seeing the multitudes, he went up into a mountain: and when he was set, his disciples came unto him: ²And he opened his mouth, and taught them, saying, ³Blessed are the poor in spirit: for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. ⁴Blessed are they that mourn: for they shall be comforted. ⁵Blessed are the meek: for they shall inherit the earth. ⁶Blessed are they which do hunger and thirst after righteousness: for they shall be filled. ⁷Blessed are the merciful: for they shall obtain mercy. ⁸Blessed are the pure in heart: for they shall see God. ⁹Blessed are the peacemakers: for they shall be called the children of God. ¹⁰Blessed are they which are persecuted for righteousness’ sake: for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. ¹¹Blessed are ye, when men shall revile you, and persecute you, and shall say all manner of evil against you falsely, for my sake. ¹²Rejoice, and be exceeding glad: for great is your reward in heaven: for so persecuted they the prophets which were before you.