Nativity Fast, day 6
Saints commemorated
-
Saint of the day
Ven. Gregory Decapolites
-
Our Holy Father Proclus, Archbishop of Constantinople (447)
Proclus (died 446 or 447) was Archbishop of Constantinople from 434, a disciple and secretary of John Chrysostom whose gifts as a preacher placed him at the centre of the greatest doctrinal crisis of the fifth century. His homily on the Mother of God, delivered in the great church before the patriarch Nestorius, became a public defence of the title Theotokos and helped open the controversy that the Council of Ephesus (431) would settle. As archbishop he brought the relics of his master Chrysostom home to Constantinople in triumph, governed with a gentleness that quieted the divided city, and left a body of homilies and doctrinal letters — above all the Tome to the Armenians — that made him a teacher of the Church. He is commemorated on November 20.
-
Dasius of Dorostorum
Dasius was a Christian of Dorostorum on the lower Danube who was beheaded for Christ, by tradition on November 20 of about the year 303, in the persecution of Diocletian and Maximian. His Passion tells that he was chosen by lot to play the mock-king of a pagan Saturn-festival — a youth honoured and indulged for a month and then sacrificed to the god — and that he refused the whole blasphemous rite, declaring that if he must die he would die as a Christian for Christ rather than as a victim for an idol. He confessed his faith openly, was tortured, and was put to the sword. His Passion is a document of unusual interest for the light it throws on the survival of the Roman Saturnalia among the soldiers of the Danube frontier. He is commemorated on November 20.
-
Gregory of Decapolis
Gregory the Decapolite (c. 780–c. 842) was one of the great wandering ascetics of the age of the second iconoclasm, a monk of the Decapolis of Isauria who spent his life on the roads of the Byzantine world — Ephesus and Constantinople, Rome and Corinth, Sicily and Thessalonica — preaching the veneration of the holy icons and confirming the persecuted Orthodox. Gifted, his Life relates, with prophecy and healing, he reposed at Constantinople shortly before the Triumph of Orthodoxy. His incorrupt relics, carried out of the fallen capital and bought in 1498 by the Ban of Wallachia, rest to this day at the Bistrița Monastery in Romania, where he is among the most beloved of saints. He is commemorated on November 20.
British Isles and Ireland
- St. Edmund, King of East Anglia and Martyr (869)
- St. Eval, bishop of Cornwall (6th C)
Troparia & kontakia
Kontakion — Tone 3
As a radiant sun the Church knoweth thee, O favourite of Christ, who enlightenest all by the beauty of thy virtues and the rays of thy healings. Therefore we keep thy honoured memory and venerate thy struggles, O all-blessed and most-wise father Gregory.
Kontakion — Tone 4
Worthily this day doth the most honoured of all cities keep high festival at thy precious repose, O father of fathers, wise Proclus.
Troparion — Tone 4
Thy martyr Dasius, O Lord, in his contest received the crown of incorruption from Thee our God; for, possessed of Thy strength, he cast down the tyrants and shattered the powerless boldness of the demons. By his intercessions, O Christ God, save our souls.
Troparion — Tone 4
O God of our Fathers, who ever dealest with us according to Thy forbearance: take not Thy mercy from us, but by their supplications govern our life in peace.
Troparion — Tone 4
O God of our Fathers, who ever dealest with us according to Thy forbearance: take not Thy mercy from us, but by their supplications govern our life in peace.
Readings
Epistle
1 Thessalonians 5.1-8
1But of the times and the seasons, brethren, ye have no need that I write unto you. 2For yourselves know perfectly that the day of the Lord so cometh as a thief in the night. 3For when they shall say, Peace and safety; then sudden destruction cometh upon them, as travail upon a woman with child; and they shall not escape. 4But ye, brethren, are not in darkness, that that day should overtake you as a thief. 5Ye are all the children of light, and the children of the day: we are not of the night, nor of darkness. 6Therefore let us not sleep, as do others; but let us watch and be sober. 7For they that sleep sleep in the night; and they that be drunken are drunken in the night. 8But let us, who are of the day, be sober, putting on the breastplate of faith and love; and for an helmet, the hope of salvation.
Gospel
Luke 16.1-9
1And he said also unto his disciples, There was a certain rich man, which had a steward; and the same was accused unto him that he had wasted his goods. 2And he called him, and said unto him, How is it that I hear this of thee? give an account of thy stewardship; for thou mayest be no longer steward. 3Then the steward said within himself, What shall I do? for my lord taketh away from me the stewardship: I cannot dig; to beg I am ashamed. 4I am resolved what to do, that, when I am put out of the stewardship, they may receive me into their houses. 5So he called every one of his lord’s debtors unto him, and said unto the first, How much owest thou unto my lord? 6And he said, An hundred measures of oil. And he said unto him, Take thy bill, and sit down quickly, and write fifty. 7Then said he to another, And how much owest thou? And he said, An hundred measures of wheat. And he said unto him, Take thy bill, and write fourscore. 8And the lord commended the unjust steward, because he had done wisely: for the children of this world are in their generation wiser than the children of light. 9And I say unto you, Make to yourselves friends of the mammon of unrighteousness; that, when ye fail, they may receive you into everlasting habitations.