Nativity Fast, day 6
Saints commemorated
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Saint of the day
Ven. Gregory Decapolites
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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.
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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.
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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
2 Corinthians 5.1-10
1For we know that if our earthly house of this tabernacle were dissolved, we have a building of God, an house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens. 2For in this we groan, earnestly desiring to be clothed upon with our house which is from heaven: 3If so be that being clothed we shall not be found naked. 4For we that are in this tabernacle do groan, being burdened: not for that we would be unclothed, but clothed upon, that mortality might be swallowed up of life. 5Now he that hath wrought us for the selfsame thing is God, who also hath given unto us the earnest of the Spirit. 6Therefore we are always confident, knowing that, whilst we are at home in the body, we are absent from the Lord: 7(For we walk by faith, not by sight:) 8We are confident, I say, and willing rather to be absent from the body, and to be present with the Lord. 9Wherefore we labour, that, whether present or absent, we may be accepted of him. 10For we must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ; that every one may receive the things done in his body, according to that he hath done, whether it be good or bad.
Gospel
Luke 9.57-62
57And it came to pass, that, as they went in the way, a certain man said unto him, Lord, I will follow thee whithersoever thou goest. 58And Jesus said unto him, Foxes have holes, and birds of the air have nests; but the Son of man hath not where to lay his head. 59And he said unto another, Follow me. But he said, Lord, suffer me first to go and bury my father. 60Jesus said unto him, Let the dead bury their dead: but go thou and preach the kingdom of God. 61And another also said, Lord, I will follow thee; but let me first go bid them farewell, which are at home at my house. 62And Jesus said unto him, No man, having put his hand to the plough, and looking back, is fit for the kingdom of God.