Christmastide, day 10
Forefeast of Theophany
Saints commemorated
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Prophet Malachi
Malachi (fifth century before Christ) is the last of the twelve Minor Prophets, and his short book stands last of all the prophets in the Christian ordering of the Old Testament — the seal of prophecy before the four centuries of silence that ended only with John the Forerunner. His name means "my messenger" or "my angel," and both the Greek tradition and the Lives of the Prophets remember him as a young man of such beauty and such gentleness of life that the people called him an angel; the hymns of his feast play throughout on the name. He prophesied in Judah after the return from Babylon, when the second Temple stood again but its worship had grown careless; against the corrupt priests and the faithless people he set the vision of a "pure offering" to be made among all nations, of the "messenger of the covenant" and the Forerunner who would come "in the spirit and power of Elijah," and of the "Sun of Righteousness" rising "with healing in his wings." He is kept on January 3, within the Forefeast of the Theophany.
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Holy Martyr Gordius of Caesarea (4th c.)
Gordius (†c. 320) was a soldier-martyr of Caesarea in Cappadocia, a centurion of the Roman army who, when the persecution of the Christians broke out, laid down his sword and withdrew into the wilderness to purify himself by fasting and prayer. Judging at last that the hour had come, he came down of his own accord into the crowded amphitheatre of his city on a day of pagan games, and, standing in the midst of the assembled people, cried aloud that he was a Christian and would not deny his Lord. After the questioning of the magistrate and the torments that followed, he was beheaded. His passion is remembered above all because Basil the Great, archbishop of the same Caesarea, preached a celebrated homily in his honour on his feast, before a congregation many of whom still remembered the martyr — one of the great pieces of early Christian martyr-preaching, and the chief source for his life. He is kept on January 3, within the Forefeast of the Theophany.
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Our Holy Mother Genevieve of Paris (ca. 502)
Genevieve (c. 422 – c. 512) is the great ascetic patroness of Paris, a consecrated virgin of the fifth-century Gallo-Roman Church who is venerated among the pre-Schism saints of the West received into Orthodox commemoration. Born at Nanterre and set apart for God in childhood by the passing bishop Germanus of Auxerre, she took the veil in her mid-teens and gave her long life to prayer, fasting, vigil, and unwearied charity. When Attila and the Huns bore down on Paris in 451, she persuaded the terrified citizens not to flee but to fast and pray, and the horde turned aside from the city; during a later blockade she led a convoy up the Seine to bring back grain and saved the people from famine. Revered by the Frankish kings Childeric and Clovis, devoted to the memory of the martyr Denis, and famed for prophecy and healing, she reposed at a great age about the year 512 and was buried on the hill that still bears her name. She is commemorated on January 3, within the Forefeast of the Theophany.
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Ephraim of Nea Makri
Ephraim is a fifteenth-century Greek monk of Mount Amomon above the modern Nea Makri in Attica, held to have been tortured to death by Turkish raiders on 5 May 1426. Nothing whatever was known of him until 1950, when the nun Makaria Desipri, excavating the ruins of the abandoned Monastery of the Annunciation on the hill, uncovered a burial she took — on the strength of a series of dreams and visions she reported — to be his, and from which the whole of his transmitted biography derives. A very large popular veneration grew up around the shrine within a generation; the Church of Greece entered him in its calendar in 1998 and the Ecumenical Patriarchate in 2011. His commemoration is therefore canonically established and liturgically kept, while the historical foundation of his life rests on private revelation and not on any document, and the Church's own recognition of him was cautious and late.
British Isles and Ireland
- St. Hywyn, companion of St. Cadfan in Cornwall (6th C)
- St. Finlugh (Finlag) (6th C)
- St. Fintan (6th C)
- SS Fugatius and Damian (2nd C)
- St. Wenog
Troparia & kontakia
Kontakion — Tone 6
Let us all sing the praises of Gordius, the soldier unconquered in his contest and the crowned victor unvanquished in his torments — the great star that shone forth in very truth out of the East, the divine adornment of the Martyrs of Christ.
Kontakion — Tone 3
Filled full with the wisdom that is above all wisdom and divine, O most great Malachi, being by nature a prophet, thou didst show forth to all men Him who is from on high, the very Wisdom of God, come to dwell here below; wherefore we honour thee, keeping in faith thy sacred memory.
Sticheron
Thy head cut off by the sword, thou didst pass over manifestly from life to life, from the mortal to the immortal, from the corruptible to the incorruptible, not awaiting the death of nature but choosing of thine own will to die. O thy contests, victorious Gordius! by which, O Martyr, thou didst magnify Christ, the only compassionate One.
Sticheron
By thy life that imitated the angels thou wast shown forth on earth to be an angel, and didst fittingly gain for thyself the very name of Angel, O all-blessed Malachi, having harmoniously joined the beauty of thy soul to the beauty of thy body.
Troparion — Tone 4 (common of a venerable-martyr)
Trained in the discipline of the monks and made perfect in the contest of the martyrs, thou didst offer to Christ a twofold crown, O Ephraim: for having died to the world in the ascetic life, thou didst give thy body to torments for His name, and wast found faithful unto the end. Wherefore intercede with Him that our souls may be saved.
Troparion — Tone 8
In thee, O mother, was the image of God preserved with exactness; for taking up thy cross thou didst follow Christ, and by thy deeds thou didst teach us to despise the flesh, for it passeth away, but to have care for the soul, a thing immortal. Wherefore, O venerable Genevieve, thy spirit rejoiceth with the angels.
Troparion — Tone 4
Thy Martyr Gordius, 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 feeble insolence of demons. By his supplications, O Christ God, save our souls.
Troparion — Tone 2
As we celebrate the memory of thy prophet Malachi, O Lord, through him we entreat thee: save our souls.
Readings
Epistle
James 4.7-5.9
7Submit yourselves therefore to God. Resist the devil, and he will flee from you. 8Draw nigh to God, and he will draw nigh to you. Cleanse your hands, ye sinners; and purify your hearts, ye double minded. 9Be afflicted, and mourn, and weep: let your laughter be turned to mourning, and your joy to heaviness. 10Humble yourselves in the sight of the Lord, and he shall lift you up. 11Speak not evil one of another, brethren. He that speaketh evil of his brother, and judgeth his brother, speaketh evil of the law, and judgeth the law: but if thou judge the law, thou art not a doer of the law, but a judge. 12There is one lawgiver, who is able to save and to destroy: who art thou that judgest another? 13Go to now, ye that say, To day or to morrow we will go into such a city, and continue there a year, and buy and sell, and get gain: 14Whereas ye know not what shall be on the morrow. For what is your life? It is even a vapour, that appeareth for a little time, and then vanisheth away. 15For that ye ought to say, If the Lord will, we shall live, and do this, or that. 16But now ye rejoice in your boastings: all such rejoicing is evil. 17Therefore to him that knoweth to do good, and doeth it not, to him it is sin. 1Go to now, ye rich men, weep and howl for your miseries that shall come upon you. 2Your riches are corrupted, and your garments are motheaten. 3Your gold and silver is cankered; and the rust of them shall be a witness against you, and shall eat your flesh as it were fire. Ye have heaped treasure together for the last days. 4Behold, the hire of the labourers who have reaped down your fields, which is of you kept back by fraud, crieth: and the cries of them which have reaped are entered into the ears of the Lord of sabaoth. 5Ye have lived in pleasure on the earth, and been wanton; ye have nourished your hearts, as in a day of slaughter. 6Ye have condemned and killed the just; and he doth not resist you. 7Be patient therefore, brethren, unto the coming of the Lord. Behold, the husbandman waiteth for the precious fruit of the earth, and hath long patience for it, until he receive the early and latter rain. 8Be ye also patient; stablish your hearts: for the coming of the Lord draweth nigh. 9Grudge not one against another, brethren, lest ye be condemned: behold, the judge standeth before the door.
Gospel
Mark 12.38-44
38And he said unto them in his doctrine, Beware of the scribes, which love to go in long clothing, and love salutations in the marketplaces, 39And the chief seats in the synagogues, and the uppermost rooms at feasts: 40Which devour widows’ houses, and for a pretence make long prayers: these shall receive greater damnation. 41And Jesus sat over against the treasury, and beheld how the people cast money into the treasury: and many that were rich cast in much. 42And there came a certain poor widow, and she threw in two mites, which make a farthing. 43And he called unto him his disciples, and saith unto them, Verily I say unto you, That this poor widow hath cast more in, than all they which have cast into the treasury: 44For all they did cast in of their abundance; but she of her want did cast in all that she had, even all her living.