Great Lent, day 3 · 46 days until Pascha
Saints commemorated
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Saint of the day
St Porphyrius, Bishop of Gaza
Porphyrius (c. 347 – 420) was bishop of Gaza from 395 to his death, and the man who broke the last great stronghold of organized paganism in Palestine. Born to wealth at Thessalonica, he gave up the world at twenty-five for the monks of the Egyptian desert of Scetis and then a cave above the Jordan; healed of a wasting illness by a vision of Christ at Golgotha, he was made keeper of the Wood of the Cross at Jerusalem, and against his will was consecrated bishop of Gaza — a city where a mere handful of Christians lived surrounded by the temples of Marnas, Aphrodite, Apollo, and the rest. There he waged a long and dangerous struggle against the pagan majority, and at length secured from the Empress Eudoxia and the Emperor Arcadius the imperial order that in 402 razed the eight public temples of Gaza — above all the Marneion, the vast shrine of Marnas — and raised in its place the cruciform church called the Eudoxiana. His deeds are known in extraordinary detail from the Life written by his deacon and companion Mark, one of the most vivid biographies to survive from the Christian antiquity. He reposed on February 26, 420.
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St Photini the Samaritan Woman, and those with her (66)
Photini (first century – c. 66) is the name the Church gives to the Samaritan woman whom Christ met at Jacob's Well near Sychar and to whom, alone among all to whom he spoke, he openly declared himself the Messiah (John 4). Tradition holds that she was baptized with the name Photini, "the enlightened," and became a fearless preacher of the Gospel — carrying it, with her two sons and her five sisters, as far as Carthage and at last to Rome in the days of Nero. There, the tradition relates, the whole company confessed Christ before the emperor, converted his daughter Domnina and the officer Sebastian sent to break them, and after fearful tortures were martyred about the year 66 — Photini herself, it is said, cast at the end into a dry well, the well of her witness answering the well of her calling. She is honoured as Great-Martyr and Equal-to-the-Apostles. Her fixed commemoration is February 26; her principal feast is the movable Sunday of the Samaritan Woman, the fourth Sunday after Pascha, on which the Church reads the Gospel of the Well.
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John Kalfa
John Kalfa (†1575) was a new-martyr of Constantinople under the Ottoman yoke: a Christian woodworker and cabinetmaker — kalfa, the Turkish builders' word for a master-craftsman or foreman, which became his surname — who lived in Galata across the Golden Horn and whose skill won him work for the great officials and even the Sultan's palace. Drawn into a dispute of religion by a former apprentice, he spoke plainly against Muhammad and was denounced. Refusing every inducement to embrace Islam and confessing Christ throughout months of imprisonment, torture, and forced labour, he was beheaded in a crowded square of the city on February 26, 1575. His sufferings were recorded by a cleric of the Patriarchate who attended him in prison, and he is numbered among the new-martyrs of the Church of Constantinople.
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Sebastian of Poshekhonye
Sebastian of Poshekhonye (†c. 1500) was a Russian monastic saint, the founder and first abbot of a hermitage in the forested Poshekhonye country of the upper Volga. On the River Sokhota, some ninety versts from the town of Romanov (now Tutaev) in the region of Yaroslavl, he raised a monastery in honour of the Transfiguration of the Lord, and gathered a brotherhood whom he taught to live by the labour of their own hands, tilling the soil for their bread. He reposed about the year 1500 and was buried at his monastery; his relics rested there, and in later centuries a stone church was built above them. He is commemorated on February 26.
Troparia & kontakia
Kontakion — Tone 2
Adorned with thy most sacred ways of life, thou wast made resplendent in the vestments of the priesthood, O all-blessed and God-minded Porphyrius; thou art radiant in the heights of healings, interceding without ceasing on behalf of us all.
Troparion — Tone 4
Thy martyr, O Lord, in his contest received the crown of incorruption from thee our God; for possessed of thy might, he cast down the tyrants and shattered the feeble insolence of demons. By his supplications, O Christ God, save our souls.
Troparion — Tone 4
Thy ewe-lamb, O Jesus, cries out with a great voice: O my Bridegroom, thee I love, and seeking thee I struggle, and I am crucified and buried together with thee in thy baptism; I suffer for thy sake, that I may reign with thee; I die for thee, that I may live in thee. Receive me as a spotless sacrifice, offered to thee with love. By her intercessions save thou our souls, O thou who art merciful.
Troparion — Tone 4
A rule of faith and an image of meekness, a teacher of temperance, the truth of things itself revealed thee to thy flock. Therefore by lowliness thou didst gain the things that are exalted, and by poverty the things that are rich. O Father and Hierarch Porphyrius, intercede with Christ our God that our souls may be saved.
Troparion — Tone 8
In thee, O Father, was preserved unimpaired that which is according to the image; for taking up thy cross thou didst follow Christ, and by thy deeds thou didst teach us to despise the flesh, for it passes away, but to care for the soul, a thing immortal. Therefore, O venerable Sebastian, thy spirit rejoices together with the Angels.
Readings
6th Hour
Isaiah 2.3-11
3And many people shall go and say, Come ye, and let us go up to the mountain of the LORD, to the house of the God of Jacob; and he will teach us of his ways, and we will walk in his paths: for out of Zion shall go forth the law, and the word of the LORD from Jerusalem. 4And he shall judge among the nations, and shall rebuke many people: and they shall beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruninghooks: nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war any more. 5O house of Jacob, come ye, and let us walk in the light of the LORD. 6Therefore thou hast forsaken thy people the house of Jacob, because they be replenished from the east, and are soothsayers like the Philistines, and they please themselves in the children of strangers. 7Their land also is full of silver and gold, neither is there any end of their treasures; their land is also full of horses, neither is there any end of their chariots: 8Their land also is full of idols; they worship the work of their own hands, that which their own fingers have made: 9And the mean man boweth down, and the great man humbleth himself: therefore forgive them not. 10Enter into the rock, and hide thee in the dust, for fear of the LORD, and for the glory of his majesty. 11The lofty looks of man shall be humbled, and the haughtiness of men shall be bowed down, and the LORD alone shall be exalted in that day.
Vespers
Genesis 1.24-2.3
24And God said, Let the earth bring forth the living creature after his kind, cattle, and creeping thing, and beast of the earth after his kind: and it was so. 25And God made the beast of the earth after his kind, and cattle after their kind, and every thing that creepeth upon the earth after his kind: and God saw that it was good. 26And God said, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness: and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth. 27So God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them. 28And God blessed them, and God said unto them, Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth, and subdue it: and have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over every living thing that moveth upon the earth. 29And God said, Behold, I have given you every herb bearing seed, which is upon the face of all the earth, and every tree, in the which is the fruit of a tree yielding seed; to you it shall be for meat. 30And to every beast of the earth, and to every fowl of the air, and to every thing that creepeth upon the earth, wherein there is life, I have given every green herb for meat: and it was so. 31And God saw every thing that he had made, and, behold, it was very good. And the evening and the morning were the sixth day. 1Thus the heavens and the earth were finished, and all the host of them. 2And on the seventh day God ended his work which he had made; and he rested on the seventh day from all his work which he had made. 3And God blessed the seventh day, and sanctified it: because that in it he had rested from all his work which God created and made.
Proverbs 2.1-22
1My son, if thou wilt receive my words, and hide my commandments with thee; 2So that thou incline thine ear unto wisdom, and apply thine heart to understanding; 3Yea, if thou criest after knowledge, and liftest up thy voice for understanding; 4If thou seekest her as silver, and searchest for her as for hid treasures; 5Then shalt thou understand the fear of the LORD, and find the knowledge of God. 6For the LORD giveth wisdom: out of his mouth cometh knowledge and understanding. 7He layeth up sound wisdom for the righteous: he is a buckler to them that walk uprightly. 8He keepeth the paths of judgment, and preserveth the way of his saints. 9Then shalt thou understand righteousness, and judgment, and equity; yea, every good path. 10When wisdom entereth into thine heart, and knowledge is pleasant unto thy soul; 11Discretion shall preserve thee, understanding shall keep thee: 12To deliver thee from the way of the evil man, from the man that speaketh froward things; 13Who leave the paths of uprightness, to walk in the ways of darkness; 14Who rejoice to do evil, and delight in the frowardness of the wicked; 15Whose ways are crooked, and they froward in their paths: 16To deliver thee from the strange woman, even from the stranger which flattereth with her words; 17Which forsaketh the guide of her youth, and forgetteth the covenant of her God. 18For her house inclineth unto death, and her paths unto the dead. 19None that go unto her return again, neither take they hold of the paths of life. 20That thou mayest walk in the way of good men, and keep the paths of the righteous. 21For the upright shall dwell in the land, and the perfect shall remain in it. 22But the wicked shall be cut off from the earth, and the transgressors shall be rooted out of it.
Great Canon; Presanctified Liturgy