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Friday, 14 June 2024

Friday of the 6th Sunday of Pascha

40 days after Pascha · Tone 5 · Liturgy · Fast (Wine and Oil are Allowed)

Saints commemorated

★ Holy Prophet Elisha

10th c. BC

The disciple and spiritual heir of the Prophet Elijah (July 20), his story can be found in II Kings. Unlike most of the Old Testament prophets, he was granted the gift of working many miracles. He reposed in peace at a great age. The Fathers tell us that he was anointed by Elijah in the year 908 BC and reposed in peace at a great age in 839 BC. He was buried in Samaria. Even after his death, miracles of wonderworking were performed through his relics.

Holy and Glorious Prophet Elisha

The holy Prophet Elisha was a son of the wealthy farmer Shaphat of Abel-meholah, in the territory of Manasseh, and lived in the ninth century before Christ during the reigns of Joram, Jehu, Jehoahaz and Jehoash, kings of Israel. After the great Prophet Elijah had been instructed on Mount Horeb that Elisha was to succeed him in the prophetic office, he found him ploughing with twelve yoke of oxen and threw upon him his mantle, in token of the calling. Elisha at once slaughtered the oxen, made of the wood of the plough a sacrifice to the Lord, and followed Elijah, ministering to him as his disciple until the day his master was taken up to heaven in a chariot of fire. At parting Elijah granted him the request of a double portion of his spirit, and as the mantle fell from the ascending prophet, Elisha took it up, struck the Jordan and crossed dry-shod, while the prophets of Jericho cried out, "The spirit of Elijah rests upon Elisha." For more than fifty years Elisha was a father and a wonderworker to Israel. He healed the bitter spring of Jericho, multiplied the widow's oil, raised the only son of the Shunammite woman from death, fed a hundred men with twenty loaves, cleansed Naaman the Syrian of his leprosy in the Jordan, and made an iron axe-head float upon the water for a poor disciple. He counselled kings, denounced idolatry, and several times confounded the armies of Aram by prayer and prophecy. As the second book of Kings records, the gift of life lingered even in his dead body: a man hastily cast into the prophet's tomb came alive at the touch of his bones. The Church of Christ honours him as the foremost of the prophets after Elijah and as a forerunner of the Saviour, who in his miracles of mercy prefigured the works of the incarnate Word.

Saint Dorotheus of Khilandar

Saint Dorotheus, called "of Hilandar" from the great Serbian monastery on the Holy Mountain in which he lived, was a Serbian monastic of the fourteenth century, a disciple of the school of asceticism that flourished on Athos in the years after the triumph of hesychasm. He entered Hilandar as a young man and was trained in obedience, watchfulness and unceasing prayer under the abbots who succeeded the holy founders Saint Symeon and Saint Sabba of Serbia. About 1356 he was raised to the abbacy of his monastery, and his brethren and the wider Athonite community chose him about the same year as protos, the chief of the Holy Mountain, an office which he held until 1366. In this period he laboured to maintain the order of the Holy Mountain through the troubles of the Serbian and Byzantine dynastic conflicts. After laying down the office of protos, Dorotheus returned with renewed strength to the silent life. With his son Danilo, who had followed him into the monastic state and was afterwards Patriarch of the Serbs (1390 to 1397), he founded in 1382 the monastery of Drenca in central Serbia, dedicated to the Presentation of the Most Holy Theotokos. In its quiet valley he ended his days, leaving behind him a community in which Athonite hesychasm took root in the Serbian lands. The Church of Serbia and the Holy Mountain reckon him among their venerable fathers and keep his memory on this day with the brethren of Hilandar.

Saint Methodius the Confessor, Patriarch of Constantinople

Saint Methodius was born in Syracuse in Sicily in the late eighth century to a wealthy and noble family and was sent as a young man to Constantinople to seek office at court. There he abandoned worldly hopes for the monastic life, made his profession at the monastery of Chenolakkos in Bithynia, and became its abbot. When the second outbreak of iconoclasm under Leo V the Armenian (813 to 820) drove the orthodox confessors from the capital, Methodius was sent to Rome by Saint Nicephorus the Patriarch as his envoy to Pope Paschal I, and lived there as a refugee for some seven years. Returning in 821 with letters from the pope rebuking the iconoclast policy, he was seized by the emperor Michael II, scourged, and shut up in a tomb on the island of Saint Andrew in the Sea of Marmora, where he remained for almost seven years amid the corpses of two robbers, kept alive by an old woman who let bread down to him from above.

Brought out a wreck of a man at the change of reign, he was for a time forced into proximity with the iconoclast court of Theophilus, who valued his learning while persecuting his faith. After the death of Theophilus on 20 January 842, his widow the empress Theodora ruled as regent for her infant son Michael III and sought a champion for the restoration of the holy icons. The orthodox bishops elected Methodius patriarch on 4 March 843; on the first Sunday of Lent that year, by his hand, the icons were restored to Hagia Sophia in a great procession from Blachernae which the Church to this day commemorates as the Sunday of Orthodoxy. Through his last four years Methodius governed the Church with mildness, declining either to persecute the former iconoclasts or to indulge the demands of those who pressed for harsher punishment. A learned man and a copyist of manuscripts, he composed canons, lives of saints and the rite of reception of repentant heretics. He fell asleep in the Lord on 14 June 847 and is honoured by the Church as a Confessor.

Venerable Niphon of Kausokalybia on Mount Athos

Saint Niphon was born in 1315 in the village of Lukove in the region of Himare, then part of the despotate of Epirus and now in southern Albania, of pious Greek Orthodox parents. As a boy he received from a hieromonk in his village both his early letters and the example of the monastic life, and at the age of ten he was tonsured a rasophore. After several years on the rocky island of Geromerion in the company of Saint Neilos Erichiotes, he came about 1335 to the Holy Mountain. There he placed himself under the obedience of the elder Theognostos at the monastery of Vatopedi, learning the strict ascetic discipline of the Athonite fathers, and afterwards was admitted to the most rigorous form of solitary life under Saint Maximos Kausokalybites, the "hut-burner," whose biography he was later to compose. Niphon spent the rest of his long life as a hesychast in the wilderness of Kausokalybia and in a remote cave near the Lavra of Saint Athanasius. In 1345 he was elected protos of Mount Athos. When the Serbian Tsar Stephen Dusan accused him of Bogomil heresy, Saint Gregory Palamas defended him and his orthodoxy was confirmed; a second false accusation under Patriarch Callistus was likewise overturned. He bore both trials with quiet patience and used his peace of soul to persevere in unceasing prayer of the heart. He received the gifts of foresight and of working miracles, foretold the day of his own departure, and reposed in deep old age on 14 June 1411, having fulfilled ninety-six years. His relics remain among the holy treasures of the Athonite skete that bears his name.

St John Mavropos, Metropolitan of Euchaïta

1100

He is commemorated today on the Slavic Calendar; for his life, see October 5, his commemoration on the Greek Calendar.

Daily readings

Epistle

weekly cycle

Acts — Acts 19.1-8

1And it came to pass, that, while Apollos was at Corinth, Paul having passed through the upper coasts came to Ephesus: and finding certain disciples,

1And it came to pass, that, while Apollos was at Corinth, Paul having passed through the upper country came to Ephesus, and found certain disciples: 2He said unto them, Have ye received the Holy Ghost since ye believed? And they said unto him, We have not so much as heard whether there be any Holy Ghost. 2and he said unto them, Did ye receive the Holy Spirit when ye believed? And they said unto him, Nay, we did not so much as hear whether the Holy Spirit was given. 3And he said unto them, Unto what then were ye baptized? And they said, Unto John’s baptism. 3And he said, Into what then were ye baptized? And they said, Into John’s baptism. 4Then said Paul, John verily baptized with the baptism of repentance, saying unto the people, that they should believe on him which should come after him, that is, on Christ Jesus. 4And Paul said, John baptized with the baptism of repentance, saying unto the people that they should believe on him that should come after him, that is, on Jesus. 5When they heard this, they were baptized in the name of the Lord Jesus. 5And when they heard this, they were baptized into the name of the Lord Jesus. 6And when Paul had laid his hands upon them, the Holy Ghost came on them; and they spake with tongues, and prophesied. 6And when Paul had laid his hands upon them, the Holy Spirit came on them; and they spake with tongues, and prophesied. 7And they were in all about twelve men. 7And all the men were about twelve. 8And he went into the synagogue, and spake boldly for the space of three months, disputing and persuading the things concerning the kingdom of God.

8And he entered into the synagogue, and spake boldly for the space of three months, reasoning and persuading as to the things concerning the kingdom of God.

Gospel

weekly cycle

John — John 14.1-11

1Let not your heart be troubled: ye believe in God, believe also in me.

1Let not your heart be troubled: believe in God, believe also in me. 2In my Father’s house are many mansions: if it were not so, I would have told you. I go to prepare a place for you. 2In my Father’s house are many mansions; if it were not so, I would have told you; for I go to prepare a place for you. 3And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again, and receive you unto myself; that where I am, there ye may be also. 3And if I go and prepare a place for you, I come again, and will receive you unto myself; that where I am, there ye may be also. 4And whither I go ye know, and the way ye know. 4And whither I go, ye know the way. 5Thomas saith unto him, Lord, we know not whither thou goest; and how can we know the way? 5Thomas saith unto him, Lord, we know not whither thou goest; how know we the way? 6Jesus saith unto him, I am the way, and the truth, and the life: no one cometh unto the Father, but by me. 6Jesus saith unto him, I am the way, the truth, and the life: no man cometh unto the Father, but by me. 7If ye had known me, ye would have known my Father also: from henceforth ye know him, and have seen him. 7If ye had known me, ye should have known my Father also: and from henceforth ye know him, and have seen him. 8Philip saith unto him, Lord, shew us the Father, and it sufficeth us. 8Philip saith unto him, Lord, show us the Father, and it sufficeth us. 9Jesus saith unto him, Have I been so long time with you, and yet hast thou not known me, Philip? he that hath seen me hath seen the Father; and how sayest thou then, Shew us the Father? 9Jesus saith unto him, Have I been so long time with you, and dost thou not know me, Philip? he that hath seen me hath seen the Father; how sayest thou, Show us the Father? 10Believest thou not that I am in the Father, and the Father in me? the words that I speak unto you I speak not of myself: but the Father that dwelleth in me, he doeth the works. 10Believest thou not that I am in the Father, and the Father in me? the words that I say unto you I speak not from myself: but the Father abiding in me doeth his works. 11Believe me that I am in the Father, and the Father in me: or else believe me for the very works’ sake. 11Believe me that I am in the Father, and the Father in me: or else believe me for the very works’ sake.