Fourth Sunday after Pentecost

 

 

July 6, 2014    

 

                                

 

Saints of the Day: Righteous Father Sisoës the Great of Egypt; Apostles Archippos, Philemon and Onesimos of the Seventy; Martyrs Lucy the Virgin,

Rex the Imperial Vicar in Campania and 24 others with them; Martyrs Apollonius, Epimachus & Alexander

 

 

Hymns of the Day

 

Troparion of the Resurrection, Tone 3

 

Let the heavens rejoice and the earth be glad, for the Lord hath done a mighty act with His own arm. He hath trampled down death by death, and became the first-born from the dead. He hath delivered us from the depths of Hades, granting the world the Great Mercy.

 

Troparion of St. Joseph, Tone 2

 

Proclaim, O Joseph to David, the ancestor of God, the amazing wonder, for by the angel they were revealed unto thee. For thou hast seen a Virgin great with child, and thou gave glory with the shepherds and didst worship with the Magi. Wherefore, plead with Christ God to save our souls.

 

Kontakion of of the Resurrection, Tone 2

 

O undisputed intercessor of Christians, the mediatrix who is unrejected by the Creator.  Turn not away from the voice of our petitions, though we be sinners.  Come to us with aid in time who cry unto thee in faith, for thou art good. Hasten to us with intercessions, O Theotokos, who does ever intercede for those who honor thee.

 

Epistle – Romans: 6: 18-23

 

Brethren, having been set free from sin, you have become slaves of righteousness. I am speaking in human terms, because of your natural limitations. For just as you once yielded your members to impurity and to greater and greater iniquity, so now yield your members to righteousness for sanctification. When you were slaves of sin, you were free in regard to

righteousness. But then what return did you get from the things of which you are now ashamed? The end of those things is death. But now that you have been set free from sin and have become slaves of God, the return you get is sanctification and its end, eternal life. For, the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.

 

Gospel - Matthew 8: 5-13

 

At that time, as Jesus entered Capernaum, a centurion came forward to him, beseeching Him and saying, “Lord, my servant is lying paralyzed at home, in terrible distress.” And Jesus said to him, “I will come and heal him.” But the centurion answered Him, “Lord, I am not worthy to have you come under my roof; but only say the word, and my servant will be healed.  For I am a man under authority, with soldiers under me; and I say to one, ‘Go,’ and he goes, and to another, ‘Come,’ and he comes, and to my slave, ‘Do this,’ and he does it.” When Jesus heard him, He marveled, and said to those who followed him, “Truly, I say to you, not even in Israel have I found such faith. I tell you, many will come from east and west and sit at table with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob in the Kingdom of Heaven, while the sons of the kingdom will be thrown into the outer darkness; there men will weep and gnash their teeth.” And to the centurion Jesus said, “Go; be it done for you as you have believed.” And the servant was healed at that very moment.

 

 

St Olga, Equal to the Apostles – July 11th

 

The holy, right-believing Empress Olga of Kiev was the grandmother of Prince Vladimir of Kiev. A convert to Orthodox Christianity, she was the main influence on her grandson that resulted in his conversion to Christianity and that of his realm of Kievan Rus. She is considered, with her grandson, as having brought Orthodoxy to Russia.

Saint Olga, renowned for her wisdom and sobriety, in her youth became the wife of Igor, Great Prince of Kiev, who ruled during the tenth century. After her husband's death, she herself ruled capably, and was finally moved to accept the Faith of Christ. She traveled to Constantinople to receive Holy Baptism. The Emperor, seeing her outward beauty and inward greatness, asked her to marry him. She said she could not do this before she was baptized; she furthermore asked him to be her Godfather at the font, which he agreed to do. After she was baptized (receiving the name of Helen), the Emperor repeated his proposal of marriage. She answered that now he was her father, through holy Baptism, and that not even among the heathen was it heard of a man marrying his daughter. Gracefully accepting to be outwitted by her, he sent her back to her land with priests and sacred texts and holy icons.  She reposed in peace in 969.

While Olga was not successful in converting her son or many others to the Christian faith, her example may have been a great influence on her grandson, Vladimir, who in 988 became an Orthodox Christian and led the inhabitants of Kiev and Rus' to follow him in the Baptism of Rus'.  For her leadership in bringing Christianity to Russia, she is considered the first saint of the Russian Orthodox Church.

 

Taken from goarch.org & orthodoxwiki.org

 

Holy St Olga, pray to God for us!