August 8, 2031

Events of the day

• Hieromartyr Hermolaus; Monk-martyr Paraskeva

  Commemoration

Fasting

Fast day · Wednesday / Friday

Wednesday and Friday: fast without meat, dairy or eggs. Whether fish is allowed depends on the day's feast — check the church calendar.

• Meat: not allowed
• Dairy & eggs: not allowed
• Fish: not specified
• Oil: allowed
• Wine: allowed

Food rules are reference church information. Agree your personal measure of fasting with a priest; consult a doctor if you are ill.

Readings of the day

• Vespers

  Wisdom of Solomon 5:15–6:3

• Vespers

  1 John 4:1–6

• Vespers

  1 John 4:20–5:5

• Matins Gospel

  John 10:9–16

  Show the text

  ⁹I am the door. If anyone enters in by me, he will be saved, and will go in and go out, and will find pasture.

  ¹⁰The thief only comes to steal, kill, and destroy. I came that they may have life, and may have it abundantly.

  ¹¹I am the good shepherd. The good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep.

  ¹²He who is a hired hand, and not a shepherd, who doesn’t own the sheep, sees the wolf coming, leaves the sheep, and flees. The wolf snatches the sheep, and scatters them.

  ¹³The hired hand flees because he is a hired hand, and doesn’t care for the sheep.

  ¹⁴I am the good shepherd. I know my own, and I’m known by my own;

  ¹⁵even as the Father knows me, and I know the Father. I lay down my life for the sheep.

  ¹⁶I have other sheep, which are not of this fold. I must bring them also, and they will hear my voice. They will become one flock with one shepherd.

• Epistle

  2 Corinthians 1:12–20

  Show the text

  ¹²For our boasting is this: the testimony of our conscience, that in holiness and sincerity of God, not in fleshly wisdom but in the grace of God we behaved ourselves in the world, and more abundantly toward you.

  ¹³For we write no other things to you than what you read or even acknowledge, and I hope you will acknowledge to the end,

  ¹⁴as also you acknowledged us in part, that we are your boasting, even as you also are ours, in the day of our Lord Jesus.

  ¹⁵In this confidence, I was determined to come first to you, that you might have a second benefit,

  ¹⁶and by you to pass into Macedonia, and again from Macedonia to come to you, and to be sent forward by you on my journey to Judea.

  ¹⁷When I therefore was thus determined, did I show fickleness? Or the things that I purpose, do I purpose according to the flesh, that with me there should be the “Yes, yes” and the “No, no?”

  ¹⁸But as God is faithful, our word toward you was not “Yes and no.”

  ¹⁹For the Son of God, Jesus Christ, who was preached among you by us, by me, Silvanus, and Timothy, was not “Yes and no,” but in him is “Yes.”

  ²⁰For however many are the promises of God, in him is the “Yes.” Therefore also through him is the “Amen”, to the glory of God through us.

• Epistle · St Jacob

  Philippians 3:7–14

• Gospel

  Matthew 22:23–33

  Show the text

  ²³On that day Sadducees (those who say that there is no resurrection) came to him. They asked him,

  ²⁴saying, “Teacher, Moses said, ‘If a man dies, having no children, his brother shall marry his wife, and raise up offspring for his brother.’

  ²⁵Now there were with us seven brothers. The first married and died, and having no offspring left his wife to his brother.

  ²⁶In the same way, the second also, and the third, to the seventh.

  ²⁷After them all, the woman died.

  ²⁸In the resurrection therefore, whose wife will she be of the seven? For they all had her.”

  ²⁹But Jesus answered them, “You are mistaken, not knowing the Scriptures, nor the power of God.

  ³⁰For in the resurrection they neither marry, nor are given in marriage, but are like God’s angels in heaven.

  ³¹But concerning the resurrection of the dead, haven’t you read that which was spoken to you by God, saying,

  ³²‘I am the God of Abraham, and the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob?’ God is not the God of the dead, but of the living.”

  ³³When the multitudes heard it, they were astonished at his teaching.

• Gospel · St Jacob

  Mark 10:29–31, 42–45

Source: Orthocal: lectionary data — Slavic tradition, Julian calendar. Text: World English Bible.

Saints and icons

• Prayer of the day: Short penitential prayers