January 13, 2021

Events of the day

No commemorations in the content package for this day yet

• Afterfeast: Holy Theophany. The Baptism of the Lord

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

• Epistle

  James 3:11–4:6

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  ¹¹Does a spring send out from the same opening fresh and bitter water?

  ¹²Can a fig tree, my brothers, yield olives, or a vine figs? Thus no spring yields both salt water and fresh water.

  ¹³Who is wise and understanding among you? Let him show by his good conduct that his deeds are done in gentleness of wisdom.

  ¹⁴But if you have bitter jealousy and selfish ambition in your heart, don’t boast and don’t lie against the truth.

  ¹⁵This wisdom is not that which comes down from above, but is earthly, sensual, and demonic.

  ¹⁶For where jealousy and selfish ambition are, there is confusion and every evil deed.

  ¹⁷But the wisdom that is from above is first pure, then peaceful, gentle, reasonable, full of mercy and good fruits, without partiality, and without hypocrisy.

  ¹⁸Now the fruit of righteousness is sown in peace by those who make peace.

  ¹Where do wars and fightings among you come from? Don’t they come from your pleasures that war in your members?

  ²You lust, and don’t have. You murder and covet, and can’t obtain. You fight and make war. You don’t have, because you don’t ask.

  ³You ask, and don’t receive, because you ask with wrong motives, so that you may spend it on your pleasures.

  ⁴You adulterers and adulteresses, don’t you know that friendship with the world is hostility toward God? Whoever therefore wants to be a friend of the world makes himself an enemy of God.

  ⁵Or do you think that the Scripture says in vain, “The Spirit who lives in us yearns jealously”?

  ⁶But he gives more grace. Therefore it says, “God resists the proud, but gives grace to the humble.”

• Gospel

  Luke 20:1–8

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  ¹On one of those days, as he was teaching the people in the temple and preaching the Good News, the priests and scribes came to him with the elders.

  ²They asked him, “Tell us: by what authority do you do these things? Or who is giving you this authority?”

  ³He answered them, “I also will ask you one question. Tell me:

  ⁴the baptism of John, was it from heaven, or from men?”

  ⁵They reasoned with themselves, saying, “If we say, ‘From heaven,’ he will say, ‘Why didn’t you believe him?’

  ⁶But if we say, ‘From men,’ all the people will stone us, for they are persuaded that John was a prophet.”

  ⁷They answered that they didn’t know where it was from.

  ⁸Jesus said to them, “Neither will I tell you by what authority I do these things.”

Source: Orthocal: lectionary data — Slavic tradition, New Calendar (OCA practice). Text: World English Bible.

Saints and icons

• Prayer of the day: The Trisagion