December 17, 2024

Events of the day

No commemorations in the content package for this day yet

Fasting

Fast day · Nativity Fast

Nativity Fast, Tuesday and Thursday (Typikon ch. 33): wine and oil, no fish.

• Meat: not allowed
• Dairy & eggs: not allowed
• Fish: not allowed
• 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

  1 Timothy 1:8–14

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  ⁸But we know that the law is good, if a person uses it lawfully,

  ⁹as knowing this, that law is not made for a righteous person, but for the lawless and insubordinate, for the ungodly and sinners, for the unholy and profane, for murderers of fathers and murderers of mothers, for manslayers,

  ¹⁰for the sexually immoral, for homosexuals, for slave-traders, for liars, for perjurers, and for any other thing contrary to the sound doctrine,

  ¹¹according to the Good News of the glory of the blessed God, which was committed to my trust.

  ¹²I thank him who enabled me, Christ Jesus our Lord, because he counted me faithful, appointing me to service;

  ¹³although I used to be a blasphemer, a persecutor, and insolent. However, I obtained mercy, because I did it ignorantly in unbelief.

  ¹⁴The grace of our Lord abounded exceedingly with faith and love which is in Christ Jesus.

• Gospel

  Mark 10:2–12

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  ²Pharisees came to him testing him, and asked him, “Is it lawful for a man to divorce his wife?”

  ³He answered, “What did Moses command you?”

  ⁴They said, “Moses allowed a certificate of divorce to be written, and to divorce her.”

  ⁵But Jesus said to them, “For your hardness of heart, he wrote you this commandment.

  ⁶But from the beginning of the creation, God made them male and female.

  ⁷For this cause a man will leave his father and mother, and will join to his wife,

  ⁸and the two will become one flesh, so that they are no longer two, but one flesh.

  ⁹What therefore God has joined together, let no man separate.”

  ¹⁰In the house, his disciples asked him again about the same matter.

  ¹¹He said to them, “Whoever divorces his wife, and marries another, commits adultery against her.

  ¹²If a woman herself divorces her husband, and marries another, she commits adultery.”

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

Saints and icons

• Prayer of the day: The Jesus Prayer