July 4, 2025

Events of the day

• Martyr Julian of Tarsus

  Commemoration

Fasting

Fast day · Apostles' Fast

Apostles' Fast, Wednesday and Friday: xerophagy.

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

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

  Romans 11:25–36

  Show the text

  ²⁵For I don’t desire you to be ignorant, brothers, of this mystery, so that you won’t be wise in your own conceits, that a partial hardening has happened to Israel, until the fullness of the Gentiles has come in,

  ²⁶and so all Israel will be saved. Even as it is written, “There will come out of Zion the Deliverer, and he will turn away ungodliness from Jacob.

  ²⁷This is my covenant with them, when I will take away their sins.”

  ²⁸Concerning the Good News, they are enemies for your sake. But concerning the election, they are beloved for the fathers’ sake.

  ²⁹For the gifts and the calling of God are irrevocable.

  ³⁰For as you in time past were disobedient to God, but now have obtained mercy by their disobedience,

  ³¹even so these also have now been disobedient, that by the mercy shown to you they may also obtain mercy.

  ³²For God has bound all to disobedience, that he might have mercy on all.

  ³³Oh the depth of the riches both of the wisdom and the knowledge of God! How unsearchable are his judgments, and his ways past tracing out!

  ³⁴“For who has known the mind of the Lord? Or who has been his counselor?”

  ³⁵“Or who has first given to him, and it will be repaid to him again?”

  ³⁶For of him, and through him, and to him are all things. To him be the glory for ever! Amen.

• Gospel

  Matthew 12:1–8

  Show the text

  ¹At that time, Jesus went on the Sabbath day through the grain fields. His disciples were hungry and began to pluck heads of grain and to eat.

  ²But the Pharisees, when they saw it, said to him, “Behold, your disciples do what is not lawful to do on the Sabbath.”

  ³But he said to them, “Haven’t you read what David did, when he was hungry, and those who were with him;

  ⁴how he entered into God’s house, and ate the show bread, which was not lawful for him to eat, neither for those who were with him, but only for the priests?

  ⁵Or have you not read in the law, that on the Sabbath day, the priests in the temple profane the Sabbath, and are guiltless?

  ⁶But I tell you that one greater than the temple is here.

  ⁷But if you had known what this means, ‘I desire mercy, and not sacrifice,’ you wouldn’t have condemned the guiltless.

  ⁸For the Son of Man is Lord of the Sabbath.”

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

Saints and icons

• Prayer of the day: Short penitential prayers