December 21, 2026

Events of the day

• St Patapius

  Commemoration

Fasting

Fast day · Nativity Fast

Nativity Fast, Monday: cooked food without oil.

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

  Hebrews 8:7–13

  Show the text

  ⁷For if that first covenant had been faultless, then no place would have been sought for a second.

  ⁸For finding fault with them, he said, “Behold, the days come”, says the Lord, “that I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and with the house of Judah;

  ⁹not according to the covenant that I made with their fathers, in the day that I took them by the hand to lead them out of the land of Egypt; for they didn’t continue in my covenant, and I disregarded them,” says the Lord.

  ¹⁰“For this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel. After those days,” says the Lord; “I will put my laws into their mind, I will also write them on their heart. I will be their God, and they will be my people.

  ¹¹They will not teach every man his fellow citizen, and every man his brother, saying, ‘Know the Lord,’ for all will know me, from their least to their greatest.

  ¹²For I will be merciful to their unrighteousness. I will remember their sins and lawless deeds no more.”

  ¹³In that he says, “A new covenant”, he has made the first old. But that which is becoming old and grows aged is near to vanishing away.

• Gospel

  Luke 20:27–44

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  ²⁷Some of the Sadducees came to him, those who deny that there is a resurrection.

  ²⁸They asked him, “Teacher, Moses wrote to us that if a man’s brother dies having a wife, and he is childless, his brother should take the wife and raise up children for his brother.

  ²⁹There were therefore seven brothers. The first took a wife, and died childless.

  ³⁰The second took her as wife, and he died childless.

  ³¹The third took her, and likewise the seven all left no children, and died.

  ³²Afterward the woman also died.

  ³³Therefore in the resurrection whose wife of them will she be? For the seven had her as a wife.”

  ³⁴Jesus said to them, “The children of this age marry, and are given in marriage.

  ³⁵But those who are considered worthy to attain to that age and the resurrection from the dead neither marry nor are given in marriage.

  ³⁶For they can’t die any more, for they are like the angels, and are children of God, being children of the resurrection.

  ³⁷But that the dead are raised, even Moses showed at the bush, when he called the Lord ‘The God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob.’

  ³⁸Now he is not the God of the dead, but of the living, for all are alive to him.”

  ³⁹Some of the scribes answered, “Teacher, you speak well.”

  ⁴⁰They didn’t dare to ask him any more questions.

  ⁴¹He said to them, “Why do they say that the Christ is David’s son?

  ⁴²David himself says in the book of Psalms, ‘The Lord said to my Lord, “Sit at my right hand,

  ⁴³until I make your enemies the footstool of your feet.” ’

  ⁴⁴“David therefore calls him Lord, so how is he his son?”

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

Saints and icons

• Prayer of the day: Morning prayer of St Macarius the Great