December 22, 2020

Events of the day

No commemorations in the content package for this day yet

• Forefeast: Nativity of our Lord, God and Saviour Jesus Christ

Fasting

Fast day · Nativity Fast

Nativity Fast (from 20 Dec Old Style), Tuesday and Thursday: 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 4:1–13

  Show the text

  ¹Let’s fear therefore, lest perhaps anyone of you should seem to have come short of a promise of entering into his rest.

  ²For indeed we have had good news preached to us, even as they also did, but the word they heard didn’t profit them, because it wasn’t mixed with faith by those who heard.

  ³For we who have believed do enter into that rest, even as he has said, “As I swore in my wrath, they will not enter into my rest;” although the works were finished from the foundation of the world.

  ⁴For he has said this somewhere about the seventh day, “God rested on the seventh day from all his works;”

  ⁵and in this place again, “They will not enter into my rest.”

  ⁶Seeing therefore it remains that some should enter into it, and they to whom the good news was preached before failed to enter in because of disobedience,

  ⁷he again defines a certain day, today, saying through David so long a time afterward (just as has been said), “Today if you will hear his voice, don’t harden your hearts.”

  ⁸For if Joshua had given them rest, he would not have spoken afterward of another day.

  ⁹There remains therefore a Sabbath rest for the people of God.

  ¹⁰For he who has entered into his rest has himself also rested from his works, as God did from his.

  ¹¹Let’s therefore give diligence to enter into that rest, lest anyone fall after the same example of disobedience.

  ¹²For the word of God is living and active, and sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing even to the dividing of soul and spirit, of both joints and marrow, and is able to discern the thoughts and intentions of the heart.

  ¹³There is no creature that is hidden from his sight, but all things are naked and laid open before the eyes of him to whom we must give an account.

• Gospel

  Mark 10:2–12

  Show the text

  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