December 30, 2025

Events of the day

No commemorations in the content package for this day yet

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

Fasting

No fast

Christmastide (25 Dec – 4 Jan Old Style) is fast-free: no fasting.

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 9:8–10, 15–23

  Show the text

  ⁸The Holy Spirit is indicating this, that the way into the Holy Place wasn’t yet revealed while the first tabernacle was still standing.

  ⁹This is a symbol of the present age, where gifts and sacrifices are offered that are incapable, concerning the conscience, of making the worshiper perfect,

  ¹⁰being only (with meats and drinks and various washings) fleshly ordinances, imposed until a time of reformation.

  ¹⁵For this reason he is the mediator of a new covenant, since a death has occurred for the redemption of the transgressions that were under the first covenant, that those who have been called may receive the promise of the eternal inheritance.

  ¹⁶For where a last will and testament is, there must of necessity be the death of him who made it.

  ¹⁷For a will is in force where there has been death, for it is never in force while he who made it lives.

  ¹⁸Therefore even the first covenant has not been dedicated without blood.

  ¹⁹For when every commandment had been spoken by Moses to all the people according to the law, he took the blood of the calves and the goats, with water and scarlet wool and hyssop, and sprinkled both the book itself and all the people,

  ²⁰saying, “This is the blood of the covenant which God has commanded you.”

  ²¹Moreover he sprinkled the tabernacle and all the vessels of the ministry in the same way with the blood.

  ²²According to the law, nearly everything is cleansed with blood, and apart from shedding of blood there is no remission.

  ²³It was necessary therefore that the copies of the things in the heavens should be cleansed with these, but the heavenly things themselves with better sacrifices than these.

• Gospel

  Mark 11:11–23

  Show the text

  ¹¹Jesus entered into the temple in Jerusalem. When he had looked around at everything, it being now evening, he went out to Bethany with the twelve.

  ¹²The next day, when they had come out from Bethany, he was hungry.

  ¹³Seeing a fig tree afar off having leaves, he came to see if perhaps he might find anything on it. When he came to it, he found nothing but leaves, for it was not the season for figs.

  ¹⁴Jesus told it, “May no one ever eat fruit from you again!” and his disciples heard it.

  ¹⁵They came to Jerusalem, and Jesus entered into the temple, and began to throw out those who sold and those who bought in the temple, and overthrew the money changers’ tables, and the seats of those who sold the doves.

  ¹⁶He would not allow anyone to carry a container through the temple.

  ¹⁷He taught, saying to them, “Isn’t it written, ‘My house will be called a house of prayer for all the nations?’ But you have made it a den of robbers!”

  ¹⁸The chief priests and the scribes heard it, and sought how they might destroy him. For they feared him, because all the multitude was astonished at his teaching.

  ¹⁹When evening came, he went out of the city.

  ²⁰As they passed by in the morning, they saw the fig tree withered away from the roots.

  ²¹Peter, remembering, said to him, “Rabbi, look! The fig tree which you cursed has withered away.”

  ²²Jesus answered them, “Have faith in God.

  ²³For most certainly I tell you, whoever may tell this mountain, ‘Be taken up and cast into the sea,’ and doesn’t doubt in his heart, but believes that what he says is happening; he shall have whatever he says.

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

Saints and icons

• Prayer of the day: The Jesus Prayer