January 7, 2032

Events of the day

• Synaxis of the Forerunner and Baptist John

  Great Feast

• Afterfeast: Holy Theophany. The Baptism of the Lord

Fasting

Fast day · Wednesday / Friday

Wednesday and Friday: fast without meat, dairy or eggs. Whether fish is allowed depends on the day's feast — check the church calendar.

• Meat: not allowed
• Dairy & eggs: not allowed
• Fish: not specified
• 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 · Forerunner

  Acts 19:1–8

• Epistle

  James 3:11–4:6

  Show the text

  ¹¹Does a spring send out from the same opening fresh and bitter water?

  ¹²Can a fig tree, my brothers, yield olives, or a vine figs? Thus no spring yields both salt water and fresh water.

  ¹³Who is wise and understanding among you? Let him show by his good conduct that his deeds are done in gentleness of wisdom.

  ¹⁴But if you have bitter jealousy and selfish ambition in your heart, don’t boast and don’t lie against the truth.

  ¹⁵This wisdom is not that which comes down from above, but is earthly, sensual, and demonic.

  ¹⁶For where jealousy and selfish ambition are, there is confusion and every evil deed.

  ¹⁷But the wisdom that is from above is first pure, then peaceful, gentle, reasonable, full of mercy and good fruits, without partiality, and without hypocrisy.

  ¹⁸Now the fruit of righteousness is sown in peace by those who make peace.

  ¹Where do wars and fightings among you come from? Don’t they come from your pleasures that war in your members?

  ²You lust, and don’t have. You murder and covet, and can’t obtain. You fight and make war. You don’t have, because you don’t ask.

  ³You ask, and don’t receive, because you ask with wrong motives, so that you may spend it on your pleasures.

  ⁴You adulterers and adulteresses, don’t you know that friendship with the world is hostility toward God? Whoever therefore wants to be a friend of the world makes himself an enemy of God.

  ⁵Or do you think that the Scripture says in vain, “The Spirit who lives in us yearns jealously”?

  ⁶But he gives more grace. Therefore it says, “God resists the proud, but gives grace to the humble.”

• Gospel · Forerunner

  John 1:29–34

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  ²⁹The next day, he saw Jesus coming to him, and said, “Behold, the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world!

  ³⁰This is he of whom I said, ‘After me comes a man who is preferred before me, for he was before me.’

  ³¹I didn’t know him, but for this reason I came baptizing in water: that he would be revealed to Israel.”

  ³²John testified, saying, “I have seen the Spirit descending like a dove out of heaven, and it remained on him.

  ³³I didn’t recognize him, but he who sent me to baptize in water said to me, ‘On whomever you will see the Spirit descending and remaining on him is he who baptizes in the Holy Spirit.’

  ³⁴I have seen, and have testified that this is the Son of God.”

• Gospel

  Luke 18:15–17, 26–30

  Show the text

  ¹⁵They were also bringing their babies to him, that he might touch them. But when the disciples saw it, they rebuked them.

  ¹⁶Jesus summoned them, saying, “Allow the little children to come to me, and don’t hinder them, for God’s Kingdom belongs to such as these.

  ¹⁷Most certainly, I tell you, whoever doesn’t receive God’s Kingdom like a little child, he will in no way enter into it.”

  ²⁶Those who heard it said, “Then who can be saved?”

  ²⁷But he said, “The things which are impossible with men are possible with God.”

  ²⁸Peter said, “Look, we have left everything and followed you.”

  ²⁹He said to them, “Most certainly I tell you, there is no one who has left house, or wife, or brothers, or parents, or children, for God’s Kingdom’s sake,

  ³⁰who will not receive many times more in this time, and in the world to come, eternal life.”

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

Saints and icons

• Prayer of the day: The Trisagion