Sunday, February 6, 1983
15th Sunday of Matthew
Tone 2. No fast. What this means
The Epistle for St. Photius
Hebrews 7:26–8:2
For such a high priest was fitting for us: holy, guiltless, undefiled, separated from sinners, and made higher than the heavens; 27who doesn’t need, like those high priests, to offer up sacrifices daily, first for his own sins, and then for the sins of the people. For he did this once for all, when he offered up himself. 28For the law appoints men as high priests who have weakness, but the word of the oath, which came after the law, appoints a Son forever who has been perfected.
1Now in the things which we are saying, the main point is this: we have such a high priest, who sat down on the right hand of the throne of the Majesty in the heavens, 2a servant of the sanctuary and of the true tabernacle which the Lord pitched, not man.
The Gospel
Matthew 22:35–46
One of them, a lawyer, asked him a question, testing him. 36“Teacher, which is the greatest commandment in the law?”
37Jesus said to him, “‘You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind.’ 38This is the first and great commandment. 39A second likewise is this, ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ 40The whole law and the prophets depend on these two commandments.”
41Now while the Pharisees were gathered together, Jesus asked them a question,
42saying, “What do you think of the Christ? Whose son is he?” They said to him, “Of David.”
43He said to them, “How then does David in the Spirit call him Lord, saying, 44‘The Lord said to my Lord, sit on my right hand, until I make your enemies a footstool for your feet’?
45“If then David calls him Lord, how is he his son?”
46No one was able to answer him a word, neither did any man dare ask him any more questions from that day forward.
Commemorated today
- St Bucolus, Bishop of Smyrna
- The Martyr and Healer Julian (Ilyan) of Homs
- St Photios, patriarch of Constantinople (891)
- Sts Barsanuphius and John the Prophet, monks of Palestine (6th c.)
Hymns and lives of the saints are on the Online Chapel of the Greek Orthodox Archdiocese.