Monday, 15 June 2026

Prophet Amos; St Jonah, Metr. of Moscow

Monday of the 3rd week after Pentecost

64 days after Pascha · Tone 1 · Red cross (polyeleos typikon symbol) · Apostles Fast

Saints commemorated

Blessed Augustine, Bishop of Hippo

Blessed Augustine was born in 354 at Tagaste in North Africa to a pagan father, Patricius, and a devout Christian mother, Saint Monica. Possessed of a brilliant mind, he was sent to study at Carthage, where he fell in with the Manichaean sect and lived a worldly life for many years. After teaching rhetoric in Carthage, Rome and Milan he came under the preaching of Saint Ambrose, and through his mother's tears and prayers and the reading of the Apostle Paul he was converted to the Orthodox faith and baptised at the Easter vigil of 387. Returning to Africa, he was ordained priest and then consecrated Bishop of Hippo Regius, where he laboured for thirty-five years, defending the faith against the Manichaeans, Donatists and Pelagians. His writings, including the Confessions and the City of God, fill many volumes. He fell asleep in the Lord in 430 as the Vandals besieged his episcopal city. The Greek and Russian Orthodox Churches keep his memory on 15 June.

Holy Prophet Amos

The Holy Prophet Amos, the third of the twelve Minor Prophets, lived in the eighth century before Christ. He was a native of Tekoah in Judah, six miles south of Bethlehem, and tended sheep and goats and dressed sycamore figs. Simple and uneducated yet fervent in faith and zealous for the glory of God, he was called by the Lord to prophetic service and sent to the Kingdom of Israel to denounce the impiety of King Jeroboam II and the apostasy of the Israelites. The book of his prophecies, fierce in its rebuke of social injustice and idolatry, contains nine chapters preserved within the Old Testament. According to a later tradition, Uzziah, the son of Amaziah the priest of Bethel, struck the prophet with a club after he had spoken against the false sanctuary. He was carried back to his native village and died there of his wounds two days later, around 787 BC.

Saint Jerome of Stridon

Saint Jerome, whose full name is Eusebius Hieronymus Sophronius, was born around 347 into a Christian family in the city of Stridon on the border between Dalmatia and Pannonia. He was sent to Rome for his education, where he studied grammar, rhetoric and philosophy and was baptised by Pope Liberius. After travels in Gaul and the East he settled for a time in the Syrian desert near Chalcis, living as a hermit, learning Hebrew from a converted Jew and giving himself to prayer, fasting and study. Ordained a priest at Antioch, he later served as secretary to Pope Damasus in Rome, who entrusted him with the great labour for which he is best known: the revision and translation of the Scriptures into Latin, the version known as the Vulgate. After the death of Damasus he settled in Bethlehem, founding a monastery near the cave of the Nativity, where he wrote commentaries on the prophets and the gospels, defended the faith against the heresies of his day and laboured at his Bible until his repose around 420.

Saint Orsisius the Lawgiver

Saint Orsisius, sometimes called Ortisius or Orsiesius, was a disciple of Saint Pachomius the Great on the island of Tabennisi in the Nile, and one of the chief organisers of Egyptian coenobitic monasticism. After the repose of Pachomius in 348, Orsisius was chosen as his successor at the head of the federation of monasteries, but the burden weighed upon him and he soon resigned the office in favour of Saint Theodore the Sanctified. With Theodore he is said to have helped Pachomius shape the original monastic rule, and he himself composed a book of instruction known to later writers as his Testament, in which the whole of monastic discipline is set out from the Old and New Testaments in short chapters. After the death of Theodore in 368 he resumed the leadership of the brotherhood and guided it with great wisdom until his own repose, sometime after 386. For his role in shaping the common life of the monks he is honoured among the saints with the title Lawgiver.

Holy Martyr Vitus, with Modestus and Crescentia

303

“St Vitus was born in Sicily of eminent pagan parents. Modestus was his tutor and Crescentia his governess. St Vitus was baptised early and, when only twelve years old, began to live an intensive ascetic life. Angels appeared to him, instructing him and encouraging him in his labours, and he was himself as radiant and handsome as an angel of God. A judge who beat him had the flesh of his arm wither away, but Vitus healed it by his prayers. His father was blinded when he saw twelve angels in his room ‘with eyes like stars and faces like lightning’, but Vitus restored his sight by his prayers. When his father sought to kill him, an angel appeared to him and took him to Lucania on the bank of the river Silaris, together with Modestus and Crescentia. St Vitus performed many miracles there for the sick and insane. He went to Rome at the summons of the Emperor Diocletian and drove out an evil spirit from his son. Far from rewarding him, the Emperor tortured him cruelly when he would not bow down before mute idols, but the Lord delivered him from torture and returned him to Lucania by His invisible arm, and there he and Modestus and Crescentia entered into rest in the Lord. St Vitus’ relics are preserved in Prague.” (Prologue) In the West, St Vitus’ aid is often invoked for the cure of many ailments, especially insanity and demonic possession. For this reason his name is given to St Vitus’ dance, an acute neurological illness that produces uncontrollable movements in the face and limbs, usually occurring in children.

Holy Martyr Lazar, Prince of Serbia

1389

“He was one of the greatest men of Serbia who ruled the kingdom after king Dušan. Upon the death of King Uroš, Lazar was crowned King of Serbia by Patriarch Ephraim. He sent a delegation to Constantinople, including a monk called Isaiah, to plead for the removing of the anathema from the Serbian people. He went to war on several occasions against the Turkish Pasha, finally clashing with the Turkish king, Amurât, at Kosovo on June 15, 1389, being slain there. His body was taken to Ravanica near Cupria, a foundation of his, and buried there, but was later taken to New Ravanica in Srem. During the Second World War, in 1942, it was taken to Belgrade and placed in the Cathedral, where it is preserved to this day and offers comfort and healing to all who turn to him in prayer. He restored Hilandar and Gornjak, built Ravanica and the Lazarica in Kruševac and was the founder of St Panteleimon, the Russian monastery on the Holy Mountain, as well as numerous other churches and monasteries.” (Prologue)

Also commemorated: St Jonah, Metr. of Moscow

Daily readings

Epistle

weekly cycle

Romans — Romans 7.1-13

¹Know ye not, brethren, (for I speak to them that know the law,) how that the law hath dominion over a man as long as he liveth? ²For the woman which hath an husband is bound by the law to her husband so long as he liveth; but if the husband be dead, she is loosed from the law of her husband. ³So then if, while her husband liveth, she be married to another man, she shall be called an adulteress: but if her husband be dead, she is free from that law; so that she is no adulteress, though she be married to another man. ⁴Wherefore, my brethren, ye also are become dead to the law by the body of Christ; that ye should be married to another, even to him who is raised from the dead, that we should bring forth fruit unto God. ⁵For when we were in the flesh, the motions of sins, which were by the law, did work in our members to bring forth fruit unto death. ⁶But now we are delivered from the law, that being dead wherein we were held; that we should serve in newness of spirit, and not in the oldness of the letter.

⁷What shall we say then? Is the law sin? God forbid. Nay, I had not known sin, but by the law: for I had not known lust, except the law had said, Thou shalt not covet. ⁸But sin, taking occasion by the commandment, wrought in me all manner of concupiscence. For without the law sin was dead. ⁹For I was alive without the law once: but when the commandment came, sin revived, and I died. ¹⁰And the commandment, which was ordained to life, I found to be unto death. ¹¹For sin, taking occasion by the commandment, deceived me, and by it slew me. ¹²Wherefore the law is holy, and the commandment holy, and just, and good. ¹³Was then that which is good made death unto me? God forbid. But sin, that it might appear sin, working death in me by that which is good; that sin by the commandment might become exceeding sinful.

Gospel

weekly cycle

Matthew — Matthew 9.36-10.8

³⁶But when he saw the multitudes, he was moved with compassion on them, because they fainted, and were scattered abroad, as sheep having no shepherd. ³⁷Then saith he unto his disciples, The harvest truly is plenteous, but the labourers are few; ³⁸Pray ye therefore the Lord of the harvest, that he will send forth labourers into his harvest.

¹And when he had called unto him his twelve disciples, he gave them power against unclean spirits, to cast them out, and to heal all manner of sickness and all manner of disease. ²Now the names of the twelve apostles are these; The first, Simon, who is called Peter, and Andrew his brother; James the son of Zebedee, and John his brother; ³Philip, and Bartholomew; Thomas, and Matthew the publican; James the son of Alphaeus, and Lebbaeus, whose surname was Thaddaeus; ⁴Simon the Canaanite, and Judas Iscariot, who also betrayed him. ⁵These twelve Jesus sent forth, and commanded them, saying, Go not into the way of the Gentiles, and into any city of the Samaritans enter ye not: ⁶But go rather to the lost sheep of the house of Israel. ⁷And as ye go, preach, saying, The kingdom of heaven is at hand. ⁸Heal the sick, cleanse the lepers, raise the dead, cast out devils: freely ye have received, freely give.