Tuesday, 21 July 2026

Prophet Ezekiel

Tuesday of the 8th week after Pentecost

100 days after Pascha · Tone 6 · Liturgy · No Fast

Saints commemorated

Holy Martyr Victor of Marseilles and his companions

Saint Victor was a Christian soldier, an officer in the Roman army stationed at Marseilles in southern Gaul, of Egyptian birth, who suffered for Christ in the persecution of the emperor Maximian about the year 290. When the persecution broke out, Victor went secretly by night through the houses of the faithful, exhorting them to constancy. Denounced and brought before the prefects Asterius and Eutychius, and afterwards before the emperor himself, he openly confessed Christ and refused to offer incense to the gods. He was racked, beaten with rods, dragged bound through the streets, and at last thrown into prison; while he lay there in chains, three soldiers who had been set to guard him, Longinus, Alexander and Felician, were converted by his preaching, and were arrested and beheaded together. Victor was led out again, scourged, and ordered to offer incense before a statue of Jupiter; with his foot he overturned the idol. For this his foot was struck off; finally Maximian commanded that he be ground beneath a millstone, but the stone broke while he was yet alive, so that the executioners cut off his head with a sword. The faithful gathered up the bodies and buried them in a cave on the seashore, where in the fifth century Saint John Cassian raised over them the famous Abbey of Saint-Victor of Marseilles, one of the oldest monastic centres of the West. Saint Victor is patron of Marseilles and of the Estonian capital Tallinn.

Holy Prophet Ezekiel

The Holy Prophet Ezekiel, son of the priest Buzi, lived in the sixth century before Christ and was of the tribe of Levi. He was born at Sarir in the land of Judah and, while still a young priest, was carried away to Babylon at the age of twenty-five together with king Jeconiah and many of the people in the second deportation by Nebuchadnezzar in 597 BC. There, by the river Chebar in the land of the Chaldeans, when he was thirty years old, the heavens were opened and he received his prophetic call: he beheld the divine Chariot-throne borne by the four living creatures with the faces of a man, a lion, an ox and an eagle, and the wheels full of eyes, and the firmament above and the likeness of a man as it were of fire upon the throne, signifying the appearing of the Word made flesh. He prophesied for some twenty-seven years among the captives, contemporary with Jeremiah at Jerusalem and Daniel at the Babylonian court. He foretold the destruction of Jerusalem and its rebuilding, the gathering of Israel and, by the famous vision in the valley of dry bones, the resurrection of the dead. The closed gate of his vision of the new Temple is understood by the Church as a type of the ever-virginity of the Theotokos. According to tradition the prince of his own people, enraged that he had reproved their idolatry, ordered him to be tied to wild horses and torn asunder. He was buried in the tomb of Shem and Arphaxad in Babylonia, where his memorial was honoured for centuries.

Our Righteous Fathers John and Symeon, the Fool for Christ's Sake

570

These two brothers in Christ were from Edessa in Mesopotamia. After a pilgrimage to Jerusalem they fled the world together; they were tonsured as monks, but soon left their monastery to struggle in prayer near the Dead Sea. Thus they passed thirty years in silence and asceticism. Symeon was then commanded by God to leave the desert and serve God among the world’s people. At their parting John said to him: ‘Keep your heart from all that you see in the world. Whatever there may be that touches your hand, let it not take hold of your heart. When food passes your lips, let not your heart be sweetened by it. If your feet have to move, let there be peace within you. Whatever you do outwardly, let your mind remain tranquil. Pray for me, that God may not part us from each other in the world to come.’ Symeon went to Emesa in Syria, where he spent the rest of his life, feigning madness in order to conceal his holiness from men. But he performed miracles of healing and appeared to people of the city in dreams, calling them to repentance. He was given the gift of discernment of others’ inward condition, and while dancing and raving through the streets would approach people, whisper their sins in their ears, and call them to repentance. He reposed peacefully in 590; John, who had remained in the desert, reposed soon afterward.

Venerable Symeon, Fool-for-Christ of Emesa, and his fellow ascetic John

Saints Symeon and John were Syrian Christians of the sixth century, joined from boyhood in close friendship at the city of Edessa. Both were of wealthy families: Symeon, the elder, was unmarried and lived with his aged mother; John, the younger, lived with his father and his young wife. About the year 552, when Symeon was thirty and John twenty-four, they made a pilgrimage to Jerusalem for the Feast of the Exaltation of the Cross. On the road they spoke continually of the salvation of the soul; passing through the Jordan they saw the great monasteries on the desert's edge, and both were seized with so vehement a desire to flee the world that, at the monastery of Saint Gerasimos, they were tonsured monks together, leaving their families behind. They withdrew to a cave near the Dead Sea, where for twenty-nine years they lived in extreme asceticism, in unceasing prayer and silence, struggling for one another's sake. After many years, Symeon, judging himself sufficiently purified, told John that he was called to go and serve the salvation of others. He took his leave with tears and entered the city of Emesa in Phoenicia, where for the rest of his life he played the fool for Christ, hiding his sanctity under apparent madness, eating in the marketplace, mingling with harlots and tax-collectors, suffering blows and mockery, while secretly he worked many wonders, brought sinners to repentance, and preserved the city from earthquake and plague. John remained in the desert in solitary prayer. Both reposed about the year 590, and on the night of Symeon's burial his sanctity was revealed and his body was found to have vanished from the grave. Saint Symeon is the prototype of the long line of holy fools who follow the saying of Saint Paul, "We are fools for Christ's sake."

Marcella, Virgin-Martyr of Chios

c. 1500

Her mother died when she was very young, and she was brought up by her father. As she grew older, she grew in virtue and beauty. Her father conceived an illicit desire for her and made improper advances toward her, which troubled her so greatly that she fled her village and hid in the mountains. Her father pursued her, even wounding her with arrows in his effort to possess her. Finally she took refuge in a cloven rock. When her father found that he could not drag her from her refuge, he viciously dismembered her and threw her head into the sea. From the rock that had sheltered her a stream appeared, whose water had healing virtues. The holy Marcella is especially venerated on Chios to this day.

Daily readings

Epistle

weekly cycle

1 Corinthians — 1 Corinthians 10.5-12

⁵But with many of them God was not well pleased: for they were overthrown in the wilderness. ⁶Now these things were our examples, to the intent we should not lust after evil things, as they also lusted. ⁷Neither be ye idolaters, as were some of them; as it is written, The people sat down to eat and drink, and rose up to play. ⁸Neither let us commit fornication, as some of them committed, and fell in one day three and twenty thousand. ⁹Neither let us tempt Christ, as some of them also tempted, and were destroyed of serpents. ¹⁰Neither murmur ye, as some of them also murmured, and were destroyed of the destroyer. ¹¹Now all these things happened unto them for ensamples: and they are written for our admonition, upon whom the ends of the world are come. ¹²Wherefore let him that thinketh he standeth take heed lest he fall.

Gospel

weekly cycle

Matthew — Matthew 16.6-12

⁶Then Jesus said unto them, Take heed and beware of the leaven of the Pharisees and of the Sadducees. ⁷And they reasoned among themselves, saying, It is because we have taken no bread. ⁸Which when Jesus perceived, he said unto them, O ye of little faith, why reason ye among yourselves, because ye have brought no bread? ⁹Do ye not yet understand, neither remember the five loaves of the five thousand, and how many baskets ye took up? ¹⁰Neither the seven loaves of the four thousand, and how many baskets ye took up? ¹¹How is it that ye do not understand that I spake it not to you concerning bread, that ye should beware of the leaven of the Pharisees and of the Sadducees? ¹²Then understood they how that he bade them not beware of the leaven of bread, but of the doctrine of the Pharisees and of the Sadducees.