Our holy father Nicephorus, Patriarch of Constantinople, died while in exile on the island of Prochonis in the year 827. After the death of the last iconoclast emperor, the relics of the holy father were brought back to Constantinople, first to the church of Hagia Sophia and then finally to the Church of the Holy Apostles in the year 846.
You reaped your reward from your patience, unceasing prayer, love of the poor, and constant comfort of the needy. O blessed and merciful Nicephorus, beseech Christ to save our souls.
The choir of patriarchs honors your memory with chants and hymns of praise, O Nicephorus; transferring your relics, it inherits your spirit. Therefore, the Church glorifies Christ the King, who alone loves human-king
When the Lord smelled the sweet odor, the Lord said to himself: Never again will I curse the ground because of human beings, since the desires of the human heart are evil from youth; nor will I ever again strike down every living being, as I have done.
All the days of the earth,
Seedtime and harvest,
Cold and heat,
Summer and winter,
And day and night
Shall not cease.
God blessed Noah and his sons and said to them: Be fertile and multiply and fill the earth. Fear and dread shall come upon all the animals of the earth and all the birds of the air, upon all the creatures that move about on the ground and all the fishes of the sea; into your power they are delivered. Any living creature that moves about shall be yours to eat; I give them all to you as I did the green plants. Only meat with its lifeblood still in it you shall not eat. Indeed for your own lifeblood I will demand an accounting: from every animal I will demand it, and from a human being, each one for the blood of another, I will demand an accounting for human life.
Anyone who sheds the blood of a human being,
By a human being shall that one’s blood be shed;
For in the image of God
Have human beings been made.
Be fertile, then, and multiply; abound on earth and subdue it.
Justice leads toward life, but pursuit of evil, toward death.
The crooked in heart are an abomination to the Lord, but those who walk blamelessly are his delight.
Be assured, the wicked shall not go unpunished, but the offspring of the just shall escape.
Like a golden ring in a swine’s snout is a beautiful woman without judgment.
The desire of the just ends only in good; the expectation of the wicked is wrath.
One person is lavish yet grows still richer; another is too sparing, yet is the poorer.
Whoever confers benefits will be amply enriched, and whoever refreshes the other will be refreshed.
Whoever hoards grain, the people curse, but blessings are on the head of the one who distributes it!
Those who seek the good seek favor, but those who pursue evil will have evil come upon them.
Those who trust in their riches will fall, but like green leaves the just will flourish.
Those who trouble their household inherit the wind, and fools become slaves to the wise of heart.
The fruit of justice is a tree of life, and one who takes lives is a sage.
If the just are recompensed on the earth, how much more the wicked and the sinner!
Whoever loved discipline loves knowledge, but whoever hates reproof is stupid.
A good person wins favor from the Lord, but the schemer he condemns.
Icon courtesy of Jack Figel, Eastern Christian Publications – ecpubs.com
Sunday, March 12 –
