Sunday 1st March 2026
Lenten Fast: wine and oil allowed
Tone 5 - Eothinon 5
Liturgy of St Basil
1st of Great Lent, Sunday of Orthodoxy
Today we commemorate:
Holy Martyr Eudoxia of Heliopolis (c.160). Holy virgin Domnina of Syria (c.460). Holy Martyrs Nestor, Tribimius, Marcellus, and Anthony of Pamphylia (3rd C). St. Agapius of Vatopedi Skete of Kolitsou, and his four companions. New Martyrs abbess Antonina of Kizliar, Northern Caucasus (1924), Hieromartyr Methodius (1920), and Anastasia Andreyevna, Fool-for-Christ.
British Isles and Ireland:
St. David of Wales (6th C). St. Marnock of Kilmarnock (625). St. Swithbert the Elder of Northumbria, bishop of the Frisians (713). Holy Martyr Monan of St. Andrew’s (874).
Hebrews 11:24-26,32-40; John 1:43-51
Readings in bold type are those appointed by the Typikon for use at the Liturgy
Hebrews 11:24-26,32-40
Brothers and sisters, by faith Moses, when he grew up, refused to be called the son of Pharaoh’s daughter. He preferred to share the suffering of God’s people than to have the short-lived pleasures of sin, reckoning Christ’s disgrace to be of more value than Egypt’s treasures because he was looking to the reward. … What more shall I say? For time would fail me to relate in full the story of Gideon, and also of Barak and Samson and Jephthah, and also of David, and of Samuel and the prophets. Through faith they overcame kingdoms; they laboured for righteousness, obtained promises, stopped the mouths of lions, quenched the power of fire, escaped from the edge of the sword, grew strong out of weakness, became powerful in battle, put to flight foreign armies. Women received their dead by resurrection, and others were beaten to death, not accepting deliverance so that they might gain a better resurrection. Others were tested by mockery and scourgings, yet others by shackles and imprisonment. They were stoned; they were sawn in two; they were subjected to ordeals; they were put to the sword. They went about in sheepskins, in goatskins; they were destitute, afflicted, tormented. The world was not worthy of them. They wandered in deserts and mountains, and were in caves and holes in the ground. All these who received a testimony through faith did not receive the promise, because God had already provided something better for us so that they would not attain perfection without us.
John 1:43-51
At that time Jesus decided to leave for Galilee. There he found Philip and said to him, ‘Follow me.’ Philip was from Bethsaida, the city of Andrew and Peter. Philip found Nathanael and told him, ‘We have found the one of whom Moses in the law and also the prophets wrote: Jesus, son of Joseph, from Nazareth.’ Nathanael asked him, ‘Can anything good come out of Nazareth?’ And Philip replied, ‘Come and see.’ Jesus saw Nathanael approaching him, and he said of him, ‘Here is an Israelite indeed in whom there is no guile.’ Nathanael asked him, ‘How do you know me?’ And Jesus told him, ‘Before Philip called you, when you were under the fig tree, I saw you.’ Nathanael’s response was to say to him, ‘Rabbi, you are the Son of God. You are the King of Israel.’ And in reply Jesus said to him, ‘Do you believe because I told you that I saw you under the fig tree? You shall see greater things than these.’ And he said, ‘Truly, truly I tell you that from now on you will see heaven opened and the angels of God ascending and descending upon the Son of Man.’