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Icon of the 5th Sunday of Luke

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Schedule:

Great Vespers for the 5th Sunday of Luke, Saturday November 1st @ 4:45pm​

Orthos for the 5th Sunday of Luke, Sunday October 2nd @ 8:30am​

Divine Liturgy for the 5th Sunday of Luke, Sunday October 2nd @ 9:30am​

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Reading for Sunday of the 5th Sunday of Luke:

Epistle, Galatians 2:16-20

Gospel, Luke 16:19-31

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 The Holy Martyrs Acyndinus, Pegasius, Anempodistus, Aphthonius, Elpidephorus and others with them

They were all Christians from Persia and suffered during the reign of King Sapor in the year 355. The
first three were servants at the court of this same king but secretly served Christ their Lord. When they
were accused and brought to trial before the king, he asked them where they came from. To this they
replied: "Our fatherland and our life is the Most-holy Trinity, one in Essence and undivided, the Father,
the Son and the Holy Spirit, One God.'' The king subjected them to cruel tortures but they endured all
heroically, with psalmody and prayer on their lips. During the time of their torture and imprisonment
angels of God appeared to them many times, and one time the Lord Christ Himself appeared to them
as a man "with a face radiant as the sun.'' When one of the torturers, Aphthonius, beheld a miracle,
when boiling lead did no harm to the martyrs, he believed in Christ and cried out: "Great is the
Christian God!'' For this, he was immediately beheaded, and many others saw and believed. Then the
king ordered that Acyndinus, Pegasius and Anempodistus be sewn into animal skins and cast into the
sea. But St. Aphthonius appeared from the other world with three shining angels, and led the holy
martyrs to dry land and set them free. Elpidephorus was one of the king's nobles. When he revealed
that he was a Christian and denounced the king for his slaughter of innocent Christians, the king
condemned him to death and Elpidephorus was beheaded along with seven thousand other Christians.
Then those first three martyrs [Acyndinus, Pegasius and Anempodistus] were finally thrown into a
burning furnace along with twenty-eight soldiers and the king's mother, since they also believed in
Christ-and thus, in the flames, they gave up their righteous souls into the hands of the Lord.

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-Excerpt from The Prologue of Ohrid by St. Nikolai Velimirovich