27th Sunday after Pentecost - 12/14/25
Sunday, December 14th, is the 27th Sunday after Pentecost. The Sunday that falls between December 11-17 is known as the Sunday of the Holy Forefathers. These are the ancestors of Christ according to the flesh, who lived before the Law and under the Law, especially the Patriarch Abraham, to whom God said, “In thy seed shall all of the nations of the earth be blessed” (Gen. 12:3, 22:18).
These also include Righteous Aaron, Benjamin, Deborah, Hezron, Isaac, Jacob, Judith, Miriam, the prophets Nathan and Nehemiah, the Righteous Noah, Rebecca, Sarah, Solomon, Susanna, Ruth, and Mary (the mother of Saint Anna, and the grandmother of the Theotokos).
On this day the Church also remembers:
Martyrs Thyrsos, Leukios, and Kallinikos (249-51), and
Martyrs Philemon, Apollonios, Arrian, and Theonas of Alexandria (286-287).
Read more about the lives of all these saints here.
Readings for Sunday, December 14th:
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4
When Christ who is our life appears, then you also will appear with Him in glory.
5
Therefore put to death your members which are on the earth: fornication, uncleanness, passion, evil desire, and covetousness, which is idolatry.
6
Because of these things the wrath of God is coming upon the sons of disobedience,
7
in which you yourselves once walked when you lived in them.
8
But now you yourselves are to put off all these: anger, wrath, malice, blasphemy, filthy language out of your mouth.
9
Do not lie to one another, since you have put off the old man with his deeds,
10
and have put on the new man who is renewed in knowledge according to the image of Him who created him,
11
where there is neither Greek nor Jew, circumcised nor uncircumcised, barbarian, Scythian, slave nor free, but Christ is all and in all.
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16
Then He said to him, “A certain man gave a great supper and invited many,
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and sent his servant at supper time to say to those who were invited, ‘Come, for all things are now ready.’
18
But they all with one accord began to make excuses. The first said to him, ‘I have bought a piece of ground, and I must go and see it. I ask you to have me excused.’
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And another said, ‘I have bought five yoke of oxen, and I am going to test them. I ask you to have me excused.’
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Still another said, ‘I have married a wife, and therefore I cannot come.’
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So that servant came and reported these things to his master. Then the master of the house, being angry, said to his servant, ‘Go out quickly into the streets and lanes of the city, and bring in here the poor and the maimed and the lame and the blind.’
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And the servant said, ‘Master, it is done as you commanded, and still there is room.’
23
Then the master said to the servant, ‘Go out into the highways and hedges, and compel them to come in, that my house may be filled.
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’For I say to you that none of those men who were invited shall taste my supper.’”
The Holy Scriptures are part of the Church’s Holy Tradition. Metropolitan Kallistos Ware of blessed memory wrote:
In the words of Father Alexander Schmemann, “A Christian is the one who, wherever he looks, finds everywhere Christ, and rejoices in Him.” This is true in particular of the biblical Christian. Wherever he looks, on every page, he finds everywhere Christ.
See Metropolitan Ware’s article How to Read the Bible for more on an Orthodox approach to scripture.