November 2020

The Gospel for this Sunday November 29th, is the reading for the 10th Sunday of Luke and speaks about Jesus’ healing of a crippled woman. Throughout the earthly ministry of Our Lord, Jesus often met with people who had various physical handicaps. We know from the various gospels read during the year about the blind beggar on the road to Jericho (Luke 18:35-43), the paralyzed man who was carried by his four friends to Jesus (Mark 2:1-12), the man with the paralyzed hand (Mark 3:1-6) and many others.

Shortly after the beginning of the Nativity Fast, we Orthodox Christians celebrate the second great feast of the Theotokos – The Entrance of the Holy Theotokos Into the Temple November 21.  The first feast of the liturgical year, was the Birth of the Holy Theotokos on September 8th and now it is indeed fitting that our thoughts now at the start of Advent turn to the Mother of God, whose humble and silent expectation should be the model of our own expectation and anticipation of Our Lord’s coming.

Today November 15th, we hear in Church the Gospel for the 8th Sunday of Luke, the Parable of the Good Samaritan, which falls usually just at the beginning of the Nativity Fast (Advent).

This Sunday we read the Gospel for the 7th Sunday of Luke 8:41-56 which is about Jairus’ daughter and the women who touched the cloak of Jesus.