The Holy Unmercenaries and Wonderworkers Cosmas and Damian.
Troparia and Kontakia
Troparion, Tone 4: Today the people sing to God on high* because He gave us doctors who practiced without fee.* Let us sing to the holy Cosmas and glorious Damian:* Since you have been given the grace to cure so freely, distribute it freely among those who venerate you.
Glory be to the Father and to the Son and to the Holy Spirit, now and for ever and ever. Amen.
Kontakion, Tone 2: Receiving the grace to heal from the source of miracles,* you generously used it for those who called on you.* Visit us in our spiritual and physical needs,* holy doctors Cosmas and Damian,* and seek mercy from Christ our God for us.
Prokeimenon, Tone 4
To the saints who are in His land,* the Lord has made wonderful all His desires in them.
verse: I foresaw the Lord always in my sight, for He is at my right hand that I may not be shaken. (Psalm 15:3,8)
Epistle
1 Corinthians 2:9-3:8
Brothers and Sisters, as it is written,
“What no eye has seen, nor ear heard, nor the human heart conceived, what God has prepared for those who love him”—
these things God has revealed to us through the Spirit; for the Spirit searches everything, even the depths of God. For what human being knows what is truly human except the human spirit that is within? So also no one comprehends what is truly God’s except the Spirit of God. Now we have received not the spirit of the world, but the Spirit that is from God, so that we may understand the gifts bestowed on us by God. And we speak of these things in words not taught by human wisdom but taught by the Spirit, interpreting spiritual things to those who are spiritual.
Those who are unspiritual do not receive the gifts of God’s Spirit, for they are foolishness to them, and they are unable to understand them because they are spiritually discerned. Those who are spiritual discern all things, and they are themselves subject to no one else’s scrutiny.
“For who has known the mind of the Lord so as to instruct him?”
But we have the mind of Christ.
And so, brothers and sisters, I could not speak to you as spiritual people, but rather as people of the flesh, as infants in Christ. I fed you with milk, not solid food, for you were not ready for solid food. Even now you are still not ready, for you are still of the flesh. For as long as there is jealousy and quarreling among you, are you not of the flesh, and behaving according to human inclinations? For when one says, “I belong to Paul,” and another, “I belong to Apollos,” are you not merely human?
What then is Apollos? What is Paul? Servants through whom you came to believe, as the Lord assigned to each. I planted, Apollos watered, but God gave the growth. So neither the one who plants nor the one who waters is anything, but only God who gives the growth. The one who plants and the one who waters have a common purpose, and each will receive wages according to the labor of each.
Alleluia, Tone 2
verse: Behold, how good and how pleasant it is for brothers to dwell together.
verse: For the Lord confers His blessing and life for ever. (Psalm 132:1,3)
Gospel
Matthew 13:31-36
The Lord told this parable: “The kingdom of heaven is like a mustard seed that someone took and sowed in his field; it is the smallest of all the seeds, but when it has grown it is the greatest of shrubs and becomes a tree, so that the birds of the air come and make nests in its branches.”
He told them another parable: “The kingdom of heaven is like yeast that a woman took and mixed in with three measures of flour until all of it was leavened.”
Jesus told the crowds all these things in parables; without a parable he told them nothing. This was to fulfill what had been spoken through the prophet:
“I will open my mouth to speak in parables; I will proclaim what has been hidden from the foundation of the world.”
Then he left the crowds and went into the house. And his disciples approached him, saying, “Explain to us the parable of the weeds of the field.”
Communion Hymn
Rejoice in the Lord, O you just;* praise befits the righteous.* Alleluia, alleluia,* alleluia.