The Holy Apostle Archippus. Day 4 of the Great Fast.
Abstention from meat and foods that contain these ingredients. According to liturgical prescriptions, the Divine Liturgy is not celebrated today.
Sixth Hour – Isaiah 2:11-21; Vespers – Genesis 2:4-19; Proverbs 3:1-19.
Read Genesis 2:4-19
Saying “no” increases your “yes.” Vasili Arkhipov was a Soviet submariner during the Cuban Missile Crisis in 1962. When his captain moved to launch a nuclear torpedo, Arkhipov’s consent was required before launch. Under extreme stress to consent, he replied with a firm “no.” That split-second restraint likely prevented a nuclear exchange.
Had Adam only said “no” to temptation, then he who “became a living soul” and was given power to name the beasts of the earth (Gen. 2:7; cf. 2:19) would have lived in communion with Life itself. Alas, he chose the easy “yes” and became a “natural” man: a mere recipient of life, a perishable entity. St. Paul takes up this thread and completes the contrast in 1 Cor. 15:45: “The first man Adam became a living being”; “the last Adam became a life-giving spirit.” Christ’s firm “no” to temptation clears the way for the New Adam to become the pattern for the new humanity: not merely living, but life-giving; not perishable, but imperishable.
Had Christ’s humanity, like Adam’s before Him, said “yes” to Satan’s temptations, there would have been a cosmic meltdown. All would have been lost. But it took one man, under extreme stress in a garden, to say “no” to the lie that happiness is found in one’s own will. By that sacrificial “no” to self and “yes” to God, the New Adam inherits the right to give the redeemed “a white stone, with a new name written on the stone” (Rev. 2:17).
In the days of the Great Fast we choose between a hard no to self and an easy yes to the Tempter. Every “no” to weakness frees us for the great “yes”: to be joined to the Imperishable One on that Last Day. No?