Saturday before Elevation

Saints commemorated

• Martyr Sozon of Cilicia

  Sozon (†c. 304) was a young Christian shepherd of Lycaonia, named Tarasios before his baptism, who suffered martyrdom at Pompeiopolis in Cilicia during the last great persecution. Warned of his coming contest in a vision at a spring where he watered his flock, he went to Pompeiopolis, broke the golden hand from a pagan idol and gave the gold to the poor, then surrendered himself so that no one else would suffer for his deed. Tortured with iron claws, iron boots nailed to his feet, and rods, he died confessing Christ. He is the chief saint of September 7, with a proper kontakion and a full canon in the Menaion.

• St John, Archbishop of Novgorod

• Martyr Sozon of Cilicia (208/304)

• Holy Apostles Evodus and Onesiphorus of the Seventy

  Onesiphorus (1st century) is the disciple whom the Apostle Paul blesses by name in his last letter: "he often refreshed me, and was not ashamed of my chain, but when he was in Rome he sought me out diligently and found me" (2 Timothy 1:16–17). Counted among the Seventy Apostles, he is held by tradition to have served Paul at Ephesus, to have become bishop of Colophon in Asia Minor and afterwards of Corinth, and to have died a martyr at Parium on the Hellespont, where he had gone to preach Christ. He is commemorated on September 7 with the Apostle Evodus, on December 8 with six fellow apostles of the Seventy, and on January 4 with all the Seventy.

• Holy Martyr Eupsychyius of Caesarea (2nd c.)

• St Kassia (Kassiani) the Hymnographer (9th c.)

  Kassiani (Kassia, Ikasia; c. 805/810 – c. 865) is the one woman whose hymnography stands, under her own name, in the received liturgical books of the Byzantine Church. A noblewoman of Constantinople, she is remembered in the chronicles as the candidate who lost the bride-show of the emperor Theophilos by answering him back about Eve; she is remembered in the letters of Theodore the Studite as a learned young woman who supported the imprisoned monks of the icons in the second iconoclasm, and was scourged for it; and she is remembered in the service books as the author of the doxastikon of Great and Holy Wednesday — Κύριε, ἡ ἐν πολλαῖς ἁμαρτίαις περιπεσοῦσα γυνή, "O Lord, the woman fallen into many sins" — the single most anticipated piece of chant in the Greek liturgical year. She founded and ruled a convent in the west of the capital, on the Xerolophos, the seventh hill; some two dozen of her hymns are securely hers, among them the Christmas Eve sticheron When Augustus reigned alone upon the earth and part of the canon of Great Saturday; and beside the hymns she left a body of epigrams and gnomic verses unlike anything else surviving from a Byzantine woman's hand — sharp, classicising, and often mordant. She is commemorated on September 7.

• Eupsychius of Caesarea

  Eupsychius (2nd century) was a Christian of Caesarea in Cappadocia — called in some synaxaria the son of a senator, Dionysius — who was martyred in the persecution under the emperor Hadrian. Arrested and tortured, he was healed of his wounds in prison by an angel; released, he gave away his goods to the poor, including a portion to the very informers who had denounced him. Seized again under a new governor, he was hung up, torn with iron hooks, and beheaded. He is commemorated on September 7, and is to be distinguished from the later and more famous Eupsychius of the same city, martyred under Julian (April 9) — whom many hold to be, in fact, the same martyr doubled.

• Evodus of Antioch

  Evodus (†c. 66) was one of the Seventy Apostles and the first bishop of Antioch after the Apostle Peter, the predecessor of Ignatius the God-bearer in the see from which the Patriarchate of Antioch descends. Eusebius names him first in the Antiochian succession, and a later tradition credits him with coining the name "Christians," first given to the disciples at Antioch. He is said to have shepherded the Antiochian church for some twenty-seven years and to have died a martyr, under Nero by the most common account. His writings, among them a book called The Star, are lost. He is commemorated on September 7 with the Apostle Onesiphorus, and with all the Seventy on January 4.

• Alcmund of Hexham

  Alcmund (†780/781) was the seventh bishop of Hexham in Northumbria, holding the see of Wilfrid, John of Beverley and Acca from his consecration in 767 until his death on September 7, 780 or 781. The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle records his death to the day, and nothing of his acts is recorded beyond the annals of his episcopate; his sanctity is attested instead by his cultus at Hexham, where he was buried beside St Acca, and by the eleventh-century elevation of his relics into the church after — the Durham tradition says — he appeared in a vision commanding it. He is commemorated with his successor Tilbert on September 7.

• Balin

  Balin (Balloin, Balanus; 7th century) was an Englishman who became a monk in Ireland: a brother of St Gerald of Mayo, and one of four brothers — Gerald, Balin, Berikert and Hubritan — who, the Irish tradition records, came from England to Ireland after the middle of the seventh century, in the generation when St Colman of Lindisfarne withdrew to Connaught with his English monks. Balin settled at Tech-Saxan, "the House of the Saxons," in what is now the parish of Athenry, County Galway, in the diocese of Tuam. The Irish martyrologies record his festival on September 3; the York calendar and Orthodox England commemorate him on September 7.

• Tilbert of Hexham

  Tilbert (Tilberht; †789) was the eighth bishop of Hexham in Northumbria, consecrated in the autumn of 780 or 781 in succession to Alcmund and holding the see until his death in 789. The record of him is a handful of annal lines: his consecration on October 2, his presence at the consecration of Aldulf, bishop of the Saxon monastery of Mayo, at Corbridge in 786, and his subscription at the Northumbrian synod of Pincanheale in 788. Nothing else of his acts survives. He is venerated with Alcmund on September 7, the pair carried together by the Benedictine martyrologies and by the modern Orthodox calendars of Britain.

British Isles and Ireland

• Holy martyr Grimonia (4th C)

Troparia & kontakia

Readings