25th Sunday after Pentecost

Saints commemorated

• Ven. Patapius of Thebes

  Patapius (7th century, by the common Greek reckoning) was an Egyptian ascetic from Thebes who withdrew as a young man into the desert, and — when his renown for holiness broke his solitude — travelled to Constantinople, where he lived as a recluse in a cell by the city wall near the Blachernae church. There a gift of healing made him one of the great wonderworkers of the capital; the tradition remembers in particular a woman freed of a devouring cancer at his word. He reposed in peace and was buried in a church of Saint John the Baptist. His relics, later carried to a cave in the Geraneia mountains above Loutraki near Corinth, were found incorrupt there and remain the treasure of the monastery that bears his name. He is commemorated on December 8, within the forefeast of the Conception of the Theotokos by Anna.

• Holy Apostles Sosthenes, Apollos, Tychicus and Epaphroditus, Cephas and Caesar

  On December 8 the Church commemorates a company of apostles of the Seventy, all named in the letters of the New Testament: Sosthenes, once ruler of the synagogue at Corinth and afterwards a bishop; Apollos, the eloquent Alexandrian of the Book of Acts; Cephas of Colophon; Tychicus, Paul's trusted messenger; Epaphroditus, whom Paul called his fellow-soldier; and Caesar, bishop of Dyrrhachium — together with the Apostle Onesiphorus, who is commemorated with them but whose principal feast and full entry stand under his own name. Chosen and sent by Christ among the Seventy (Luke 10), they laboured beside the Apostle Paul and became shepherds of the young Churches. Their memory is kept also on March 30 and, with all the Seventy, on January 4.

• 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.

• Sophronius of Cyprus

  Sophronius (6th century, by the usual reckoning) was a bishop of the Church of Cyprus, honoured by the tradition as an ascetic hierarch — learned, austere in his own life, and open-handed toward the poor and the oppressed. The Greek synaxaria remember him for having "quenched every fleshly passion" and for a pastorate marked by mercy; he reposed in peace. He is commemorated on December 8, on the same day as Patapius of Thebes, chiefly in the Greek tradition.

British Isles and Ireland

• St. Gunthild of Wimborne (748)

Troparia & kontakia

Readings