Thursday 12 January 2023
St Sava, Archbishop of Serbia
Thursday of the 31st week after Pentecost
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Saints commemorated
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Saint of the day
St Sava, Archbishop of Serbia
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Holy Martyr Tatiana (ca. 230)
Tatiana of Rome (died c. 226) was a noble Roman virgin and deaconess martyred under the emperor Alexander Severus. Daughter of a man who had thrice been consul and who raised her secretly in the faith, she consecrated her virginity to Christ and served the Church of Rome as a deaconess, tending the sick and the poor. Arrested in the persecution driven by the prefect Ulpian, she was subjected to a long sequence of tortures out of which the tradition tells its most vivid signs: the temple of Apollo into which she was led fell in ruin, the arena lion loosed upon her lay down and licked her feet, and several of her executioners, seeing her wounds healed and their own blows turned back upon them, confessed Christ and were themselves baptised in their blood. Beheaded with the sword — together, the account says, with her aged father — she became one of the best-loved virgin-martyrs of the Church, and in Russia the patroness of students, her feast kept as "Tatiana's Day" and bound to the founding of the University of Moscow.
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Venerable Benedict Biscop, Abbot of Wearmouth (689-690)
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Eupraxia of Tabenna
Eupraxia was a child of the senatorial nobility of Constantinople — daughter of Antigonus, a kinsman of the emperor Theodosius the Great — who was taken to Egypt at the age of seven, asked to be left in a women's monastery of the Thebaid near Tabennisi, and never came out again. Betrothed in infancy to a senator's son, she wrote to the emperor at the age of twelve to renounce the match and to ask that her whole inheritance be given to the poor and the churches, saying that she was already the bride of Christ. In the monastery she chose the lowest work of the house — the kitchen, the water, the sweeping — carried her fast from daily food to one meal a week, bore in silence the malice of an envious sister and a series of disfiguring accidents, and received before her death the gift of healing. She died aged about thirty, about the year 410–413, ten days after the abbess had seen her in a vision standing before the throne of God. Her Life is one of the most widely copied of the early Egyptian women's lives, and she is commemorated on July 25 with Olympias the Deaconess.
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Euthasia
Euthasia (died c. 305) was a virgin-martyr commemorated on January 12, of whom the synaxaria preserve only the fact of her consecrated virginity and her death by the sword. The Greek books group her among the martyrs of the Diocletianic age, about the year 305.
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Mertius of Mauretania
Mertius (died c. 305) was a soldier of the Roman army in Mauretania, in Roman Africa, martyred in the persecution of Diocletian. Commanded to sacrifice to the idols and refusing, he was given over to torture, which he bore without a sound; cast into prison, he died there of hunger and of the wounds of his torments. He is commemorated on January 12.
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Peter Absolom
Peter Absolom (died c. 309–311) was a young Christian of Anea, near Eleutheropolis in Palestine, martyred by fire at Caesarea in the persecution of Diocletian and his successors — one of the Palestinian martyrs whose sufferings Eusebius of Caesarea witnessed and recorded. Renowned, the tradition says, for his bodily strength and his piety, he was seized, refused every inducement to deny Christ or even to make a token compliance, and was burned alive. He is commemorated on January 12.
Readings
Epistle
James 1.19-27
19Wherefore, my beloved brethren, let every man be swift to hear, slow to speak, slow to wrath: 20For the wrath of man worketh not the righteousness of God. 21Wherefore lay apart all filthiness and superfluity of naughtiness, and receive with meekness the engrafted word, which is able to save your souls. 22But be ye doers of the word, and not hearers only, deceiving your own selves. 23For if any be a hearer of the word, and not a doer, he is like unto a man beholding his natural face in a glass: 24For he beholdeth himself, and goeth his way, and straightway forgetteth what manner of man he was. 25But whoso looketh into the perfect law of liberty, and continueth therein, he being not a forgetful hearer, but a doer of the work, this man shall be blessed in his deed. 26If any man among you seem to be religious, and bridleth not his tongue, but deceiveth his own heart, this man’s religion is vain. 27Pure religion and undefiled before God and the Father is this, To visit the fatherless and widows in their affliction, and to keep himself unspotted from the world.
Gospel
Mark 9.10-16
10And they kept that saying with themselves, questioning one with another what the rising from the dead should mean. 11And they asked him, saying, Why say the scribes that Elias must first come? 12And he answered and told them, Elias verily cometh first, and restoreth all things; and how it is written of the Son of man, that he must suffer many things, and be set at nought. 13But I say unto you, That Elias is indeed come, and they have done unto him whatsoever they listed, as it is written of him. 14And when he came to his disciples, he saw a great multitude about them, and the scribes questioning with them. 15And straightway all the people, when they beheld him, were greatly amazed, and running to him saluted him. 16And he asked the scribes, What question ye with them?
Troparia & kontakia
Apolytikion — Tone 1
Venerating thy divine icon as the tabernacle of thy glory, O Virgin Milk-Giver, we glorify thee; for from it thou dost mystically pour forth the milk of immaterial gifts, and dost nourish the hearts and the souls of those who cry to thee in faith: Glory to thy magnificence, O pure one; glory to thy wonders; glory to thine unutterable goodness toward us.
Kontakion — Tone 2
Let us hymn her who as a mother gives suck, as to an infant, to Him who was ineffably born of her — the only Theotokos, who nourishes with milk Christ our God; for she delivers us from many dangers.
Kontakion — Tone 2
Despising the bridal chamber of earth and the wealth of thy fathers, thou wast betrothed to Christ alone, O all-blessed Eupraxia; and serving thy sisters in the lowest labours thou wast raised on high, and dost intercede unceasingly for us all.
Megalynarion
Come, brethren, let us venerate the sacred and honoured icon of the Milk-Giver; for it wells up the grace of ineffable compassion, and warms our hearts and our souls.
Synaxarion
A spiritual milk thou pourest forth, O thou who barest God: thy divine icon is the Milk-Giver.
Synaxarion
For the head of all-radiant Tatiana the sword wrought out a radiant crown. On the twelfth, the sword shore through Tatiana's neck.
Troparion — Tone 8 (common of a venerable woman)
In thee, O mother, was the divine image preserved unimpaired: for taking up the cross thou didst follow after Christ, and by thy deeds thou hast taught us to despise the flesh, which passeth away, and to care rather for the soul, a thing immortal. Wherefore, O venerable Eupraxia, thy spirit rejoiceth with the angels.
Troparion — Tone 4
Thy lamb Tatiana crieth unto Thee, O Jesus, with a loud voice: Thee, my Bridegroom, do I love, and seeking Thee I strive in contest; I am crucified and buried together with Thee in Thy baptism, and I suffer for Thy sake, that I may reign with Thee; I die for Thee, that I may live in Thee. Receive me then as a spotless sacrifice, offered unto Thee in love. By her prayers, O Merciful One, save Thou our souls.