Sunday of Zacchaeus

Saints commemorated

• Trans. Rel. Ignatius the Godbearer

• St Andrei Rublev, iconographer (1430)

• Our Holy Father Aphrahat the Persian (4th c.)

  Aphraates (†c. 370–380) was a Persian of noble birth who forsook the fire-worship of his fathers for Christ, left his own country, and became an anchorite — first near Edessa and then outside Antioch, in a small cell by the Orontes, where he gave himself to prayer, fasting, and the healing of the sick. He is remembered above all for the boldness with which, in the reign of the Arian emperor Valens, he broke his solitude to come into the city and strengthen the Orthodox faithful against the heresy — answering the emperor, who rebuked a monk for meddling, that a man whose house was ablaze could not stay shut in his room. His life and words are recorded by his younger contemporary Theodoret of Cyrrhus. He must be kept distinct from the Syriac writer Aphrahat "the Persian Sage," with whom his very similar name causes him to be confused. He is commemorated on January 29.

• Repose of Blessed Father Dimitrios Gagastathis (1975)

• Gerasimus, Pitirim and Jonah of Perm

  Gerasimus, Pitirim and Jonah were three successive bishops of Great Perm, seated at Ust-Vym on the Vychegda, who in the fifteenth century carried forward the mission begun by Stephen of Perm among the Zyrians (Komi) and the pagan tribes of the far north-east of Russia. Gerasimus (†c. 1441) and Pitirim (†1455) were both martyred — the one strangled by a heathen of his own household, the other killed in a raid of the pagan Voguls (Mansi) — while Jonah (†1470) completed the conversion of Great Perm on the upper Kama and reposed in peace. Venerated together as the wonderworking hierarchs of Perm, their relics rest in the cathedral of Ust-Vym, and they are commemorated as a company on January 29.

• Ignatius of Antioch

  Ignatius the God-bearer (c. 35 – c. 107) was bishop of Antioch — the third to hold the see, after the Apostle Peter and Evodus — and, with Polycarp of Smyrna, a disciple of the Apostle and Evangelist John the Theologian. Tradition identifies him with the child whom Christ set in the midst of the disciples, and reads his name "Theophoros," God-bearer, in both its senses: one borne in the arms of God, and one who bore God in his heart. Arrested under the emperor Trajan and condemned to the beasts, he was sent under military guard across Asia Minor to Rome — a journey on which, chained to "ten leopards," he wrote the seven letters that are his enduring monument: a foundational witness to the bishop's office, to the Eucharist as "the medicine of immortality," and to a martyrdom he embraced with longing — "I am the wheat of God, and I am ground by the teeth of the wild beasts, that I may be found the pure bread of Christ." He was devoured by beasts in the amphitheatre at Rome about the year 107. His relics were carried back to Antioch — the first stage of their journey — and later translated to Rome, to the Basilica of San Clemente, where they rest. He is kept on December 20, and on January 29 for the translation of his relics.

• Laurence of Turov

  Laurence (†1194) was a monk of the Kiev Caves monastery who lived as a recluse in strict enclosure, was granted the gift of healing — especially of casting out unclean spirits — and was afterwards consecrated Bishop of Turov, a see of the Turov-Pinsk land in the west of the Kievan realm. He shepherded his diocese in the last years before the fragmentation of the Rus' and reposed in 1194; his incorrupt relics rest in the Near (Anthony's) Caves of the Kiev-Caves Lavra, where he is numbered among the venerable fathers who lie there. He is commemorated on January 29, and among the Fathers of the Near Caves. He is not to be confused with the later Laurence the Recluse of the Far Caves, a distinct Kiev-Caves saint.

• Martyrs of Samosata

  The seven Martyrs of Samosata — Romanus, James, Philotheus, Hyperechius, Abibus, Julian and Paregorius — suffered together about the year 297, in the persecution of Diocletian, at Samosata, the ancient capital of Commagene on the upper Euphrates. Christians of the city, they refused to join the pagan sacrifices offered for the emperor's victory and openly denounced the worship of idols. For this they were seized and subjected to prolonged and savage torture — their bodies scored with iron, heavy fetters hung about their necks, and long imprisonment — and at the last were nailed to crosses, iron nails being driven into their heads while they hung. They are commemorated as a company on January 29, and are listed among the martyrs of the Greek Menaion and the synaxaria.

• Sarbelus of Edessa

  Sarbelus (Syriac Sharbil) was the chief pagan priest of Edessa in Mesopotamia under the emperor Trajan (98–117), converted to Christ with his sister Bebaia by Barsimaeus, bishop of Edessa. Renouncing the idols whose most honoured servant he had been, he was arrested, subjected to prolonged and savage tortures, and put to death, his sister receiving the crown of martyrdom with him. He is commemorated on September 5, and again with Bebaia on October 15 and with Barsimaeus on January 29.

• Silvanus of Emesa

  Silvanus, Bishop of Emesa in Phoenicia Libanensis (modern Homs, in Syria), was an aged hierarch given to the wild beasts in the amphitheatre of his city together with two of his clergy — Luke the deacon and Mocius the reader — in the great persecution, about the year 312. His martyrdom is one of the few of its region attested by a contemporary historian: Eusebius of Caesarea names Silvanus, "bishop of the churches about Emesa," among the bishops thrown to the beasts as the persecution reached its height. The Byzantine calendars keep the three together on January 29. Because his name and death so closely resemble those of his exact contemporary Silvan of Gaza, the two are constantly confused in the sources; they are distinct saints of the same persecution.

British Isles and Ireland

• St. Gildas the Wise, abbot of Llanilltud and Brittany (c.570)
• St. Blath (Flora) of Kildare (523)
• St. Dallan Forgaill, martyr (598)
• St. Voloc, bishop in Scotland (c.724)

Troparia & kontakia

Readings