Hieromartyr Babylas, Bishop of Antioch

Saints commemorated

• Saint of the day

  

  Hieromartyr Babylas, Bishop of Antioch

  Babylas was bishop of Antioch from about 237 until his death in the Decian persecution, c. 253. Celebrated in antiquity for barring an emperor stained with murder from the doors of the church, he confessed Christ under Decius, was loaded with chains — which he asked to have buried with him — and died a martyr together with three boys he had raised in the faith. A century later his relics were carried to the suburb of Daphne to silence the oracle of Apollo there — the first attested translation of relics in Christian history — and their removal on the order of Julian the Apostate, followed at once by the burning of Apollo's temple, made Babylas the emblem of the martyrs' victory over paganism, immortalised in John Chrysostom's writings.

• Holy Prophet Moses, who beheld God.

  Moses, the God-seer and Lawgiver, is the greatest figure of the Old Covenant: the Hebrew child drawn from the Nile who spoke with God in the Burning Bush, led Israel out of Egypt through the Red Sea, received the Law on Sinai, and guided the people forty years in the wilderness before dying within sight of the promised land. The Orthodox Church venerates him as the first and chief of the prophets — the man "whom the Lord knew face to face" — reads his books and sings his odes throughout the liturgical year, sees in the bush that burned unconsumed the great type of the Theotokos, and beholds him standing beside Christ in glory at the Transfiguration. His principal feast is September 4.

• St John Mavropos, Metropolitan of Euchaita (1100)

• St Hermione, daughter of Apostle Philip (1st c.)

  Hermione (†c. 117) was one of the four virgin daughters of Philip the Deacon — the evangelist of the Seven — who "did prophesy" (Acts 21:9). A prophetess and physician of the apostolic generation, she travelled to Ephesus seeking John the Theologian, arriving only after his repose, healed the sick without charge, and founded a house of care for them. Interrogated by the emperor Trajan, to whom she foretold Hadrian's succession, she was released, but under Hadrian was tortured and finally beheaded at Ephesus, where she was buried. Her converted executioners, Theotimus and Theodoulos, are commemorated with her on September 4.

• Venerable Anthimos the Blind, New Ascetic (1782)

• Holy New Martyr Gorazd, Bishop of Slovakia and the Czech Lands (1942) (August 22 OC)

• Joasaph of Belgorod

  Joasaph of Belgorod (1705–1754), born Joachim Gorlenko of a noble Ukrainian family, was a monk and bishop of the Russian Church renowned for the austerity of his personal life and the strictness of his pastoral zeal. Formed at the Kiev Academy and tonsured young, he rose through the monastic offices to be igumen of the Mgarsk monastery and vicar of the Trinity–Sergius Lavra before his consecration as Bishop of Belgorod and Oboyan in 1748. In six years of ascetic and exacting episcopate he laboured for the moral reform of his clergy and people. His body was found incorrupt after his repose, and he was glorified in 1911; he is commemorated on December 10, the day of his death.

• Monessa

  Monessa (traditionally †456) is a maiden of the age of Patrick who, in the earliest account, sought the Maker of the sun before she had ever heard him preached, was brought to Patrick, was baptised by him, and died at the font "giving up her spirit into the hands of the angels." The story is first told by Muirchú in the seventh century of Monesan, a British king's daughter brought to Patrick in Ireland; the later hagiographical dictionaries, and the calendar line under which she is commemorated, make her instead the daughter of an Irish chieftain. The martyrologies keep her on September 4.

• Rhuddlad of Llanrhyddlad

  Rhuddlad (or Rhyddlad; by convention 7th century) is the patroness of Llanrhyddlad — "the church of Rhuddlad" — at the foot of Moel Rhyddlad in north-west Anglesey, Wales. Her surviving record is exactly that: the church dedication that carries her name, and her festival, September 4, entered in late-medieval and early-modern Welsh calendars. The Welsh genealogies of the saints have nothing to say of her; an eighteenth-century antiquary's guess made her a daughter of a king of Leinster. Nothing more is known.

• Ultan of Ardbraccan

  Ultán moccu Conchobair (†657, the annals varying) was bishop of Ardbraccan (Ard Breccáin) in Meath, and is one of the best-attested Irish saints of his century: his own pupil Tírechán wrote his memoir of Patrick "from the mouth or the book of Bishop Ultán," and the tradition credits Ultán with gathering the miracles of Brigid into a book and with hymns in her honour. The Irish tradition remembers him above all as "the cleric of the children": the Martyrology of Óengus pictures the little ones playing around him, and its scholia tell how, after the Yellow Plague, every orphaned infant in Ireland was brought to Ultán, who fed them with his own hands. He is kept on September 4, the day of his death.

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