Saturday before Nativity

Saints commemorated

• Holy Ten Martyrs of Crete

  The Ten Martyrs of Crete — Theodulus, Saturninus, Euporus, Gelasius, Eunician, Zoticus, Pompeius, Agathopus, Basilides and Evaristus — were Cretans of several towns who confessed Christ together at Gortyna, the Roman capital of the island, and were beheaded there around the year 250 in the persecution of the emperor Decius. Interrogated and tortured over some thirty days by a governor of Crete who also bore the name Decius, they held firm and died as one company. They are the patron-martyrs of the whole island — its foundational Christian witnesses, whose memory is preserved in the village near Gortyna still called Agioi Deka, "the Holy Ten" — and their feast on December 23 falls within the Forefeast of the Nativity, so that the hymns of the day join their contest to the coming of Christ.

• Our Venerable Father Paul, Archbishop of Neocaesarea (4th c.)

  Paul, bishop of Neocaesarea on the Euphrates, was a confessor of the last great persecution — that of the emperor Licinius (reigned 308–324) in the Christian East. Arrested and tried for the faith, he confessed Christ firmly, was scourged and starved, and finally had both his hands scorched and crippled with red-hot iron before being imprisoned in a fortress on the Euphrates. Released when Constantine's victory brought the persecution to an end, he took his place among the 318 Fathers of the First Ecumenical Council at Nicaea in 325, his maimed hands a living testimony to the faith the Council defined. He is commemorated on December 23, within the Forefeast of the Nativity.

• Our Holy Father Nahum of Ochrid, Wonderworker and Enlightener of the Slavs (ca. 900)

  Naum of Ohrid (c. 830–910) was one of the seven Apostles of the Slavs — the Sedmochislenitsi — a direct disciple and co-worker of Cyril and Methodius who, after their mission in Great Moravia was broken up by the Latin clergy, carried the Slavonic letters and liturgy south into Bulgaria. There, with his companion Clement of Ohrid, he became a founder of Slavonic learning: a teacher at Pliska and Preslav under the princes Boris and Symeon, and then head of the school at Ohrid, where he built a monastery on the southern shore of the lake and reposed in 910. Venerated across the Bulgarian, Macedonian and Serbian lands as an enlightener and wonderworker, he is commemorated on December 23, and his monastery and relics at the springs of Lake Ohrid remain one of the great pilgrimage shrines of the Balkans.

• Victoria, Anatolia and Audax

  Victoria and Anatolia were sisters, Christian maidens of noble family in the Sabine country north-east of Rome, who refused the pagan husbands to whom they had been betrothed, gave away their property, and were put to death in the persecution of Decius about the year 250. Anatolia was held at Thora and Victoria at Trebula Mutuesca. To Anatolia's passion belongs the third name: Audax, the man sent to kill her, who was bitten — or, as the legend has it, seized — by the serpent shut up with her, was delivered by her prayer, confessed Christ, and died with her. The Byzantine calendar keeps the two sisters on December 23; the Roman Martyrology keeps Anatolia and Audax on July 10, which is why they stand in this collection's July 10 file as well.

British Isles and Ireland

• St. Frithebert, bishop of Hexham (766)
• St. Mazota of Abernethy (8th C)

Troparia & kontakia

Readings