Saturday before Elevation

Saints commemorated

• Martyr Sozon of Cilicia

  Sozon (†c. 304) was a young Christian shepherd of Lycaonia, named Tarasios before his baptism, who suffered martyrdom at Pompeiopolis in Cilicia during the last great persecution. Warned of his coming contest in a vision at a spring where he watered his flock, he went to Pompeiopolis, broke the golden hand from a pagan idol and gave the gold to the poor, then surrendered himself so that no one else would suffer for his deed. Tortured with iron claws, iron boots nailed to his feet, and rods, he died confessing Christ. He is the chief saint of September 7, with a proper kontakion and a full canon in the Menaion.

• St John, Archbishop of Novgorod

• Martyr Sozon of Cilicia (208/304)

• Holy Apostles Evodus and 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.

• Holy Martyr Eupsychyius of Caesarea (2nd c.)

• St Kassia (Kassiani) the Hymnographer (9th c.)

  Kassiani (Kassia, Ikasia; c. 805/810 – c. 865) is the one woman whose hymnography stands, under her own name, in the received liturgical books of the Byzantine Church. A noblewoman of Constantinople, she is remembered in the chronicles as the candidate who lost the bride-show of the emperor Theophilos by answering him back about Eve; she is remembered in the letters of Theodore the Studite as a learned young woman who supported the imprisoned monks of the icons in the second iconoclasm, and was scourged for it; and she is remembered in the service books as the author of the doxastikon of Great and Holy Wednesday — Κύριε, ἡ ἐν πολλαῖς ἁμαρτίαις περιπεσοῦσα γυνή, "O Lord, the woman fallen into many sins" — the single most anticipated piece of chant in the Greek liturgical year. She founded and ruled a convent in the west of the capital, on the Xerolophos, the seventh hill; some two dozen of her hymns are securely hers, among them the Christmas Eve sticheron When Augustus reigned alone upon the earth and part of the canon of Great Saturday; and beside the hymns she left a body of epigrams and gnomic verses unlike anything else surviving from a Byzantine woman's hand — sharp, classicising, and often mordant. She is commemorated on September 7.

• Eupsychius of Caesarea

  Eupsychius (2nd century) was a Christian of Caesarea in Cappadocia — called in some synaxaria the son of a senator, Dionysius — who was martyred in the persecution under the emperor Hadrian. Arrested and tortured, he was healed of his wounds in prison by an angel; released, he gave away his goods to the poor, including a portion to the very informers who had denounced him. Seized again under a new governor, he was hung up, torn with iron hooks, and beheaded. He is commemorated on September 7, and is to be distinguished from the later and more famous Eupsychius of the same city, martyred under Julian (April 9) — whom many hold to be, in fact, the same martyr doubled.

• Evodus of Antioch

  Evodus (†c. 66) was one of the Seventy Apostles and the first bishop of Antioch after the Apostle Peter, the predecessor of Ignatius the God-bearer in the see from which the Patriarchate of Antioch descends. Eusebius names him first in the Antiochian succession, and a later tradition credits him with coining the name "Christians," first given to the disciples at Antioch. He is said to have shepherded the Antiochian church for some twenty-seven years and to have died a martyr, under Nero by the most common account. His writings, among them a book called The Star, are lost. He is commemorated on September 7 with the Apostle Onesiphorus, and with all the Seventy on January 4.

British Isles and Ireland

• SS. Alcmund (781) and Tilbert (789), bishops of Hexham
• St. Balin, monk (7th C)
• Holy martyr Grimonia (4th C)

Troparia & kontakia

Readings