Veneration of Chains of Apostle Peter

Saints commemorated

• Saint of the day

  

  Veneration of Chains of Apostle Peter

  Peter — Simon bar Jonah, the fisherman of Bethsaida whom Christ renamed Cephas, "rock" — is the first-named of the Twelve, the prōtokoryphaios or "chief" of the apostolic choir, the confessor of Caesarea Philippi and the shepherd of the Lord's sheep. His life holds together the two poles of Christian experience with unusual frankness: the man who walked on water and sank, who confessed the Christ and was called Satan in the same chapter, who swore he would die with his Master and denied him three times before a servant girl, and who was restored beside the same charcoal fire by a threefold "Lovest thou me?" After Pentecost he preached the first Christian sermon, opened the door of the Church to the Gentiles in the house of Cornelius, was by ancient tradition the first to sit in the see of Antioch, and ended at Rome under Nero, crucified — at his own asking, so the tradition runs — with his head downward, about the year 67. The Church keeps his memory on June 29 together with Paul, and his witness is confessed daily in the Creed's "one holy, catholic and apostolic Church."

• Damascene of Gabrovo

  Damascene the New (†1771) was a Bulgarian hieromonk of the Hilandar monastery on Mount Athos, martyred at Svishtov on the Danube under the Ottoman yoke. Born in Gabrovo in the diocese of Tarnovo, he left home as a young man for Athos, where he was tonsured at the Serbian house of Hilandar, ordained deacon and priest, and in time made its igumen (abbot). Sent to Svishtov to collect the rents of property belonging to the monastery, he was entrapped by a Muslim debtor who, to escape payment, contrived a false accusation of immorality against him; though the judge himself doubted the charge, the perjured testimony of the accusers forced a conviction. Offered his life if he would embrace Islam, Damascene answered, "I was born a Christian, and I shall die a Christian," and was hanged on January 16, 1771. He is venerated among the new-martyrs of the Ottoman period, at Hilandar and in Bulgaria.

• Danax the Reader

  Danax was a reader (anagnostes) of the church at Auleon in the region of Illyria (Macedonia), martyred in the second century when a band of pagans overran the place. Charged with the care of the sacred vessels, he sought to save the holy things of the church from profanation when the raiders came; seized by them and commanded to worship their idols, he refused, confessed Christ, and was cut down with a sword. The tradition remembers him among the martyrs of January 16, a minor saint known from a single synaxarion notice.

• Peusippus, Elasippus, Mesippus and Neonilla

  Peusippus, Elasippus and Mesippus were three brothers — the tradition calls them triplets — martyred in the second century, together with their grandmother Neonilla who had raised them in the faith and suffered with them. Orphaned young and brought up by Neonilla, a Christian, the three grew famous as horsemen; on coming to a clear knowledge of Christ they openly renounced the pagan gods, threw down and broke the idols, and confessed the faith. For this they were hung upon a tree and torn, and cast into a fire from which their bodies came unharmed, until they gave up their souls; their grandmother Neonilla was beheaded, and with them suffered a woman named Jonilla and the confessors Neon and Turbo, who recorded and copied the account of their passion and were themselves martyred. Their veneration spread early and widely; the sources place their contest either in Cappadocia or — in the Western tradition that received their relics — in Gaul, at Langres. They are kept on January 16.

British Isles and Ireland

• St. Fursey of Burgh Castle, Enlightener of East Anglia (650)
• St. Dunchaid O’Braoin, abbot of Clonmacnoise (988)

Troparia & kontakia

Readings