St Meletius, Archbishop of Antioch; St Aleksy, Metr. of All Russia

Saints commemorated

• Saint of the day

  St Meletius, Archbishop of Antioch

  Meletius (early 4th century – 381) was Archbishop of Antioch and one of the most beloved and most tried of the Church's hierarchs. Raised to the great Syrian see about the year 360, he confessed the Nicene faith so plainly at his enthronement that within a month the Arians procured his exile; three times he was driven from his city under the Arian emperors, and three times he returned, always in the same gentleness that made his name a byword. Under him the young John Chrysostom was catechised, baptised, and ordained reader. His episcopate was shadowed by the long Meletian schism — a division of the Nicene party at Antioch itself, over the legitimacy of his election rather than over the faith. Vindicated at last, he presided over the opening of the Second Ecumenical Council at Constantinople in 381 and reposed while it sat; Gregory of Nyssa preached his funeral, and his relics were carried home to Antioch and laid beside the martyr Babylas.

• Saint of the day

  St Aleksy, Metr. of All Russia

• St Meletios, archbishop of Antioch (381)

• Alexis of Moscow

  Alexis (c. 1292/1305 – 1378) was Metropolitan of Kiev and All Russia and one of the great architects of Muscovite Russia — a saint remembered equally as a wonderworking hierarch and as a statesman who held the Russian land together in a perilous age. Born Eleutherius, of a boyar family of Chernigov settled at Moscow, he was a monk of the Theophany monastery for over twenty years before his elevation, and Metropolitan from 1354. Twice he journeyed to the Golden Horde; there, at the Khan's summons, he healed Taidula, the mother of the Khan, of blindness, and won by it protection and privileges for the Church. As guardian and regent for the boy-prince Demetrius Donskoy, he steadied the throne of Moscow and reconciled its warring princes. He founded the Chudov (Miracle) Monastery in the Kremlin and other houses, and reposed on February 12, 1378. His relics, uncovered incorrupt in 1431, made him one of the beloved wonderworkers of Russia and one of the Hierarchs of Moscow.

• Antony II Kauleas

  Antony Kauleas (c. 829 – 901), called "the Younger" to distinguish him from an earlier patriarch of the name, was Patriarch of Constantinople from 893 until his death, and a peacemaker of the Church. Of a Phrygian family settled in the capital, he was drawn from childhood to the monastic life, entering a monastery at twelve and becoming in time its abbot; he even brought his own widowed father into the brotherhood. Renowned for austere prayer through the night and for great mercy to the poor, he was raised to the patriarchal throne under the emperor Leo VI the Wise, and laboured to compose the divisions left by the long strife between the followers of Photius and of Ignatius, convening a synod that restored peace to the Church. He reposed on February 12; his memory was honoured with encomia by the learned men of his own generation, and the monastery of Kauleas long kept his name.

• Christos the Gardener

  Christos (Kristo) the Gardener (c. 1708 – 1748) was a new martyr of the Ottoman period — a simple Albanian market-gardener who died at Constantinople rather than deny Christ. Come to the great city about the age of forty to earn his living by his trade, he fell into a dispute over the price of apples with a Turk, who in his anger denounced him to the authorities with the false claim that Christos had said he wished to become a Muslim. Arrested on the word of Muslim witnesses, Christos steadfastly refused to apostatise, endured imprisonment and torture, and was beheaded on February 12, 1748. His memory was recorded by the monk and writer Kaisarios Dapontes, who ministered to him in prison, and he is numbered among the Neomartyrs of the Faith.

• Mary (called Marinos)

  Mary, called Marinos (fifth-to-sixth century), is the ascetic woman who lived out her whole monastic life disguised as a man, and bore in silence a slander that would have crushed a lesser soul. Left motherless, she would not be parted from her father Eugene when he resolved to become a monk; cutting her hair and putting on man's clothing, she entered the monastery with him as the young "monk Marinos," and so excelled in humility and obedience that none suspected her. Falsely accused by an innkeeper's daughter of having fathered her child, "Marinos" made no defence, accepted expulsion, and for years lived outside the gate, raising the child as her own. Restored at last to the monastery and set to the hardest labours, she bore all without complaint; only when she died was her secret revealed, to the confusion and repentance of her accusers. She is a beloved image of humility, patience, and unjust blame borne for Christ.

British Isles and Ireland

• St. Ethelwold, monk and bishop of Lindisfarne (740)
• St. Siadhal (Sedulius) (5th C)

Troparia & kontakia

Readings