St Porphyrius, Bishop of Gaza

Saints commemorated

Saint of the day

St Porphyrius, Bishop of Gaza

Porphyrius (c. 347 – 420) was bishop of Gaza from 395 to his death, and the man who broke the last great stronghold of organized paganism in Palestine. Born to wealth at Thessalonica, he gave up the world at twenty-five for the monks of the Egyptian desert of Scetis and then a cave above the Jordan; healed of a wasting illness by a vision of Christ at Golgotha, he was made keeper of the Wood of the Cross at Jerusalem, and against his will was consecrated bishop of Gaza — a city where a mere handful of Christians lived surrounded by the temples of Marnas, Aphrodite, Apollo, and the rest. There he waged a long and dangerous struggle against the pagan majority, and at length secured from the Empress Eudoxia and the Emperor Arcadius the imperial order that in 402 razed the eight public temples of Gaza — above all the Marneion, the vast shrine of Marnas — and raised in its place the cruciform church called the Eudoxiana. His deeds are known in extraordinary detail from the Life written by his deacon and companion Mark, one of the most vivid biographies to survive from the Christian antiquity. He reposed on February 26, 420.
St Photini the Samaritan Woman, and those with her (66)

Photini (first century – c. 66) is the name the Church gives to the Samaritan woman whom Christ met at Jacob's Well near Sychar and to whom, alone among all to whom he spoke, he openly declared himself the Messiah (John 4). Tradition holds that she was baptized with the name Photini, "the enlightened," and became a fearless preacher of the Gospel — carrying it, with her two sons and her five sisters, as far as Carthage and at last to Rome in the days of Nero. There, the tradition relates, the whole company confessed Christ before the emperor, converted his daughter Domnina and the officer Sebastian sent to break them, and after fearful tortures were martyred about the year 66 — Photini herself, it is said, cast at the end into a dry well, the well of her witness answering the well of her calling. She is honoured as Great-Martyr and Equal-to-the-Apostles. Her fixed commemoration is February 26; her principal feast is the movable Sunday of the Samaritan Woman, the fourth Sunday after Pascha, on which the Church reads the Gospel of the Well.
John Kalfa

John Kalfa (†1575) was a new-martyr of Constantinople under the Ottoman yoke: a Christian woodworker and cabinetmaker — kalfa, the Turkish builders' word for a master-craftsman or foreman, which became his surname — who lived in Galata across the Golden Horn and whose skill won him work for the great officials and even the Sultan's palace. Drawn into a dispute of religion by a former apprentice, he spoke plainly against Muhammad and was denounced. Refusing every inducement to embrace Islam and confessing Christ throughout months of imprisonment, torture, and forced labour, he was beheaded in a crowded square of the city on February 26, 1575. His sufferings were recorded by a cleric of the Patriarchate who attended him in prison, and he is numbered among the new-martyrs of the Church of Constantinople.
Sebastian of Poshekhonye

Sebastian of Poshekhonye (†c. 1500) was a Russian monastic saint, the founder and first abbot of a hermitage in the forested Poshekhonye country of the upper Volga. On the River Sokhota, some ninety versts from the town of Romanov (now Tutaev) in the region of Yaroslavl, he raised a monastery in honour of the Transfiguration of the Lord, and gathered a brotherhood whom he taught to live by the labour of their own hands, tilling the soil for their bread. He reposed about the year 1500 and was buried at his monastery; his relics rested there, and in later centuries a stone church was built above them. He is commemorated on February 26.

Troparia & kontakia

Kontakion — Tone 2

Adorned with thy most sacred ways of life, thou wast made resplendent in the vestments of the priesthood, O all-blessed and God-minded Porphyrius; thou art radiant in the heights of healings, interceding without ceasing on behalf of us all.

Troparion — Tone 4

Thy martyr, O Lord, in his contest received the crown of incorruption from thee our God; for possessed of thy might, he cast down the tyrants and shattered the feeble insolence of demons. By his supplications, O Christ God, save our souls.

Troparion — Tone 4

Thy ewe-lamb, O Jesus, cries out with a great voice: O my Bridegroom, thee I love, and seeking thee I struggle, and I am crucified and buried together with thee in thy baptism; I suffer for thy sake, that I may reign with thee; I die for thee, that I may live in thee. Receive me as a spotless sacrifice, offered to thee with love. By her intercessions save thou our souls, O thou who art merciful.

Troparion — Tone 4

A rule of faith and an image of meekness, a teacher of temperance, the truth of things itself revealed thee to thy flock. Therefore by lowliness thou didst gain the things that are exalted, and by poverty the things that are rich. O Father and Hierarch Porphyrius, intercede with Christ our God that our souls may be saved.

Troparion — Tone 8

In thee, O Father, was preserved unimpaired that which is according to the image; for taking up thy cross thou didst follow Christ, and by thy deeds thou didst teach us to despise the flesh, for it passes away, but to care for the soul, a thing immortal. Therefore, O venerable Sebastian, thy spirit rejoices together with the Angels.

Readings

Sixth Hour

Joel 2.12-26

¹²Therefore also now, saith the LORD, turn ye even to me with all your heart, and with fasting, and with weeping, and with mourning: ¹³And rend your heart, and not your garments, and turn unto the LORD your God: for he is gracious and merciful, slow to anger, and of great kindness, and repenteth him of the evil. ¹⁴Who knoweth if he will return and repent, and leave a blessing behind him; even a meat offering and a drink offering unto the LORD your God? ¹⁵Blow the trumpet in Zion, sanctify a fast, call a solemn assembly: ¹⁶Gather the people, sanctify the congregation, assemble the elders, gather the children, and those that suck the breasts: let the bridegroom go forth of his chamber, and the bride out of her closet. ¹⁷Let the priests, the ministers of the LORD, weep between the porch and the altar, and let them say, Spare thy people, O LORD, and give not thine heritage to reproach, that the heathen should rule over them: wherefore should they say among the people, Where is their God? ¹⁸Then will the LORD be jealous for his land, and pity his people. ¹⁹Yea, the LORD will answer and say unto his people, Behold, I will send you corn, and wine, and oil, and ye shall be satisfied therewith: and I will no more make you a reproach among the heathen: ²⁰But I will remove far off from you the northern army, and will drive him into a land barren and desolate, with his face toward the east sea, and his hinder part toward the utmost sea, and his stink shall come up, and his ill savour shall come up, because he hath done great things. ²¹Fear not, O land; be glad and rejoice: for the LORD will do great things. ²²Be not afraid, ye beasts of the field: for the pastures of the wilderness do spring, for the tree beareth her fruit, the fig tree and the vine do yield their strength. ²³Be glad then, ye children of Zion, and rejoice in the LORD your God: for he hath given you the former rain moderately, and he will cause to come down for you the rain, the former rain, and the latter rain in the first month. ²⁴And the floors shall be full of wheat, and the fats shall overflow with wine and oil. ²⁵And I will restore to you the years that the locust hath eaten, the cankerworm, and the caterpiller, and the palmerworm, my great army which I sent among you. ²⁶And ye shall eat in plenty, and be satisfied, and praise the name of the LORD your God, that hath dealt wondrously with you: and my people shall never be ashamed.

Vespers

Joel 3.12-21

¹²Let the heathen be wakened, and come up to the valley of Jehoshaphat: for there will I sit to judge all the heathen round about. ¹³Put ye in the sickle, for the harvest is ripe: come, get you down; for the press is full, the fats overflow; for their wickedness is great. ¹⁴Multitudes, multitudes in the valley of decision: for the day of the LORD is near in the valley of decision. ¹⁵The sun and the moon shall be darkened, and the stars shall withdraw their shining. ¹⁶The LORD also shall roar out of Zion, and utter his voice from Jerusalem; and the heavens and the earth shall shake: but the LORD will be the hope of his people, and the strength of the children of Israel. ¹⁷So shall ye know that I am the LORD your God dwelling in Zion, my holy mountain: then shall Jerusalem be holy, and there shall no strangers pass through her any more. ¹⁸And it shall come to pass in that day, that the mountains shall drop down new wine, and the hills shall flow with milk, and all the rivers of Judah shall flow with waters, and a fountain shall come forth of the house of the LORD, and shall water the valley of Shittim. ¹⁹Egypt shall be a desolation, and Edom shall be a desolate wilderness, for the violence against the children of Judah, because they have shed innocent blood in their land. ²⁰But Judah shall dwell for ever, and Jerusalem from generation to generation. ²¹For I will cleanse their blood that I have not cleansed: for the LORD dwelleth in Zion.

Saints commemorated