Martyr Conon of Isauria

Saints commemorated

Saint of the day

Martyr Conon of Isauria

Conon of Isauria (first–second century) was an apostolic-age wonderworker of the village of Bidana near Isauria in Asia Minor, a region evangelised by the Apostle Paul. Guarded from childhood, the tradition holds, by the Archangel Michael, he was married against his will and persuaded his bride Anna to keep virginity with him; he then converted his household and, after their deaths, gave himself wholly to prayer and asceticism. God granted him such authority over demons that he is said to have compelled them to labour and sealed them beneath his house, and he converted much of his region by his preaching and miracles. In old age he was seized and tortured in a persecution, but the people of his country rose in arms and rescued him; he lived some two years more and reposed in peace. The Church keeps him on March 5, styling him martyr — indeed hosiomartyr — for the confession and sufferings he endured.
St Mark of Athens (4th c.)
St Mark the Ascetic (5th c.)

Mark the Ascetic — also called Mark the Faster and Mark the Monk (fourth– fifth century) — was one of the great spiritual teachers of the desert and, in the witness of the tradition, a disciple of John Chrysostom. He is remembered above all as a writer on the ascetic life: his short treatises On the Spiritual Law and On Those Who Think They Are Made Righteous by Works are foundational texts of the Philokalia, weighing with rare balance the roles of grace and of human effort in salvation. Tradition holds that he knew the whole of Scripture by heart, was gentle and pure of soul, and lived to a very great age as a solitary. So highly were his writings valued that a Byzantine proverb ran, "Sell all, and buy Mark." He is commemorated on March 5.
Adrian of Poshekhonye

Adrian of Poshekhonye (†1550) was a Russian monk, iconographer, and monastic founder, and a venerable-martyr. A disciple of Cornelius of Komel — under whom he was tonsured and learned the painting of icons — he was led, after his master's death, by a mysterious elder to a remote place in the forests of Poshekhonye near Yaroslavl, where in 1540 he and the elder Leonid settled and founded a monastery dedicated to the Dormition of the Mother of God. Ordained priest and made abbot by Metropolitan Macarius of Moscow, he governed the house in strict observance and continued to paint icons, keeping a hermitage for solitude a little way off. On 5 March 1550, during Great Lent, armed robbers broke into the monastery seeking its money, beat him, and killed him. His relics were found incorrupt in 1626, and many miracles were worked at his grave; the monastery he founded bore his name thereafter.
Conon the Gardener

Conon the Gardener (martyred about the year 251) was a simple and guileless labourer of the town of Mandon in Pamphylia — a native of Nazareth of Galilee who tended a garden and lived, the synaxarion says, "God-fearing, sincere in heart, and without malice." When the persecution of the emperor Decius reached his country he was denounced as a Christian and refused to sacrifice to the idols; the tortures inflicted on him were fitted to his humble calling and his humble constancy — nails were driven through his feet, and he was made to run before the governor's chariot until he fell exhausted, and, praying, gave up his soul. He is one of the most beloved of the calendar's plain, unlettered martyrs, kept on March 5 together with the wonderworker Conon of Isauria, from whom he must be carefully distinguished.
Luke of Simferopol

Luke of Simferopol — in the world Valentin Felixovich Voino-Yasenetsky (1877–1961) — was one of the foremost surgeons of the Russian twentieth century and, at the same time, a bishop who spent eleven years in Soviet prisons and exile for refusing to be silent. He pioneered regional anaesthesia, wrote the Essays on the Surgery of Purulent Infections that trained generations of Russian surgeons, operated in a cassock with an icon in the theatre, was tonsured and consecrated in secret in 1923, was arrested three times, ran the military hospitals of Krasnoyarsk as an exile through the Second World War, was given the Stalin Prize in 1946 and gave most of it away, governed the see of Simferopol and Crimea from 1946, went blind in his last years and went on preaching, and died on 29 May (civil 11 June) 1961. His relics were uncovered in 1996 and he is venerated with extraordinary warmth in Russia, Ukraine and above all in Greece, where he is invoked before surgery as the physician-hierarch of the modern world.

British Isles and Ireland

St. Ladoca of Cornwall, virgin and missionary (5th C)
St. Ciaran of Saighir (Ossory) (c.530)
St. Caron of Tregaron
St. Carthage the Elder, bishop of Ossory (c.540)
St. Piran, hermit of Cornwall (c.480)
St. Colman of Armagh (5th C)

Troparia & kontakia

Apolytikion — Tone 4 (common of a hierarch)

The truth of things hath shown thee to thy flock as a rule of faith, an image of meekness and a teacher of temperance; therefore thou hast attained the heights by humility and riches by poverty. O father and hierarch Luke, intercede with Christ God that our souls may be saved.

Kontakion — Tone 2

Thou didst take the knife to heal and the cross to preach, and neither prison nor the northern ice could part thee from either; blind at the last, thou didst see more than thy persecutors. O holy hierarch and physician Luke, stretch out thy hand over those who lie under the surgeon's knife, and pray for our souls.

Troparion — Tone 8 (from the common of a venerable one)

With the streams of thy tears thou didst till the barrenness of the desert, and by thy sighing from the depths thou didst make thy labours bear fruit a hundredfold; and thou becamest a luminary to the whole world, shining forth with miracles, O Adrian our venerable father. Intercede with Christ our God that our souls may be saved.

Troparion — Tone 4

Counted worthy of an angelic vision, thou wast led into the faith of Christ and didst receive the power of wonders, O wise one; wherefore thou didst humble the arrogance of the demons and, contending, didst quench the flame of error. O Venerable-Martyr Conon, O champion, make the Friend of mankind gracious unto us.

Troparion — Tone 4 (common of a martyr)

Thy Martyr Conon, O Lord, in his contest received from Thee our God the crown of incorruption; for, having Thy strength, he cast down the tyrants and shattered the feeble insolence of the demons. By his intercessions, O Christ God, save our souls.

Troparion — Tone 8 (from the common of a venerable one)

In thee, O Father, was the divine image kept secure; for, taking up thy cross, thou didst follow Christ, and by thy deeds didst teach us to despise the flesh, for it passes away, but to care for the soul, a thing immortal. Therefore, O venerable Mark, thy spirit rejoices together with the Angels.

Readings

6th Hour

Isaiah 2.3-11

³And many people shall go and say, Come ye, and let us go up to the mountain of the LORD, to the house of the God of Jacob; and he will teach us of his ways, and we will walk in his paths: for out of Zion shall go forth the law, and the word of the LORD from Jerusalem. ⁴And he shall judge among the nations, and shall rebuke many people: and they shall beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruninghooks: nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war any more. ⁵O house of Jacob, come ye, and let us walk in the light of the LORD. ⁶Therefore thou hast forsaken thy people the house of Jacob, because they be replenished from the east, and are soothsayers like the Philistines, and they please themselves in the children of strangers. ⁷Their land also is full of silver and gold, neither is there any end of their treasures; their land is also full of horses, neither is there any end of their chariots: ⁸Their land also is full of idols; they worship the work of their own hands, that which their own fingers have made: ⁹And the mean man boweth down, and the great man humbleth himself: therefore forgive them not. ¹⁰Enter into the rock, and hide thee in the dust, for fear of the LORD, and for the glory of his majesty. ¹¹The lofty looks of man shall be humbled, and the haughtiness of men shall be bowed down, and the LORD alone shall be exalted in that day.

Vespers

Genesis 1.24-2.3

²⁴And God said, Let the earth bring forth the living creature after his kind, cattle, and creeping thing, and beast of the earth after his kind: and it was so. ²⁵And God made the beast of the earth after his kind, and cattle after their kind, and every thing that creepeth upon the earth after his kind: and God saw that it was good. ²⁶And God said, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness: and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth. ²⁷So God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them. ²⁸And God blessed them, and God said unto them, Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth, and subdue it: and have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over every living thing that moveth upon the earth. ²⁹And God said, Behold, I have given you every herb bearing seed, which is upon the face of all the earth, and every tree, in the which is the fruit of a tree yielding seed; to you it shall be for meat. ³⁰And to every beast of the earth, and to every fowl of the air, and to every thing that creepeth upon the earth, wherein there is life, I have given every green herb for meat: and it was so. ³¹And God saw every thing that he had made, and, behold, it was very good. And the evening and the morning were the sixth day. ¹Thus the heavens and the earth were finished, and all the host of them. ²And on the seventh day God ended his work which he had made; and he rested on the seventh day from all his work which he had made. ³And God blessed the seventh day, and sanctified it: because that in it he had rested from all his work which God created and made.

Proverbs 2.1-22

¹My son, if thou wilt receive my words, and hide my commandments with thee; ²So that thou incline thine ear unto wisdom, and apply thine heart to understanding; ³Yea, if thou criest after knowledge, and liftest up thy voice for understanding; ⁴If thou seekest her as silver, and searchest for her as for hid treasures; ⁵Then shalt thou understand the fear of the LORD, and find the knowledge of God. ⁶For the LORD giveth wisdom: out of his mouth cometh knowledge and understanding. ⁷He layeth up sound wisdom for the righteous: he is a buckler to them that walk uprightly. ⁸He keepeth the paths of judgment, and preserveth the way of his saints. ⁹Then shalt thou understand righteousness, and judgment, and equity; yea, every good path. ¹⁰When wisdom entereth into thine heart, and knowledge is pleasant unto thy soul; ¹¹Discretion shall preserve thee, understanding shall keep thee: ¹²To deliver thee from the way of the evil man, from the man that speaketh froward things; ¹³Who leave the paths of uprightness, to walk in the ways of darkness; ¹⁴Who rejoice to do evil, and delight in the frowardness of the wicked; ¹⁵Whose ways are crooked, and they froward in their paths: ¹⁶To deliver thee from the strange woman, even from the stranger which flattereth with her words; ¹⁷Which forsaketh the guide of her youth, and forgetteth the covenant of her God. ¹⁸For her house inclineth unto death, and her paths unto the dead. ¹⁹None that go unto her return again, neither take they hold of the paths of life. ²⁰That thou mayest walk in the way of good men, and keep the paths of the righteous. ²¹For the upright shall dwell in the land, and the perfect shall remain in it. ²²But the wicked shall be cut off from the earth, and the transgressors shall be rooted out of it.

Saints commemorated