Leavetaking of Ascension

Saints commemorated

• Ven. Bessarion the Wonderworker of Egypt

  Bessarion the Great (died c. 466) was one of the great desert fathers of fifth-century Egypt, a wonderworker of Scetis and disciple, the tradition holds, of Anthony the Great and of Macarius the Great. He is known above all from the Apophthegmata Patrum, the Sayings of the Desert Fathers, where a chapter of his sayings and a memoir by his disciple Doulas preserve both his teaching and his miracles: how on a waterless shore he prayed and the salt sea grew sweet to drink; how, to reach an elder before nightfall, he prayed and the sun stood still in its course; how he crossed a river dry-shod. He owned nothing and stayed nowhere, passing his life homeless "like a bird," sleeping in the open among the rocks and thorns, so poised in unceasing prayer and self-denial that his brethren likened him to the bodiless powers. He reposed in extreme old age. The day of his memory is not agreed: the Greek Menaion keeps him on February 20, the Slavonic books and the OCA on June 6, where he heads the day together with Hilarion the New of Dalmatia.

• St Hilarion the New, abbot of the Dalmatian Monastery (845)

  Hilarion, surnamed "the New" because he took the ancient Hilarion the Great for his model, was abbot of the monastery of the Dalmatians — the oldest monastery of Constantinople — through the whole of the second Iconoclasm, and one of the sternest confessors of the holy icons. Born in Cappadocia about 775, tonsured at twelve, he was drawn from his cell to govern Dalmatou at the urging of the Patriarch Nikephoros, ruled it eight years in peace, and then for a quarter of a century was imprisoned, starved, flogged and exiled in turn by Leo V the Armenian and Theophilos for refusing to sign against the images. Freed by the Empress Theodora at the Triumph of Orthodoxy in 843, he returned to his monastery and reposed there in 845, in his seventieth year.

• Our Holy Mothers the Martyrs Archelaïs, Thekla and Susanna (293)

  Archelais, Thecla and Susanna were three consecrated virgins of a small monastery near Rome who, when the persecution of Diocletian (284–305) reached the city, cut off their hair, put on men's clothing and fled south into Campania. There they lived hidden in a solitary place in fasting and prayer, and there God gave them the gift of healing, by which they cured the country people and brought many pagans to Christ. Denounced to the governor of the province, they were taken to Salerno and commanded to sacrifice. Archelais answered for the three, exposing the folly of worshipping lifeless statues; lions loosed upon her lay down at her feet; she was torn with iron and burnt with pitch, and a great stone meant to crush her fell instead upon the executioners. At the last the soldiers, who hesitated to strike, were urged on by the virgins themselves, and the three were beheaded in 293.

• Anoub the Sign-bearer

  Anoub, called σημειοφόρος, "the sign-bearer" — the Greek epithet for one through whom God works signs — is one of the desert fathers of Egypt whose sayings are gathered in the Apophthegmata Patrum, the Lausiac History and the Evergetinos. St Nikodemos the Hagiorite, summarising his notice, lists seven marks of his attainment: that from the day he first named the name of Christ no lie ever came out of his mouth; that in the deep desert he ate only what an angel brought him; that he desired nothing in the world but God alone; that God made known to him what was done on earth; that his one occupation night and day was the enjoyment of God; that whatever he asked of God was given him; and that he was taken up in ecstasy and saw the choirs of the saints singing before God, and Satan delivered to the eternal fire. Three days after that vision he departed, and those present heard angels singing as his soul was received.

• Attalus the Wonderworker

  Attalus is a wonderworking ascetic commemorated by the Greek synaxaria on June 6, known only from the synaxarion notice for that day. It describes a monk consumed with the desire to know God's law exactly and to keep it exactly: he ate once in two days, grudged himself sleep as a kind of death, and yet was of so gentle a heart that the birds came to him unafraid each morning and joined their voices to his in the praise of the Creator. God gave him the working of miracles, and he healed sicknesses of body and of soul. Forewarned of his end, he asked the brethren to embrace him while he yet lived, and so departed in the light. Neither his country nor his century is transmitted.

• Five Virgins of Caesarea

  Five women of Caesarea in Palestine — Martha, Mary, Cyria, Valeria and Marcia — were catechised by a devout Christian, baptised, and thereafter lived together in retirement, passing their lives in fasting, vigil and prayer for the strengthening of the Christian faith throughout the world. They were denounced to the governor; when they refused to sacrifice to the idols they were severely tortured, and each in turn gave up her life to Christ. Their names, their city and the manner of their end are all that the synaxarion transmits; neither the year nor the name of the governor is given.

• Gelasius the Martyr

  Gelasius is a martyr of one of the general persecutions, commemorated on June 6 and known from the synaxarion notice alone. Before he suffered himself he served those who were suffering: he gave away everything he owned to the poor, put on a long white garment, and went among the imprisoned and tortured Christians, kissing their wounds and strengthening them to endure. That white robe made him conspicuous, and he was arrested. Brought before the magistrate, he confessed Christ openly and denounced the emptiness of the idols; the judge at first treated him with contempt, then had him flogged and finally beheaded. Neither his country, his judge, nor the year of his martyrdom is transmitted.

• Gerasimus, Pitirim and Jonah of Perm

  Gerasimus, Pitirim and Jonah were three successive bishops of Great Perm, seated at Ust-Vym on the Vychegda, who in the fifteenth century carried forward the mission begun by Stephen of Perm among the Zyrians (Komi) and the pagan tribes of the far north-east of Russia. Gerasimus (†c. 1441) and Pitirim (†1455) were both martyred — the one strangled by a heathen of his own household, the other killed in a raid of the pagan Voguls (Mansi) — while Jonah (†1470) completed the conversion of Great Perm on the upper Kama and reposed in peace. Venerated together as the wonderworking hierarchs of Perm, their relics rest in the cathedral of Ust-Vym, and they are commemorated as a company on January 29.

• Gudwal of Brittany

  Gudwal — Gurval in Breton, Gudwall in the older English books — was a Welshman of noble family, ordained early and made bishop, who in the seventh century led a great company of monks (the tradition says 188) out of Britain across the sea to found monasteries on the coasts and islands of the Channel. He is remembered as a founder and abbot rather than as a diocesan bishop, in the manner of the Celtic hierarchs of his century, and his houses are placed variously in Cornwall or Devon, in Brittany, and at Cormont in Picardy. He reposed about 650; his body was carried to Montreuil, and in the middle of the tenth century his relics were translated to the abbey of Blandinium (Blandinberg) at Ghent, whence his cultus spread through Flanders and, by way of the relics kept there, to Worcester in England. He is commemorated on June 6.

• Jonah of Klimetzk

  Jonah of Klimetzk, in the world John, of the Novgorod merchant family of the Klementievs, was caught by a storm on Lake Onega in 1490 while travelling on his trade, and in the extremity cried out to the Lord to spare his life that he might repent and serve God. The boat was driven to safety on a sandbar of the island the Russians call Klimetsky, and there — the tradition says he found a holy icon in a juniper bush, and received the assurance that he should build on that spot — he fulfilled his vow. He was tonsured, and raised the Klimetzk monastery of the Holy Trinity, with a second church of St Nicholas, the patron of sailors and travellers. He refused the abbacy and lived out his life as a simple monk, and reposed on June 6, 1534. A church of the Righteous Zachariah and Elizabeth was built over his relics.

• Paisius of Uglich

  Paisius of Uglich (c. 1397 – 1504) was the founder and first abbot of the Protection (Pokrov) Monastery near Uglich on the Volga, and a wonderworker of the Russian north. Orphaned as a boy, he entered the monastery of his uncle, Saint Macarius of Kalyazin, at the age of eleven, and was formed there in obedience, fasting, and prayer, labouring at the copying of sacred books. At the wish of the Prince of Uglich, Andrew, he founded in 1464 the cenobitic Protection Monastery a few versts from the city, and served as its abbot; he founded a second monastery in 1489. He lived to a great age and reposed on June 6, 1504; his relics, glorified by miracles, rest in the monastery he built. He is commemorated on January 8, within the afterfeast of the Theophany, and on June 6, the day of his repose.

• Photius the Monk

  Photius — printed in the Greek books also as Φώτας, Photas — is a venerable monastic commemorated on June 6, of whom the service-books preserve, quite literally, one line: ὁ Ὅσιος Φώτας ἀπεβίωσεν εἰρηνικῶς, "the venerable Photas reposed in peace." Beyond that sentence and the commemorative distich which plays on his name — phōs, light, and its illumination — nothing is transmitted: no country, no century, no monastery, no act. He is entered here because his commemoration is genuine and consistently printed for the day, and because the honest record of such a saint is a line and not a page.

British Isles and Ireland

• St. Eigrad of Anglesey (6th C)
• St. Cocca
• St. Gudwall (6th C)
• St. Jarlath, bishop of Tuam (c.550)

Troparia & kontakia

Readings