Miracle of Archangel Michael at Colossae

Saints commemorated

• Saint of the day

  Miracle of Archangel Michael at Colossae

• Holy Prophet Zacharias and Righteous Elizabeth (1st c.), parents of St John the Forerunner.

• St Maxim (Sandovich), martyr of Lemkos, Czechoslovakia (1914) (August 24 OC)

  Maxim Sandovich (1886–1914), priest of the Lemko highlands, is the protomartyr of the Carpatho-Russian return to Orthodoxy — a young Lemko who left the Uniate Basilians for the Orthodox monastery of Pochaev, was ordained in 1911 for the villages of his own mountains, and served them under constant Austrian prosecution: two years in a Lviv prison on charges of "Russophile treason" ended in acquittal in the great trial of March 1914, and five months later, the World War having begun, he was seized again and shot without trial in the prison yard of Gorlice on 6 September 1914, crying with his last breath, "Long live the Rus' people, long live Orthodoxy!" His pregnant wife, father and brother were sent to the Talerhof camp; his posthumous son became a priest. The Church of Poland glorified him at Gorlice in September 1994.

• Archippus of Herapolis

  Archippus of Herapolis (Hierapolis in Phrygia) was the sacristan of the church of the Archangel Michael at the healing spring near Colossae, which he served for sixty years from the age of ten in a life of severe asceticism, catechising the pagans who came to the water. When his enemies loosed the joined flood of two rivers against the church to destroy both shrine and sacristan, his prayer was answered by the appearance of the Archangel Michael, who cleft the rock and swallowed the torrent — the Miracle at Chonae commemorated with him on September 6. He is not to be confused with the apostle Archippus of the Seventy (Colossians 4:17), commemorated February 19 and November 22.

• David of Hermopolis

  David of Hermopolis was the leader of a band of robbers in the Egyptian desert who, moved in old age to reckon with his crimes, forced his way into a monastery — threatening, when the abbot judged the life beyond his strength, to return and sack it — and there outstripped all the brethren in ascetic zeal. The tradition relates that the Archangel Gabriel announced God's forgiveness to him, and, when David could not believe that so great a sinner was so soon pardoned, left him mute except for the prayers and services of the church. He received grace to heal the sick and cast out demons, and reposed in peace, in the sixth century by the Greek reckoning. He is commemorated on September 6.

• Eudoxius, Zeno and Macarius

  Eudoxius was a high military commander under Diocletian and his successors, a secret Christian who laid down his rank rather than sacrifice to the idols and was martyred at Melitene in Armenia about 311–312, in the last great persecution before the peace of the Church. With him suffered his friend Zeno, who confessed Christ at his execution, and his household steward Macarius, who came forward after a vision of the martyr; his wife Basilissa, who sought but was denied a martyr's death, buried him. More than a thousand soldiers are said to have cast down their military belts in confession of Christ at his trial. The three are commemorated together on September 6.

British Isles and Ireland

• St. Bega (Bee), Virgin, first abbess of Copeland in Cumbria (7th C)
• St. MacCallin, bishop of Lusk (497)
• SS Felix and Augebert, the English slaves ransomed by St. Gregory (7th C)
• St. Magnus, disciple of St. Columbanus and Abbot of Füssen (c.665)

Troparia & kontakia

Readings