St Spyridon the Wonderworker

Saints commemorated

• Saint of the day Antiochian commemoration

  St Spyridon the Wonderworker

  Spyridon of Trimythous (c. 270–348) was a married Cypriot shepherd who became bishop of the small town of Trimythous and one of the most beloved wonderworkers of the Orthodox Church. Unlettered and utterly plain in manner, he is remembered above all for the disarming simplicity through which God worked abundant miracles — healing the sick, raising the dead, commanding the elements, and, at the First Ecumenical Council of Nicaea (325), confounding an Arian philosopher and, by tradition, demonstrating the Holy Trinity with a single clay tile that burst into fire and water. His incorrupt relics rest on the island of Corfu, where he is venerated as the island's protector and patron.

• Saint of the day

  Our Holy Godbearing Father Spyridon the Wonderworker (348).

• St Herman, Wonderworker of Alaska (1836)

• St Finian of Clonard (549)

• Alexander of Jerusalem

  Alexander of Jerusalem (died c. 251) was a bishop of the early third century, remembered as a disciple of Clement of Alexandria and fellow-student of Origen, as the founder of the first great Christian theological library, and as a confessor who twice suffered imprisonment for the faith. First bishop in Cappadocia and then, uniquely for his age, coadjutor and successor to the aged Narcissus of Jerusalem, he governed that Church for nearly four decades before dying in prison at Caesarea during the persecution of Decius.

• Peter the Aleut

  Peter, whose native name was Cungagnaq, was a Kodiak Aleut of the Russian-American mission territory, baptised into the Orthodox faith, who about the year 1815 was seized with a party of Alaskan hunters by the Spanish authorities in California and, refusing under torture to renounce Orthodoxy for the Roman Catholic faith, was put to death. He is the first-glorified martyr of the Americas; the account of his suffering was carried to St Herman of Alaska, who blessed his memory, and he is honoured among the Saints of Alaska on September 24 (in Antiochian usage on December 12).

• Synetus of Rome

  Synetus of Rome (died c. 270–275) was a reader of the Roman Church in the third century who was tortured and beheaded for his confession of Christ under the emperor Aurelian. His Greek name, meaning "a man of understanding," is rendered in the Slavonic books as Razumnik.

• Therapon of Monza

  Therapon of Monza (died 1597) was a Russian monk of the Kostroma region, an ascetic of great hiddenness who laboured at the small monastery founded on the River Monza, north of Galich. He withdrew each day to pray alone in the forest and spent his nights copying spiritually profitable books, was granted the gift of wonderworking in his lifetime, and foretold the great famine of 1601. The monastery took his name after his repose.

British Isles and Ireland

• St. Finnian, bishop of Clonard and founder of Skellig Michael (c.549)
• St. Colman of Glendalough (659)
• St. Columba of Leinster (548)
• St. Cormac, abbot (6th C)
• St. Agatha of Wimborne (790)

Troparia & kontakia

Readings