Apostle Timothy of the Seventy

Saints commemorated

• Saint of the day Antiochian commemoration

  Apostle Timothy of the Seventy

  Timothy (c. 17 – c. 97) was the beloved disciple and inseparable companion of the Apostle Paul (who has no separate entry in this collection as yet), who called him "my own son in the faith" and "my dearly beloved son." A native of Lystra in Lycaonia, born of a Greek father and a believing Jewish mother, Eunice, he was reckoned by the tradition among the Seventy Apostles and became the first bishop of Ephesus, where Paul left him to order the Church and to which he addressed the two epistles — 1 and 2 Timothy — that bear his name and stand among the pastoral charters of the Christian ministry. After Paul's martyrdom he governed Ephesus for many years, associated there in old age with the Apostle and Evangelist John the Theologian, and about the year 97, opposing a licentious pagan festival called the Katagogia, he was set upon by the idolatrous mob, beaten with clubs and stones, and died of his wounds two days later. His relics were translated to Constantinople in 356 and laid in the Church of the Holy Apostles beside those of the Apostles Andrew and Luke. He is kept on January 22.

• Holy Martyr Anastasius of Persia (628)

  Anastasius the Persian (†628), born Magundat, was a Persian soldier and the son of a magus, who was converted to Christ by the miracles surrounding the True Cross that his own emperor Chosroes II had carried off from Jerusalem. Leaving the Persian army, he was baptized at Jerusalem by the Patriarch Modestus — taking the name Anastasius, "Resurrection" — and became a monk in the monastery of Abba Anastasius near the Holy City, where he passed seven years in ascetic labour. Burning to confess Christ before his own people, he went into Persian-occupied Caesarea of Palestine, openly denounced the fire-worship of the magi, and was seized, imprisoned, and cruelly tortured. Sent into Persia and pressed to renounce his faith, he was at last strangled with seventy other captive Christians and beheaded on January 22, 628. His relics, untouched by the dogs to which his body was thrown, were carried to his monastery in Palestine, thence to Constantinople and to Rome. He is honoured as a venerable-martyr — a monk crowned as a martyr — and his memory is bound to the Cross whose power first drew him to Christ.

• Joseph the Sanctified of Samakos

  Joseph the Sanctified (c. 1440 – 1511), surnamed Samakos, was a Cretan hieromonk of the last generation before the Ottoman conquest of the island, a priest-monk of radical poverty and prayer whose incorrupt and fragrant relics made him one of the best-loved saints of Crete and, afterwards, of Zakynthos. Born in the far east of Crete and formed from boyhood in the monasteries of his homeland, he gave away his inheritance to the poor, was ordained priest despite his youth, and lived a hidden ascetic life marked by unceasing almsgiving — the tradition remembers loaves miraculously supplied when he had given all his bread away. He reposed on January 22, 1511, and his relics were found incorrupt and sweet-smelling and worked many healings. When the Ottomans took Herakleion in 1669, the relics were carried to safety on Zakynthos, where they are venerated still. He is kept on January 22 (his repose) and August 29 (the deposition of his relics).

• Manuel, George and the 377 Martyrs of Bulgaria

  The Three Hundred and Seventy-Seven Martyrs of Bulgaria — also called the Martyrs of Adrianople — were a company of Christians of the Byzantine frontier, led by the bishops Manuel of Adrianople, George of Develtos, Peter, and Leo of Nicaea, and the presbyter Parodus, who were carried off as captives into Bulgaria in the wars of the pagan Khan Krum (813) and, refusing under his son and successor to abandon Christ, were put to death in various ways about the year 815. Deported "beyond the Danube" with whole populations of the Thracian towns, the bishops and clergy and some three hundred and seventy-seven of the faithful sealed their confession with their blood — the archbishop of Adrianople trampled and slain, others clubbed and beheaded, one bishop disembowelled — a martyrdom of the ninth century kept by the whole Church on January 22.

British Isles and Ireland

• St. Brithwald of Ramsbury (1045)

Troparia & kontakia

Readings