Apostle Quadratus of the Seventy; Unc. Rel. St Dimitry, Metr. Rostov

Saints commemorated

• Saint of the day

  Apostle Quadratus of the Seventy

• Saint of the day

  Unc. Rel. St Dimitry, Metr. Rostov

  Dimitry of Rostov (1651–1709), in the world Daniel Tuptalo, was Metropolitan of Rostov and the greatest churchman-scholar of the Russian Church in the age of Peter the Great. For some twenty years he laboured over the Chetii-Minei, the great Lives of the Saints for the whole year, which became the standard hagiographic reading of the Russian world for two centuries; he was besides a famed preacher and a gentle, unworldly pastor who died owning little but his books and manuscripts. Glorified in 1757 — the first canonisation of the Synodal period — he is commemorated on October 28, the day of his repose, and on September 21, the uncovering of his incorrupt relics.

• Saint of the day

  Apostle Quadratus (Codratus) of the Seventy (130)

  Quadratus (Kodratos), numbered among the Seventy Apostles, preached Christ at Athens and at Magnesia, served as bishop of Athens, and died a martyr's death around 130 — stoned by a pagan mob and left to perish of hunger in prison. He is the author of the earliest surviving Christian apology, a defence of the faith presented to the emperor Hadrian, of which one luminous fragment is preserved by Eusebius: that those whom Christ healed and raised remained alive as witnesses "even to our own times." His feast is kept on September 21, the leavetaking of the Elevation of the Cross.

• Holy Prophet Jonas (Jonah) (9th c. BC)

  Jonah son of Amittai, of Gath-hepher in Galilee, prophesied in Israel in the eighth century before Christ and is the central figure of the Book of Jonah: the prophet who fled from God's call, was swallowed by the great fish, prayed from its belly, and after three days was cast up to preach repentance to Nineveh. The Lord himself made him the pattern of his own death and rising — "as Jonah was three days and three nights in the belly of the whale, so shall the Son of Man be in the heart of the earth" — and Jonah's prayer became the sixth of the Church's biblical canticles, echoed in the sixth ode of every canon. He is among the oldest subjects in all Christian art.

• Our Venerable Father Joseph of Zaonikiev Monastery(1612)

• Eusebius of Phoenicia

  Eusebius was a Christian of Phoenicia who, in a time of persecution, came forward of his own accord to confess Christ before the persecutors and was beheaded. He is known only from the brief notices of the synaxaria, which transmit neither the year of his contest nor the name of the ruler under whom he suffered; his memory is kept on September 21.

• Hypatius and Andrew of Ephesus

  Hypatius, bishop of Ephesus, and Andrew his presbyter were martyred around 730–735 under the iconoclast emperor Leo III the Isaurian, among the first victims of the imperial war on the holy icons. Schooled together in a monastery from youth, the one became a monk and bishop, the other a priest and preacher; both openly defended the veneration of icons when Leo began to cast them out of the churches. After debate before the emperor, long imprisonment, and torture — the accounts relate that icons were burned upon their heads — they were dragged through the city and put to death, and the faithful buried what the persecutors had thrown to the dogs.

• Isaac and Meletius of Cyprus

  Isaac (Isaacius) and Meletius were bishops of the Church of Cyprus, commemorated together on September 21. The synaxaria transmit their names, their office, and their island, and nothing more: neither their sees, nor their dates, nor any deed has come down. They are remembered among the hierarchs who shepherded Cyprus in the early centuries and reposed in peace.

• Jonah the Presbyter

  Jonah the Presbyter (ninth century), called the Sabbaite, was a married priest of Palestine who, after the death of his wife, ended his days as a monk of the Lavra of St. Sabbas the Sanctified, where God granted him a gift of healing. His chief glory in the Church's memory is his fatherhood: his two sons are Theophanes the Hymnographer, later Metropolitan of Nicaea, and Theodore — the brother-confessors whose faces the iconoclast emperor Theophilus branded with mocking verses, whence their name "the Branded" (Graptoi). He is commemorated on September 21, the same day as the Prophet Jonah, from whom he must be distinguished.

• Priscus of Phrygia

  Priscus was a martyr of Phrygia in Asia Minor, known only from the brief notices of the synaxaria, which record neither the year of his contest nor the persecutor under whom he suffered. The verses appointed to him in the Greek synaxarion imply a death by fire: bearing the living water in his heart, Priscus did not fear the burning of the flesh. His memory is kept on September 21.

British Isles and Ireland

• St. Mabyn, missionary in Cornwall (5th C)

Troparia & kontakia

Readings