Hieromartyr Dionysius the Areopagite

Saints commemorated

• Saint of the day

  Hieromartyr Dionysius the Areopagite

  Dionysius the Areopagite (†c. 96) was the judge of the Athenian high court who believed at the Apostle Paul's sermon on the Areopagus (Acts 17:34) and became, by the earliest tradition, the first bishop of Athens. The Church commemorates him on October 3 as a hieromartyr, together with the presbyter Rusticus and the deacon Eleutherius who suffered with him. Around his name has gathered one of the great questions of Christian history: the Corpus Areopagiticum, the profound mystical-theological writings transmitted under his name but composed some four centuries after him, and the medieval conflation of the Areopagite with Denis, the martyred third-century bishop of Paris.

• Holy Hieromartyr Dionysius, Bishop of Alexandria, and his disciples (258)

• St John the Chozebite, Bishop of Caesarea in Palestine (532)

  John the Chozebite (6th century) was an Egyptian of Thebes who became a hermit of the wild gorge of Choziba in the Judaean desert, between Jerusalem and Jericho, where he reorganized the hermit settlement into the community later famous as the monastery of Choziba. Renowned for healings, exorcisms and discernment, he was made bishop of Caesarea in Palestine against his will, soon laid down the see, and returned to the desert, where he reposed in old age. A defender of the Council of Chalcedon, he is remembered above all through the stories of the Spiritual Meadow of John Moschus, including the celebrated episode of the loaves consecrated on the road.

• Damaris of Athens

  Damaris of Athens (1st century) was the first woman of Athens to believe in Christ, converted by the preaching of the Apostle Paul on the Areopagus in the same hour as Dionysius the Areopagite: "certain men clave unto him, and believed: among the which was Dionysius the Areopagite, and a woman named Damaris, and others with them" (Acts 17:34). Nothing more of her is recorded; the Church honours her on October 3 with Dionysius, as the mother-convert of the Athenian church.

• Hesychius the Horebite

  Hesychius the Horebite (6th century) was a monk of Mount Horeb, in the Sinai wilderness, whose whole recorded life is one story — told by John Climacus in the Ladder of Divine Ascent as the "seal" of his chapter on the remembrance of death. A negligent monk, Hesychius fell deathly ill and for an hour lay as dead; restored to life, he walled himself into his cell and passed twelve years in unbroken silence, tears and prayer, tasting nothing but bread and water. Dying, he left the brethren a single sentence: no one who has acquired the remembrance of death will ever be able to sin. The hesychasts have claimed him as a father of their silence.

British Isles and Ireland

• Holy Martyrs Ewald the Fair and Ewald the Dark (695)

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