Ven. Euthymius the New of Thessalonica

Saints commemorated

• Saint of the day

  Ven. Euthymius the New of Thessalonica

  Euthymius the New (c. 823–898), called also the Younger, was a Galatian soldier turned monk who became one of the first great ascetics of Mount Athos — a forerunner of the Holy Mountain's organised monasticism — and a stylite and spiritual father at Thessalonica. Leaving wife, infant daughter, and mother in secret, he passed fifteen years on Bithynian Olympus, took the great schema on Athos, kept three years of total silence in a cave, stood upon a pillar near Thessalonica, and in 863 founded the monastery of Peristerai east of the city, which he governed fourteen years while remaining, in humility, a deacon. He reposed on the island of Hiera by Athos on October 15, 898, and his relics were translated to Thessalonica, whose people count him among their own saints.

• Holy Hieromartyr Lucian, Presbyter of the Church of Antioch (312)

  Lucian (c. 240–312) was a presbyter of Antioch, founder of the Antiochene school of biblical study and author of a critical recension of the Greek Bible whose text, through the church of Constantinople, underlies the Scriptures the Byzantine world has read ever since. Teacher of a generation of eastern bishops — among them Arius and the "Collucianists," a connection the tradition has weighed honestly against his sanctity — he was arrested in the last great persecution, made a celebrated defence of the faith before his judge at Nicomedia, celebrated the Eucharist on his own breast in prison, and died there of starvation on January 7, 312, answering every question with the words "I am a Christian." His body, cast into the sea, was borne ashore at Drepanum — the later Helenopolis — and John Chrysostom preached his festal encomium at Antioch. The Byzantine calendar keeps him on October 15.

• John of Suzdal

  John (†1373) was the first bishop of the restored see of Suzdal and Nizhny Novgorod, consecrated about 1350, and is remembered as a hierarch of the poor: he pleaded with the princes to lighten the taxes of the destitute, built almshouses and hospices, and laboured to bring the pagan Mordvins of the Volga lands to Christ. The tradition tells that Prince Boris of Suzdal saw an angel serving with him at the Divine Liturgy, and that slanderers struck blind received their sight again by his prayer. When his diocese was joined to the metropolitan's jurisdiction he took the schema and withdrew to the Bogolyubovo monastery, where he died in peace; his relics rest in Suzdal, and miracles at his grave sealed his veneration as a wonderworker.

• Lucian of the Kiev Caves

  Lucian was a priest-monk of the Kiev Caves monastery who suffered martyrdom under Batu Khan about the year 1243, in the devastation of Kiev that followed the Mongol storm of the city. Nothing more of his life is recorded: the whole of his transmitted history is the inscription on an ancient board bearing his icon, which names him a hieromartyr who suffered under Batu. His relics repose in the Far (Theodosius) Caves of the Lavra, and his memory is kept on October 15 — the feast of his patron, the hieromartyr Lucian of Antioch — and with the Far Caves fathers on August 28.

• Sabinus of Catania

  Sabinus (†c. 760) was a bishop of Catania in Sicily who laid down his see for the wilderness: consecrated against his inclination, he soon withdrew into solitude, where his strict ascetic life was crowned with the gifts of wonderworking and discernment. The Byzantine synaxarion honours him among the venerable rather than simply among the hierarchs — "having lived well a life equal to the angels," its verses say, "in death he was joined to the choir of the angels" — and his memory is kept on October 15, in the Greek East as in the Latin West.

• Sarbelus of Edessa

  Sarbelus (Syriac Sharbil) was the chief pagan priest of Edessa in Mesopotamia under the emperor Trajan (98–117), converted to Christ with his sister Bebaia by Barsimaeus, bishop of Edessa. Renouncing the idols whose most honoured servant he had been, he was arrested, subjected to prolonged and savage tortures, and put to death, his sister receiving the crown of martyrdom with him. He is commemorated on September 5, and again with Bebaia on October 15 and with Barsimaeus on January 29.

British Isles and Ireland

• St. Thecla of Wimborne, abbess and missionary (786)

Troparia & kontakia

Readings