Prophet Joel; Relics Ven. John of Rila

Saints commemorated

• Saint of the day

  

  Prophet Joel

  Joel son of Pethuel, whose name means "the LORD is God," is the second of the Twelve Minor Prophets and the author of the book that bears his name: the prophecy that turns a devastating locust plague into the trumpet-blast of the Day of the LORD, calls Israel to fasting with the words "rend your hearts and not your garments," and promises that God will pour out his Spirit upon all flesh. The apostle Peter opened the first Christian sermon, on the day of Pentecost, by declaring that promise fulfilled — "this is that which was spoken by the prophet Joel" — and the Church has read Joel as the prophet of Pentecost ever since. The traditional reckoning places him around 800 BC; he is commemorated on October 19.

• Saint of the day

  

  Relics Ven. John of Rila

  John of Rila (c. 876–946) is the greatest of the Bulgarian saints: the shepherd of Skrino who fled into the Rila wilderness, lived in a hollow oak and a bare cave on herbs and wild chickpeas, refused the visit of Tsar Peter while returning his gold, gathered the disciples who became the Rila Monastery, and left them a Testament of poverty, prayer and freedom from kings. His relics travelled for five centuries — Sredets, Esztergom, Tarnovo, and home to Rila in 1469 — and his monastery became the ark of Bulgarian faith and letters through the Ottoman night. Heavenly protector of the Bulgarian people, he is celebrated above all on October 19, with further feasts on August 18 (his repose) and July 1 (the return of his relics).

• Righteous John, Wonderworker of Kronstadt (1908).

• Holy Martyr Varus and those with him (304)

• Holy Hieromartyr Sadoth (Shahdost) and his 128 companions (342)

  Sadoth (Syriac Shahdost, "friend of the king"; Slavic Sadoc) was the second bishop of Seleucia-Ctesiphon, the royal city of Persia, succeeding Symeon Barsabae when that first great martyr of the Persian church was slain at the outbreak of Shapur II's persecution. Warned in a vision of a ladder — Symeon calling from its summit, "I climbed yesterday; do thou climb today" — he was arrested in the persecution's second year with his clergy, monks and consecrated virgins, held five months in chains, tortured, and commanded to worship the sun; refusing, he was taken to Beth Lapat and beheaded, about the year 342, and his company — 128 in the Slavic count, 120 in the Greek — died by the sword. He is commemorated on October 19 and again on February 20.

• Cleopatra and her son John

  Cleopatra was a widow of Edra near Mount Tabor in Palestine who, living in Egypt, witnessed the martyrdom of Varus (†c. 307), buried his body in secret, and carried his relics home to her village under the guise of her husband's remains. She built a church for the martyr; on the day of its completion her only son John, newly raised to an officer's rank, died — and the grieving mother, reproaching the martyr at his shrine, was answered with a vision of Varus and John together, radiant and crowned in the Kingdom. Consoled, she gave away her goods and lived seven more years in prayer and fasting beside the church, where she reposed in peace (c. 327; John, c. 320). Mother and son are commemorated with Varus on October 19.

• Demetrius of Uglich

  Demetrius (Dimitry) Ivanovich, youngest son of Ivan IV the Terrible, was born at Moscow in 1582 and died at Uglich on 15 May 1591, aged eight, of a knife-wound in the throat: his mother's family cried murder, the government's commission of inquiry found that he had fallen on his own knife in an epileptic fit, and the question has never been settled. The consequences were enormous — his name was taken up by a succession of impostors who carried the Time of Troubles to the walls of Moscow — and the Church's answer was to glorify him. On 3 June 1606, three weeks after the first false Demetrius was killed, his body was raised at Uglich and carried to the Cathedral of the Archangel Michael in the Kremlin, where it remains. He is honoured not as a martyr for the faith but as a passion-bearer, an innocent child who suffered a violent death without guilt, and as a wonderworker at whose shrine healings were recorded from the day of the translation onward.

• Varus of Egypt

  Varus (in Slavic usage Uar) was a soldier in Egypt at the opening of the fourth century, a secret Christian who ministered by night to confessors in prison. Keeping vigil with seven imprisoned ascetic teachers of the desert, one of whom had died of his sufferings, he took the dead man's place among them, was tortured before their eyes, and died under the torments, about the year 307; the monks were beheaded after him. The widow Cleopatra buried his body, carried it home to Palestine, and built a church over it — the setting of the beloved story of her son John and her consoling vision. In Russian piety Varus became, uniquely, the saint entreated on behalf of those who died outside the faith. He is commemorated on October 19.

British Isles and Ireland

• St. Frideswide, abbess of Oxford (c.735)
• St. Ethbin the Recluse (600)
• Hieromartyr Ednoth, bishop of Dorchester-on-Thames (1016)

Troparia & kontakia

Readings