Martyr Anastasia the Roman

Saints commemorated

• Saint of the day

  Martyr Anastasia the Roman

  Anastasia the Roman (died c. 256) was an orphan raised from infancy in a community of consecrated virgins near Rome under an abbess named Sophia, and put to death for Christ while still a young woman during the third-century persecutions — the sources name the emperor Decius or Valerian and the city-prefect Probus. Refusing either to sacrifice to the idols or to renounce her virginity, she endured a succession of savage tortures and was at last beheaded. Because she was both a nun and a martyr, the calendars style her a venerable-martyr; she is one of several early virgin-martyrs surnamed "the Roman," and is commemorated on October 29.

• Our Holy Father Abramius (366) and his niece Mary (371) of Mesopotamia

  Abraham the Recluse (died c. 360) was a hermit and priest of the village of Kidun, near Edessa in Mesopotamia, whose Life was written by his younger contemporary and countryman Ephrem the Syrian. Having fled his own wedding feast to live walled up in a cell, he was drawn out of solitude twice — once to convert a stubbornly pagan village as its unwilling priest, and once, most famously, to rescue his orphaned niece Mary, whom he had raised in asceticism but who, seduced and then despairing, had fled to a brothel in a distant town. Disguising himself as a customer, the old hermit sought her out, and by tenderness rather than reproach won her back to a repentance so complete that she became a healer of others. Uncle and niece are commemorated together on October 29.

• Anna and John of Constantinople

  Anna and her son John were ninth-century ascetics of Constantinople and Bithynia. Anna was the daughter of a deacon of the church of the Blachernae in the capital; widowed young, she cut her hair, put on a man's habit, took the name Euthymianus, and went with her son to live the monastic life in one of the monasteries on Mount Olympus in Bithynia, where the two of them were received as father and son. She belongs to the small and much-loved company of Byzantine holy women who lived hidden in men's monasteries under a man's name. She returned at length to Constantinople, and there reposed in the year 826. Her memory — and her son's with hers — is kept twice in the year, principally on June 13 and again on October 29.

British Isles and Ireland

• St. Kennara, hermitess of Kirk Kinner, Galloway (5th C)
• St. Colman, abbot-founder of Kilmacduagh (632)

Troparia & kontakia

Readings