Ven. Paul of Thebes and John Calabytes

Saints commemorated

• Saint of the day Antiochian commemoration

  Ven. Paul of Thebes and John Calabytes

  Paul of Thebes (c. 227 – c. 341), called the First Hermit, is honoured by the Church as the father and archetype of Christian solitude. A wealthy and educated young Egyptian of the Thebaid, orphaned early and threatened with betrayal by a covetous brother-in-law during the persecution of the emperor Decius, he fled into the desert about the age of twenty-three and found a hidden cave beside a spring and a single palm tree. There he remained for some ninety years, clothed in woven palm-leaves and fed — the tradition holds — by a raven that brought him half a loaf of bread each day, unknown to the world and known only to God. Near the end of his life he was sought out and found by Anthony the Great, to whom God revealed that a monk more perfect than himself dwelt deeper in the wilderness; the two aged fathers conversed, and Anthony was present at Paul's death and buried him — the grave, the account says, dug by two lions that came from the desert. Paul reposed about the year 341, aged some one hundred and thirteen. He is kept on January 15.

• Saint Ita of Kileedy, Ireland (570)

• John Kalyvites

  John Kalyvites — "the Hut-dweller" (c. 450) — was the only son of a wealthy senatorial family of Constantinople who, seized in boyhood by the longing for God, secretly left his parents' house to become a monk in the "Sleepless" (Akoimetoi) monastery. After years of ascetic struggle he returned, unrecognised, to his own family's gate, and lived there as a nameless beggar in a little hut, enduring the contempt of his parents' servants and the daily sight of the home and the mother he had renounced, keeping always with him a precious Gospel-book his parents had once given him. Only on his deathbed did he make himself known, sending word by that book, so that his mother and father knew at last that the beggar at their door was their lost son. He reposed about the year 450, still a young man, and a church was raised over the hut. He is kept on January 15, together with Paul of Thebes.

• Pansophius of Alexandria

  Pansophius (early 3rd century – c. 250) was a martyr of Alexandria, the son of a Roman proconsul, who was well educated in his youth and, coming to the faith of Christ, distributed his large inheritance to the poor and withdrew to live as an ascetic, spending some twenty-seven years in prayer, fasting, and the study of the Scriptures. During the persecution of the emperor Decius he was arrested and brought before the magistrate; confessing Christ and refusing to sacrifice to the idols, he was scourged so cruelly that he gave up his soul under the lash, receiving the crown of martyrdom about the year 250. He is commemorated on January 15.

British Isles and Ireland

• St. Ita of Killeedy, nun (570)
• St. Teath of Wales, daughter of King Brychan (6th C)
• St. Lleudadd, abbot of Bardsey (6th C)
• St. Sawl, father of St. Asaph (6th C)
• St. Ceolwulf, King of Northumbria, monk (764)
• Hieromartyr Blaithmaic, abbot of Iona (823)

Troparia & kontakia

Readings