36th Sunday after Pentecost

Saints commemorated

• St Parthenius, Bishop of Lampsacus

  Parthenius (fourth century) was bishop of Lampsacus on the Hellespont in the age of Constantine the Great, and one of the most celebrated wonderworkers and healers of the early Church. Born at Melitopolis, the son of a deacon, and a fisherman by trade who gave the price of his catch to the poor, he was ordained priest and afterward consecrated bishop of the still largely pagan Lampsacus. He converted the city, overthrew its idols, and — armed with an edict he obtained from the emperor — pulled down its temples and raised a church in their place. His memory is bound above all to the abundance of his miracles: he healed the sick of every kind of disease and was renowned as a caster-out of demons, before whom, the tradition says, the unclean spirits fled at his mere word. He reposed in peace and is kept on February 7.

• Our Venerable Father Luke the New of Mount Stirion (ca. 950)

  Luke of Steiris (c. 896 – c. 953), called the Younger and Luke of Hellas, was the most beloved Greek ascetic-saint of the tenth century and one of the great wonderworkers of the Byzantine world. Born of poor Phocian farmers who had fled the Arab raids on Aegina, he gave himself from childhood to prayer, fasting, and an almost reckless charity, and left the world young to live as a monk and hermit in the mountains of central Greece. Driven from place to place by war, he settled at last at Steiris in Phocis, where a community gathered around him. He was famed for healings, for the reading of hearts, for the gift of prophecy — most celebrated of all his foretelling that Crete would be recovered from the Saracens, which came to pass under Nikephoros Phokas eight years after his death — and, the tradition says, for being lifted from the ground in prayer. He reposed on February 7. Over his tomb rose the monastery of Hosios Loukas, one of the supreme monuments of Byzantine art, where his myrrh-flowing relics rest to this day.

• The 1,003 Martyrs of Nicomedia

  The 1,003 Martyrs of Nicomedia were a great company of Christians put to death in the eastern capital of Nicomedia during the Great Persecution under Diocletian, in the year 303. The tradition remembers them as the servants and household of four court dignitaries who, in the fury of the persecution that began at Nicomedia, confessed Christ before the emperor, refused to sacrifice to the idols, and were martyred together — one thousand and three souls glorified in a single company. They are kept on February 7, and belong to the vast multitude of witnesses whose blood made Nicomedia, in that terrible year, the very type of a city sanctified by martyrdom.

• Peter of Monembasia

  Peter of Monembasia is a venerable monastic saint commemorated on February 7, known only from the brief notice of the Byzantine synaxaria. The tradition remembers him as a monk who "struggled" — that is, pursued the ascetic life — at a place its manuscripts call Monovata or Monebata, a name variously rendered in the calendars as Monembasia. Beyond his name, his monastic vocation, and his feast, the surviving record transmits nothing certain of his life, dates, or deeds; he is honoured, as many of the ascetics of the synaxarion are, for a holiness the Church remembers though its details are lost.

British Isles and Ireland

• Holy Martyr Augulus (Aule) of London (303)
• St. Richard of the West Saxons (720)
• St. Ronan of Kilmaronen
• St. Meldon, bishop of Peronne (6th C)

Troparia & kontakia

Readings