Leavetaking of Meeting

Saints commemorated

• Martyr Nicephorus of Antioch

  Nicephorus of Antioch (†c. 257) was a layman of Syrian Antioch whose martyrdom the Church keeps as its great parable of forgiveness. He and the priest Sapricius had been friends as close as brothers until the devil turned their love to hatred; and though Nicephorus again and again begged pardon, Sapricius would not be reconciled. When persecution came, Sapricius the priest was arrested, confessed Christ under torture, and was condemned to be beheaded — but on the very ground of execution, refusing still to forgive his brother, he was abandoned by grace, lost his nerve, and apostatised at the last, casting away the crown already in his hand. Nicephorus, who had run after him to the place of death still pleading for pardon, then confessed himself a Christian in the apostate's stead, and was beheaded, receiving the martyr's crown that Sapricius had forfeited. The two together — the one who suffered everything but would not forgive and was lost, the one who forgave and inherited the crown — are read by the Church as a living commentary on Saint Paul's word that though a man give his body to be burned and have not love, it profits him nothing.

• Relics of St Innocent of Irkutsk

  Innocent of Irkutsk (c. 1680–1731), in the world John Kulchitsky, was the first bishop of the Siberian see of Irkutsk and is honoured as a wonderworker and enlightener of Siberia. Educated at the Kiev Academy and appointed to lead the Russian ecclesiastical mission to Peking, he was refused entry by the Chinese and left to years of hardship and uncertainty on the Mongolian frontier; named bishop of Irkutsk in 1727, he governed his vast and impoverished diocese for barely four years, maintaining its schools and toiling amid extreme want until his early death. His incorrupt relics, discovered later in the century, made him the first canonised saint of Siberia; he is commemorated on November 26.

• Hieromartyr Peter of Damascus, bishop of Damascus (ca. 776)

  Peter of Damascus is honoured in the Byzantine calendars on February 9 as a hieromartyr — a bishop of Damascus who, in the age of the Arab conquest, confessed Christ openly against Islam and the errors of the Manichaeans, and for his boldness had his tongue cut out by the Muslim authorities and was sent into exile in the Arabian desert, where (the tradition holds) he continued to preach and at length died a martyr's death by the sword. His name is also borne by one of the great spiritual writers of the Philokalia, "the Damascene," second in bulk only to its longest authors; and Orthodox tradition, following Nikodemos the Hagiorite, long identified the martyred bishop with the Philokalic teacher, though modern scholarship distinguishes them and dates the writer to the twelfth century (see Disputed questions). The Church keeps him on February 9, with the leavetaking of the Meeting of the Lord.

• Peter of Damascus, Hesychast (12th c.)

• Apollonia of Alexandria

  Apollonia (†249) was an aged and revered virgin of Alexandria, martyred in the anti-Christian riot that swept the city in the last year of the emperor Philip, on the eve of the Decian persecution. Seized by the mob, she had all her teeth broken by repeated blows to the jaws, and was then dragged to a great fire kindled outside the city and threatened with burning alive unless she would blaspheme Christ. Given a moment's freedom, she paused as if to consider — and then, of her own accord, filled with a divine ardour, leapt into the flames and was consumed, a bride hastening to her Lord. Her martyrdom is one of the very few of the third century recorded by an eyewitness pen — that of Dionysius, bishop of Alexandria, whose letter Eusebius preserved — and from the manner of her torture she became, in East and West alike, the patroness invoked against toothache and by those who suffer in the teeth. The Church keeps her on February 9, with the leavetaking of the Meeting of the Lord.

• Marcian of Syracuse

  Marcian, the first bishop of Syracuse in Sicily, is venerated as a disciple of the Apostle Peter sent to preach in the West, and as a hieromartyr of the apostolic age. The tradition places his labours in a cave near Syracuse, from which he spread the faith through the island, and records that he died a martyr; his relics are kept at Gaeta on the Italian mainland. He is commemorated on October 30 and is identified in the received calendars with the "Marcellus, bishop of Sicily" honoured on February 9.

• Pancratius of Taormina

  Pancratius (first century) is venerated as the first bishop of Tauromenium (Taormina) in Sicily and the apostle of the island — a disciple of the Apostle Peter, who is said to have consecrated him and sent him westward to preach. Of Antiochene origin, converted (the tradition holds) with his parents in the days of the Lord's own preaching, he was set by Peter over the young church of Tauromenium, where he laboured with such success that he is remembered as the enlightener of eastern Sicily; he overthrew idols, worked wonders, and built up a Christian people, until he was set upon and stoned to death by pagans (in some accounts by a band of brigands). He is honoured in the Byzantine calendars on February 9, kept with the leavetaking of the Meeting of the Lord, and is one of the three disciples of Peter — with Marcellus of Sicily and Philagrius of Cyprus — whom the day commemorates as apostles of the West.

• Philagrius of Cyprus

  Philagrius (first century) is venerated as a bishop in Cyprus and a hieromartyr of the apostolic age — one of the disciples whom the Apostle Peter is said to have ordained and sent out to preach, with Pancratius, sent to Tauromenium in Sicily, and Marcellus, sent to Syracuse. Set over a church of Cyprus, he laboured to spread the faith among the pagans of the island and died a martyr for Christ. The Byzantine calendars keep his memory on February 9, together with his fellow-disciples of Peter and with the leavetaking of the Meeting of the Lord. The surviving record of him is a brief synaxarion notice, and the Church honours him with the common office of a hieromartyr.

• Romanos of Cilicia

  Romanos of Cilicia was a hermit of the fifth century who, though a native of Rhoson in Cilicia, passed his ascetic life in a cave near Antioch. In strict fasting, wearing heavy chains beneath a hair shirt and keeping no fire in his cell for many years, he was granted by God the gift of wonderworking: he healed grave illnesses and obtained children for the barren through his prayers, so that he is invoked especially by the childless. He wore his gifts with humility, teaching that it is no great thing to work miracles but to keep God's commandments, and reposed in peace. He is commemorated on November 27 and again on February 9.

• Tikhon of Moscow

  Tikhon (Vasily Ivanovich Bellavin, 1865–1925) was the first Patriarch of Moscow after the two-hundred-year synodal captivity of the Russian Church, and before that the builder of Orthodoxy in North America — the hierarch under whom the American mission became a multi-ethnic archdiocese with its cathedral in New York, its seminary, its monastery, and its first church council. Elected Patriarch in November 1917, within days of the Bolshevik seizure of power, he led the Church of Russia into the fire of the persecution: he anathematized the shedders of innocent blood, refused to surrender the Church to the state-sponsored schism of the "Living Church," was imprisoned for a year, and died worn out on the feast of the Annunciation, 7 April 1925. The Church glorified him in 1989 as confessor and enlightener of North America, and his incorrupt relics were uncovered at the Donskoy monastery in 1992.

British Isles and Ireland

• St. Teilo, bishop of Llandaff and Llandeilo Fawr (6th C)
• St. Eingan, hermit at Llanengan (6th C)
• St. Cuaran the Wise (c.8th C)
• St. Cronan the Wise (8th C)
• St. Alto of Altomuenster (760)

Troparia & kontakia

Readings