Ven. Alexius the Man of God; Ven. Makary of Kalyazinsk

Saints commemorated

Saint of the day

Ven. Alexius the Man of God

Alexis the Man of God (died c. 411) is one of the most beloved saints of the undivided Church — a young Roman nobleman who, on his own wedding day, left his bride untouched at the bridal chamber and fled his father's palace to live as a nameless beggar. For seventeen years he begged at the doors of a church in Edessa of Syria, where a vision of the Mother of God revealed him as "the man of God"; when his fame grew unbearable he fled again, and Providence carried him back to Rome and to the very house of his father Euphemianus. There, unknown, he lived seventeen more years as a servant under the stairs of his own home, enduring the mockery of the household slaves and the daily grief of parents and wife who did not know him. Only at his death was he revealed — by a writing found clutched in his hand, which told his whole story — and Rome wept over the beggar it had trampled. He is kept on March 17, honoured as ὅσιος, "the man of God," the pattern of hidden sanctity and voluntary poverty.
Saint of the day

Ven. Makary of Kalyazinsk
St Alexis, the Man of God (411)
St Patrick, Enlightener of Ireland (ca. 461)

Patrick (late 4th century – c. 461/493) is the apostle and enlightener of Ireland, a saint of the undivided Church honoured East and West on March 17. A Romano-British youth, the son of a deacon, he was carried off at sixteen by Irish raiders and spent six years as a slave herding flocks, in which captivity — by his own account — he was converted from a careless faith to unceasing prayer. Escaping home, he was called back to Ireland by a vision, "the voice of the Irish" begging him to walk among them again; trained and consecrated bishop, he returned to the land of his bondage and spent the rest of his life baptising a pagan people, ordaining clergy, and planting the Church across the island, with his see at Armagh. He is known intimately from his own hand, for his Confession and his Letter against Coroticus survive — the earliest documents of Irish Christianity and a rare first-person witness of a saint of that age. The Orthodox Church receives him as a father of the one Church before the schism, and many number him, with Nina of Georgia and the like, among those equal to the Apostles.
Gertrude of Nivelles

Gertrude of Nivelles (c. 626–659) was a Frankish abbess of the seventh century and a saint of the undivided Western Church, kept on March 17. Daughter of Pepin of Landen, the powerful mayor of the palace of Austrasia, she refused a noble marriage and, when her widowed mother Itta founded the double monastery of Nivelles in Brabant, became its first abbess while still very young. She was renowned for her hospitality to pilgrims and wandering Irish monks, for her deep knowledge of the Scriptures, and for an ascetic devotion that wore out her body by her early thirties; she resigned her office to prepare for death and reposed on March 17, 659, at the age of thirty-three. Long one of the most popular saints of the Low Countries — invoked by travellers, gardeners, and against plagues of mice — she is honoured among the Orthodox as a mother of the one Church before the schism.
Macarius of Kalyazin

Macarius of Kalyazin (c. 1400–1483) was one of the great monastic founders of fifteenth-century Russia — a wonderworker of the Tver land whose monastery on the Volga became a centre of the Russian North. Born Matthew Kozhin to a pious boyar family, he was married at his parents' wish but widowed within a few years and left an orphan; freed of every earthly tie, he took the monastic habit at Kashin and then withdrew into the forest between the lakes above the Volga, where he built a cell and, drawing disciples, founded the Holy Trinity monastery later called after Kalyazin. Famed for a humility so deep that he named his own monastery after the very landowner who had first opposed it, and for the gift of healing, he governed his brotherhood into great old age and reposed in 1483. His relics were found incorrupt in 1521 and he was numbered among the saints of the Russian Church; his monastery stood until it was drowned by the waters of the Volga in 1940.
Theosteriktos the Confessor

Theosteriktos the Confessor (8th century) was a monk — by the tradition the abbot — of the famous Pelekete monastery on the Bithynian shore of the Sea of Marmara, one of the communities that stood firm for the holy icons during the iconoclast persecution of the eighth century. When the imperial power fell upon the iconodule monasteries, Pelekete was raided and its monks scattered, tortured, and put to flight; Theosteriktos endured the sufferings of a confessor for the veneration of the icons — imprisonment and ill-usage borne without recanting — and, surviving his tormentors, ended his life in peace, honoured by the Church as one who "confessed" the faith and did not die of it. He is commemorated on March 17.

British Isles and Ireland

St. Patrick, bishop of Armagh, Apostle to the Irish (461)
St. Beccan of Rhum (677)
St. Withburga, hermit at Holkham and East Dereham (c.743)

Troparia & kontakia

Kontakion — Tone 2

Regarding thy parents' house as a stranger's, thou didst dwell therein in the guise of a beggar; and at thy departure from this life, receiving a crown of glory, thou wast shown wondrous upon the earth, O Alexis, man of God, thou joy of the angels and of men.

Kontakion — Tone 2

Yearning for the things on high, and finding thy delight in abstinence and toil and sweat, thou didst bridle the desire of thy flesh, and didst receive the gift of wonders, to heal the sicknesses of them that run to thee in faith, O father Macarius. Wherefore we cry to thee: Rejoice, O most radiant lamp.

Troparion — Tone 4

Raised on high unto virtue and having purified thy mind, thou didst attain unto the Desired and Uttermost Good, O our father Alexis; adorning thy soul with the graces of dispassion, and taking up unceasing prayer as a shield, thou didst live as one of the bodiless powers. Intercede with Christ our God that our souls may be saved.

Troparion — Tone 8

The mindings of the flesh, O father Macarius, thou didst put to death by fasting and by vigil; for the place whereon thou didst pour out thy sweat cries aloud like a trumpet to God who glorifieth thee; and after thy death thou didst receive the gift of wonders from Him who grants incorruption to all. Wherefore we cry to thee: Intercede with Christ our God, that our souls may be saved.

Readings

6th Hour

Isaiah 2.3-11

³And many people shall go and say, Come ye, and let us go up to the mountain of the LORD, to the house of the God of Jacob; and he will teach us of his ways, and we will walk in his paths: for out of Zion shall go forth the law, and the word of the LORD from Jerusalem. ⁴And he shall judge among the nations, and shall rebuke many people: and they shall beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruninghooks: nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war any more. ⁵O house of Jacob, come ye, and let us walk in the light of the LORD. ⁶Therefore thou hast forsaken thy people the house of Jacob, because they be replenished from the east, and are soothsayers like the Philistines, and they please themselves in the children of strangers. ⁷Their land also is full of silver and gold, neither is there any end of their treasures; their land is also full of horses, neither is there any end of their chariots: ⁸Their land also is full of idols; they worship the work of their own hands, that which their own fingers have made: ⁹And the mean man boweth down, and the great man humbleth himself: therefore forgive them not. ¹⁰Enter into the rock, and hide thee in the dust, for fear of the LORD, and for the glory of his majesty. ¹¹The lofty looks of man shall be humbled, and the haughtiness of men shall be bowed down, and the LORD alone shall be exalted in that day.

Vespers

Genesis 1.24-2.3

²⁴And God said, Let the earth bring forth the living creature after his kind, cattle, and creeping thing, and beast of the earth after his kind: and it was so. ²⁵And God made the beast of the earth after his kind, and cattle after their kind, and every thing that creepeth upon the earth after his kind: and God saw that it was good. ²⁶And God said, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness: and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth. ²⁷So God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them. ²⁸And God blessed them, and God said unto them, Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth, and subdue it: and have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over every living thing that moveth upon the earth. ²⁹And God said, Behold, I have given you every herb bearing seed, which is upon the face of all the earth, and every tree, in the which is the fruit of a tree yielding seed; to you it shall be for meat. ³⁰And to every beast of the earth, and to every fowl of the air, and to every thing that creepeth upon the earth, wherein there is life, I have given every green herb for meat: and it was so. ³¹And God saw every thing that he had made, and, behold, it was very good. And the evening and the morning were the sixth day. ¹Thus the heavens and the earth were finished, and all the host of them. ²And on the seventh day God ended his work which he had made; and he rested on the seventh day from all his work which he had made. ³And God blessed the seventh day, and sanctified it: because that in it he had rested from all his work which God created and made.

Proverbs 2.1-22

¹My son, if thou wilt receive my words, and hide my commandments with thee; ²So that thou incline thine ear unto wisdom, and apply thine heart to understanding; ³Yea, if thou criest after knowledge, and liftest up thy voice for understanding; ⁴If thou seekest her as silver, and searchest for her as for hid treasures; ⁵Then shalt thou understand the fear of the LORD, and find the knowledge of God. ⁶For the LORD giveth wisdom: out of his mouth cometh knowledge and understanding. ⁷He layeth up sound wisdom for the righteous: he is a buckler to them that walk uprightly. ⁸He keepeth the paths of judgment, and preserveth the way of his saints. ⁹Then shalt thou understand righteousness, and judgment, and equity; yea, every good path. ¹⁰When wisdom entereth into thine heart, and knowledge is pleasant unto thy soul; ¹¹Discretion shall preserve thee, understanding shall keep thee: ¹²To deliver thee from the way of the evil man, from the man that speaketh froward things; ¹³Who leave the paths of uprightness, to walk in the ways of darkness; ¹⁴Who rejoice to do evil, and delight in the frowardness of the wicked; ¹⁵Whose ways are crooked, and they froward in their paths: ¹⁶To deliver thee from the strange woman, even from the stranger which flattereth with her words; ¹⁷Which forsaketh the guide of her youth, and forgetteth the covenant of her God. ¹⁸For her house inclineth unto death, and her paths unto the dead. ¹⁹None that go unto her return again, neither take they hold of the paths of life. ²⁰That thou mayest walk in the way of good men, and keep the paths of the righteous. ²¹For the upright shall dwell in the land, and the perfect shall remain in it. ²²But the wicked shall be cut off from the earth, and the transgressors shall be rooted out of it.

Saints commemorated