Holy Myrrhbearer Mary Magdalene, Equal-to-the-Apostles

Saints commemorated

• Saint of the day Antiochian commemoration

  Holy Myrrhbearer Mary Magdalene, Equal-to-the-Apostles

  Mary of Magdala, the fishing town on the western shore of the Sea of Galilee, was delivered by Christ from seven demons and thereafter followed Him and ministered to Him of her own substance. She stood by the Cross when the disciples had fled, watched where the Lord was laid, and came at first light on the third day with the spices — and so became the first human being to see the risen Christ and the first to be sent with the news of the Resurrection. For this the Church calls her ἰσαπόστολος, Equal-to-the-Apostles, and the Fathers name her apostle to the apostles. Tradition carries her afterwards to Rome, where she is said to have testified of the Resurrection before Tiberius with a red egg in her hand, and then to Ephesus, where she laboured beside the Apostle John and reposed in peace; her relics were translated to Constantinople by the emperor Leo VI the Wise.

• Cornelius of Pereyaslavl

  Born Konon to a merchant family of Pereyaslavl-Ryazan, he left his father's house at fifteen for the monastic life and settled at last in the Monastery of Saints Boris and Gleb on the Sands at Pereyaslavl-Zalessky. There he kept an astonishing discipline: for some thirty years he did not speak, and was taken by the brotherhood for a deaf-mute, while he dug wells, planted the orchard, carried water and worked in the bakehouse, fasting so severely that his body was wasted away. God gave him discernment and the gift of healing, particularly of sick children. He reposed on 22 July 1693, having received the great schema at the end; his incorrupt relics were uncovered in 1701 during the building of a new stone church and were authenticated in 1705 by Saint Dimitry of Rostov.

• Cyprian of Suzdal

  Blessed Cyprian was a fool-for-Christ of the Suzdal country who pursued his struggle in solitude on an island at the confluence of the rivers Klyazma and Uvod, near the village of Voskresenskoye by Kovrov in the Vladimir land, and who reposed on 22 July 1622. He was buried at the Church of the Resurrection there, and the veneration that grew about his grave was formal enough that in 1751 a side-chapel of the Protecting Veil of the Mother of God was built over it. He is remembered as a wonderworker, and is numbered among the Saints of Vladimir.

• Cyril of Antioch

  Cyril was bishop of Antioch the Great at the turn of the fourth century — the immediate predecessor of the persecution, whose episcopate ended just as Diocletian's edicts fell upon the churches. Eusebius of Caesarea, who was his contemporary and says so, names him in the Antiochene succession between Timaeus and Tyrannus, and notes pointedly that it was in Tyrannus's time that "the destruction of the churches" occurred. Nothing of his teaching or writing survives. The later hagiographic tradition remembers him as a confessor, condemned under Diocletian to labour in the mines and dying of his sufferings; the Latin martyrologies go further and call him a martyr. He is honoured on July 22, and holds his place in the Antiochian memory as the last bishop of the peace before the Great Persecution.

• Markella of Chios

  Markella was a young Christian woman of Volissos, in the north-west of the island of Chios, killed by her own father in defence of her virginity at the place on the shore now called Agia Markella. The narrative tradition — her mother's early death, the father's unnatural desire, her flight into the hills, the arrow, the rock that opened to hide her, and the beheading at the water's edge — is a local one, first written down late; Saint Nikodemos the Hagiorite, compiling the Synaxaristes, frankly recorded that no account of her had been preserved, and that the Chians nevertheless honoured her from ancient custom. What has never been in doubt on Chios is the veneration: the shrine on the shore, the hot spring in the rocks, and the red staining of the stones which the islanders gather as a healing relic. She is the patroness of Chios.

• Phocas of Sinope

  Phocas was bishop of Sinope, the great harbour city of the southern Black Sea coast, and died a martyr there in the year 117, in the persecution at the end of Trajan's reign: refusing to renounce Christ, he was tortured and shut into a bath-house heated to fury, where he gave up his spirit. Styled "the Wonderworker" in the synaxaria, he became one of the most beloved saints of the Black Sea world — the patron of seafarers, invoked daily by those in peril on the waters, and a defender against fire and drowning. His relics were translated to Constantinople in 404, and his feast is kept on September 22.

British Isles and Ireland

• St. Dabius, Irish missionary
• St. Movean (Biteus), disciple of St. Patrick

Troparia & kontakia

Readings