Righteous Joachim and Anna; Ven. Joseph of Volotsk

Saints commemorated

• Saint of the day Antiochian commemoration

  Righteous Joachim and Anna

  Joachim and Anna were the parents of the Most Holy Theotokos and the grandparents of Christ according to the flesh, honoured by the Church with the unique title "Ancestors of God" (Theopatores). An aged couple childless through fifty years of marriage, they bore the reproach of barrenness with patience and prayer until an angel announced to each of them the conception of a daughter whose name would be spoken of in all the world; their embrace at the Golden Gate of Jerusalem, and the birth of Mary that followed, are the matter of the feast of September 8. They are commemorated together on September 9, the day after the Nativity of the Theotokos, and are invoked by name at the dismissal of every Orthodox service.

• Saint of the day

  Ven. Joseph of Volotsk

• Saint of the day

  Holy Ancestors of God Joachim and Anna

• Commemoration of the Third Ecumenical Council (431)

• Holy Martyr Severian of Sebaste (320)

  Severian (†320) was a nobleman of Sebaste in Armenia who suffered martyrdom under the emperor Licinius, in the same persecution and the same city as the famous Forty Martyrs of Sebaste. Before his own arrest he had visited the Forty in prison, encouraging them to endure to the end; about half a year after their death in the frozen lake he was himself brought to trial, scourged, torn with iron scrapers, and finally hanged upon the city wall with a heavy stone bound to his body until he died. His memory is kept on September 9, and the Menaion styles him the "trainer" of the Forty whom he had strengthened for their contest.

• Our Holy Father Ciaran of Clonmacnoise (549)

• Theodosius of Chernigov

  Theodosius (Uglitsky) of Chernigov (c. 1630s–1696) was one of the last great hierarchs of pre-Petrine Rus' and Ukraine, Archbishop of Chernigov from 1692 and a wonderworker glorified two centuries after his repose. Born of a priestly family in Podolia and formed at the Kiev collegium, he rose through the great Ukrainian monasteries — abbot of the Krupitsky Saint Nicholas and of the Kiev Vydubitsky houses, then archimandrite of the Eletsky Dormition Monastery at Chernigov — before his consecration as archbishop. Renowned in life for gentleness, almsgiving, and care for monasticism and learning, he reposed on February 5, 1696, and was buried in the Chernigov cathedral. His relics were found incorrupt, and through the many miracles worked at his tomb — above all upon his successor John (Maximovich) — he was solemnly canonized by the Russian Church in 1896, one of the last glorifications of imperial Russia.

• Theophanes of Mount Diabenos

  Theophanes the Confessor and Faster (†c. 300) was an ascetic of the generation before the great persecutions ended, born of pagan parents, who came to faith in Christ in his youth, was baptized, and fled secretly to an aged hermit on the mountain the sources call Dabis or Diabenos. After five years under the elder he spent fifty-eight years alone in his cave; coming down at last to preach Christ among the pagans, he converted many, was seized and tortured under the emperor Carus and his sons, survived his confession, and returned to the mountain, where he lived some seventeen years more and reposed in peace. He is commemorated on September 9.

British Isles and Ireland

• St. Ciaran the Younger of Clonmacnois (c.545)
• St. Bettelin (Bertram) of Crowland, hermit (8th C)
• St. Wulfhild, abbess of Bar and Horton (c.1000)
• Osmanna (Argariarga) (c.650)

Troparia & kontakia

Readings