Saturday before Elevation

Saints commemorated

• Ven. Theodora of Alexandria

  Theodora of Alexandria (died c. 490) is one of the most celebrated penitents of the Orthodox calendar: a married woman of Alexandria who, having fallen once into adultery, spent the rest of her life in a repentance so complete that the Church numbers her among the great ascetics. Disguising herself as a man, she entered a men's monastery under the name Theodore; falsely accused of fathering a child, she accepted the disgrace in silence and raised the infant in exile for seven years rather than clear herself. Only at her death did the brethren discover that the slandered "monk Theodore" was a woman, and innocent. She is commemorated on September 11.

• St Euphrosynos the Cook of Alexandria (9th c.)

  Euphrosynus the Cook (9th century) is the patron of the humble and hidden: an unlettered peasant who served as cook in a monastery kitchen, despised by some of the brethren for his rusticity and enduring their contempt in silence. His sanctity, concealed all his life, was revealed in a single night, when a priest of the monastery who had long prayed to see the good things prepared for those who love God was shown paradise in a vision — and found the monastery cook dwelling there, who gave him three apples from the garden. Waking, the priest found the apples beside him, fragrant and real; and Euphrosynus, his secret out, fled the monastery the same morning and was never found. He is commemorated on September 11.

• St Paphnutius the Confessor (4th c.)

• Canonization of St Xenia of St Petersburg (1978)

• Demetrius, Evanthia and Demetrian of Skepsis

  Demetrius, his wife Evanthia, and their son Demetrian were a family of the first century martyred together at Skepsis on the Hellespont. Demetrius, the ruler of the city, sat in judgment on Cornelius the Centurion — the first Gentile baptized by the Apostle Peter, who had come to Skepsis preaching the Gospel — and was instead converted by the preaching and the miracles of his prisoner, receiving baptism with his whole household. For this the pagans of the city shut the newly-converted family in prison, where they were starved to death. They are commemorated together on September 11.

• Diodorus, Didymus and Diomedes of Laodicea

  Diodorus, Didymus and Diomedes were martyrs of Laodicea, natives of the city in which they suffered, put to death for Christ by scourging — flogged until they died under the blows. Their commemoration, preserved in a single synaxarion line with its distich on the scourges that "flogged the error" of paganism even as they tore the martyrs' flesh, is kept on September 11.

• Ia of Persia

  Ia was a Christian woman — the Greek synaxarion remembers her as aged in years — who was seized with nine thousand fellow-Christians in the great fourth-century persecution of Shapur II of Persia and brought to the city of Bisada. Commanded by the chief of the magi to renounce Christ, she refused through repeated tortures and imprisonment, and was at last beheaded, around the year 363. The tradition relates that the sun was darkened at her death and the air filled with a sweet fragrance. She and the nine thousand with her are commemorated on September 11.

• Sergius and Herman of Valaam

  Sergius and Herman are venerated as the founders of the Monastery of the Transfiguration on Valaam, the great island house in the northern reaches of Lake Ladoga that became the mother of monasticism for the whole Karelian north and, through its children, for Solovki, Konevets, Ondrusov and at last Alaska. Tradition makes Sergius a Greek monk who came northward as a missionary among the pagan Karelians and Herman his companion, sometimes named as a Karelian convert; they settled on the rocky archipelago, gathered a brotherhood under a rule of fasting, vigil and manual labour, and reposed there — the service books say about the year 1353. No Life of them survives, and the dating of their coming is one of the vexed questions of Russian church history, ranging from the tenth century to the end of the fourteenth. Their relics lie hidden beneath the floor of the monastery cathedral, twice carried to Novgorod for safety from Swedish raids and twice brought home. The Church keeps their memory on June 28, and on September 11 the return of their relics to the island.

British Isles and Ireland

• St. Deiniol, abbot of Bangor, bishop in Clwyd (c.584)

Troparia & kontakia

Readings