Martyrs Terence, Neonila and Children; St Arsenius of Serbia

Saints commemorated

• Saint of the day

  Martyrs Terence, Neonila and Children

  Terence and Neonilla were a married couple of Syria who, with their seven children, confessed Christ and were put to death together in the persecution of the third century, by tradition under the emperor Decius. Denounced as Christians and brought before the magistrate, the whole family stood firm through a succession of tortures — the iron hook, vinegar and fire, the wild beasts, the cauldron of pitch — from which, the account says, an angel of God delivered them; at the last, when nothing could break them, all nine were beheaded. They are commemorated together on October 28, and stand in the calendar as one of the great household-martyrdoms of the early Church.

• Saint of the day

  St Arsenius of Serbia

• St Dimitri (Demetrius) of Rostov (1709)

  Dimitry of Rostov (1651–1709), in the world Daniel Tuptalo, was Metropolitan of Rostov and the greatest churchman-scholar of the Russian Church in the age of Peter the Great. For some twenty years he laboured over the Chetii-Minei, the great Lives of the Saints for the whole year, which became the standard hagiographic reading of the Russian world for two centuries; he was besides a famed preacher and a gentle, unworldly pastor who died owning little but his books and manuscripts. Glorified in 1757 — the first canonisation of the Synodal period — he is commemorated on October 28, the day of his repose, and on September 21, the uncovering of his incorrupt relics.

• Our Holy Father Firmilian, Bishop of Caesarea (268)

• Holy Hieromartyr Cyriacus, Bishop of Jerusalem, and his mother Anna (4th c.)

• Job of Pochaev

  Job of Pochaev (c. 1551–1651) was for more than half a century the abbot of the monastery on the hill of Pochaev in Volhynia and the foremost defender of Orthodoxy in the south-western Russian lands during the generation of the Union of Brest. Tonsured a monk at twelve, later abbot at Dubno at the patronage of Prince Constantine Ostrozhsky, he withdrew to a cave beside the wonderworking Pochaev Icon of the Mother of God and there governed the lavra with unbroken gentleness and labour, standing against the pressure of Latin and Uniate proselytism by copying and printing Orthodox books, taking part in the 1628 Council of Kiev against the Unia, and pouring out his life in ascetic prayer. He reposed above a hundred years old; his incorrupt relics, uncovered in 1659, made the Pochaev Lavra one of the great pilgrimage centres of Orthodoxy. He is not to be confused with the Old Testament patriarch Job the Long-suffering (May 6), whose name he bore, nor with his fellow Russian ascetic Job of Anzersk (†1720).

• John the Chozebite

  John the Chozebite (6th century) was an Egyptian of Thebes who became a hermit of the wild gorge of Choziba in the Judaean desert, between Jerusalem and Jericho, where he reorganized the hermit settlement into the community later famous as the monastery of Choziba. Renowned for healings, exorcisms and discernment, he was made bishop of Caesarea in Palestine against his will, soon laid down the see, and returned to the desert, where he reposed in old age. A defender of the Council of Chalcedon, he is remembered above all through the stories of the Spiritual Meadow of John Moschus, including the celebrated episode of the loaves consecrated on the road.

• Parasceva of Iconium

  Parasceva of Iconium is a virgin great-martyr of the early Church, honoured across the whole Orthodox world on October 28 and among the most beloved of all women saints in the Slavic lands, where she is known simply as Paraskeva Pyatnitsa — "Paraskeva Friday." Born, the tradition says, of pious parents of Iconium in Lycaonia who so revered the Friday of the Lord's Passion that they named their daughter for it (Paraskeue, "Preparation," is the Greek name of Friday), she consecrated her virginity to Christ, preached him openly, and was tortured and beheaded for refusing to sacrifice to the idols, under one of the pagan persecutions of the second or third century. Venerated as a healer, especially of diseases of the eyes, and as a protectress of fields, waters and household, she is depicted as an ascetic martyr in the red robe of martyrdom, a cross in her hand and a radiant crown upon her head.

• Stephen the Hymnographer

  Stephen the Hymnographer, a monk of the Great Lavra of Saint Sabbas (Mar Saba) in the Judaean desert, is commemorated on October 28 as one of the makers of the Church's service-books. To him and to Andrew "the Blind" the tradition ascribes many of the idiomela — the proper stichera — sung through the Lenten Triodion, from the Sunday of the Publican and the Pharisee to Palm Sunday. His life is little recorded, and his identity is entangled with that of another Stephen of the same monastery, the wonderworker and nephew of John of Damascus (commemorated July 13); the sources do not agree whether the two are one man or two.

British Isles and Ireland

• St. Dorbhene, abbot of Iona (713)
• St. Eadsige, 32nd archbishop of Canterbury (1050)

Troparia & kontakia

Readings