Martyrs Onesiphorus and Porphyrius

Saints commemorated

• Saint of the day

  

  Martyrs Onesiphorus and Porphyrius

  Onesiphorus and Porphyrius were two martyrs who suffered together during the persecution of the emperor Diocletian (284–305). Having confessed Christ and refused to sacrifice to the idols, they were scourged and burned, and then, when neither torment shook their faith, were bound to wild horses and dragged over the stones until they died. Their relics were afterwards gathered and enshrined. They are commemorated together on November 9. In some accounts Porphyrius is named as the servant of Onesiphorus, and both are styled "of Ephesus," where their contest is placed.

• Saint of the day

  

  Our Father among the Saints Nectarius (Nektarios), bishop of Pentapolis, Wonderworker, and founder of the Monastery of the Holy Trinity on Aegina (1920).

  Nectarius of Aegina (1846–1920), born Anastasios Kephalas in Silivri (Selybria) in Thrace, is among the most beloved saints of the modern Orthodox world. A learned and gentle hierarch, he was consecrated Metropolitan of Pentapolis in the Patriarchate of Alexandria, then driven from Egypt by the envy and slander of fellow clergy and left, uncomplaining, to years of obscurity and poverty in Greece. He served humbly as a preacher and for fourteen years as director of the Rizarios Ecclesiastical School in Athens, and at last founded the Holy Trinity convent on the island of Aegina, where he reposed in 1920. His grave proved a source of healings and his relics streamed myrrh; glorified by the Ecumenical Patriarchate in 1961, he is invoked across the world, especially by the sick and by cancer patients, and more churches are dedicated to him than to any other modern saint.

• Our Venerable Father John the Dwarf (John the Short) (4th c.)

  John the Dwarf (c. 339 – c. 409), called in Greek Kolobos ("the Short"), was one of the most renowned of the Desert Fathers of Egypt, an ascetic of Scetis celebrated for his humility, his obedience, and the many sayings preserved under his name in the Sayings of the Desert Fathers. Small of stature, hot-tempered in youth and mastered by patience, he is remembered above all for the wonder of the dry stick that his elder bade him water daily until, after three years, it budded and bore fruit — "the tree of obedience." Driven from Scetis by a barbarian raid, he ended his days near Clysma by the Red Sea. He is commemorated on November 9.

• Our Holy Mother Matrona (492)

  Matrona of Constantinople (c. 420 – c. 492) was born at Perge in Pamphylia and married young to a man named Dometian, to whom she bore a daughter, Theodota. Drawn wholly to the monastic life, she left her husband and, cutting her hair and dressing as a man, entered under the name Babylas a monastery of men led by the abbot Bassianos in Constantinople, where she lived undetected until her sex was disclosed. Sent away to protect the brotherhood, she passed through convents at Emesa, Jerusalem and Sinai, evading her husband's pursuit, before returning to Constantinople and founding a convent of her own, which she governed as abbess into great old age. She is one of the most celebrated of the holy women who took the monastic habit in male disguise, and is commemorated on November 9.

• Saint Symeon Metaphrastes (960)

• Theoctista of Lesbos

  Theoctista of Lesbos (9th century) was a nun of the island of Lesbos who, seized in a Saracen pirate raid, escaped on the deserted island of Paros and lived there as a hermitess in extreme asceticism for some thirty-five years, unseen by any human being. A hunter who chanced upon her in the ruined church of the Hundred Doors found an aged woman clothed only in her white hair; at her request he brought her the Holy Gifts the following year, and after she had communed she was found dead. Her story, told by Symeon the Metaphrast, closely echoes that of Mary of Egypt, and she is venerated among the desert-dwelling holy women. She is commemorated on November 9.

British Isles and Ireland

• St. Benignus, the Psalmsinger (c.466)
• St. Pabo, abbot of Llanbabon (c.510)

Troparia & kontakia

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