Saturday before Nativity

Saints commemorated

• Martyr Sebastian and Companions at Rome

  Sebastian (d. c. 288) was, by the tradition received in both East and West, an officer of the Roman army under Diocletian — captain of the imperial guard — who concealed his Christianity in order to strengthen the persecuted brethren. His Passion makes him above all an encourager of martyrs: he steadied the wavering brothers Marcellinus and Mark, converted their jailers and a whole company of prisoners and officials, and when at last denounced was tied to a stake and shot with arrows. Surviving that ordeal, he confronted the emperor a second time and was beaten to death with clubs. He is commemorated on December 18 together with the many companions who suffered in the same cycle — Zoe, Tranquillinus, Nicostratus, Castorius, Claudius, Victorinus, Symphorian, Tiburtius, Castulus, and the deacons Marcellinus and Mark.

• Holy Hieromartyr Modestus I, Archbishop of Jerusalem (634)

  Modestus (c. 537–634) was the archbishop who rebuilt the holy places of Jerusalem after the catastrophe of the Persian sack. Born in Cappadocia and tonsured on Mount Sinai, he governed the great monastery of St Sabbas and then, as locum tenens of the widowed patriarchal throne, led the restoration of the churches — above all the Church of the Holy Sepulchre — that Chosroes II's army had burned in 614, when the True Cross was carried off and the Patriarch Zachariah taken captive. With the help of John the Merciful of Alexandria he raised the shrines from their ashes and buried the martyred monks of St Sabbas. On Zachariah's death he became patriarch himself, reposing at the age of ninety-seven. He is honoured as a wonderworker and, in popular devotion, as a protector of flocks and herds.

• Florus of Amisus

  Florus (d. early 7th century) was a Byzantine nobleman who became bishop of Amisus on the Black Sea coast of Asia Minor. Named for his father, and given a fine education, he served at the imperial court and was raised to the rank of patrician; he married and had children. When his wife and children died of an epidemic, he renounced the world, withdrew to the neighbourhood of Constantinople to live in solitude and prayer, and was afterwards chosen bishop of Amisus, where he shepherded his flock wisely and reposed in peace. He is commemorated on December 18.

• Michael the Synkellos

  Michael the Synkellos (c. 761–846) was a monk of the Lavra of St Sabbas and synkellos of the Patriarchate of Jerusalem who became one of the steadfast confessors of the second iconoclast crisis. Sent to Constantinople on the patriarch's business, he was caught in the icon controversy and, with his disciples the brothers Theodore and Theophanes — the "Branded" (Graptoi) — was beaten, imprisoned, and exiled under the emperors Leo V and Theophilus for his defence of the holy images. When the veneration of icons was restored under the empress Theodora in 843, he was offered the patriarchal throne of Constantinople but declined it, ending his days as synkellos and as abbot of the Chora monastery. He reposed in peace and is honoured as a confessor.

• Sebastian of Poshekhonye

  Sebastian of Poshekhonye (†c. 1500) was a Russian monastic saint, the founder and first abbot of a hermitage in the forested Poshekhonye country of the upper Volga. On the River Sokhota, some ninety versts from the town of Romanov (now Tutaev) in the region of Yaroslavl, he raised a monastery in honour of the Transfiguration of the Lord, and gathered a brotherhood whom he taught to live by the labour of their own hands, tilling the soil for their bread. He reposed about the year 1500 and was buried at his monastery; his relics rested there, and in later centuries a stone church was built above them. He is commemorated on February 26.

• Simeon of Verkhoturye

  Simeon of Verkhoturye (c. 1607–1642) is the most beloved saint of the Russian Urals and Siberia — a nobleman who hid his birth to live as a poor wanderer among the newly settled and half-Christianised peoples of the frontier. Making his home by the village church of Merkushino near Verkhoturye, he supported himself by sewing coats for the poor, deliberately leaving each garment a little unfinished so as to earn reproach rather than praise, and he taught the faith to the local Russians and native peoples while fishing and praying in the wilderness. He died young and obscure, but in 1692 his coffin rose from the earth and his incorrupt relics began to work abundant healings; their translation to Verkhoturye in 1704 is his second feast.

British Isles and Ireland

• St. Winebald, abbot and missionary in England and Heidenheim (761)
• St. Samthan, foundress of Clonbroney Convent (6th C)
• St. Flannan, 1st bishop of Killaloe (7th C)

Troparia & kontakia

Readings