Bright Tuesday

Saints commemorated

Ven. John, Disciple of Gregory Decapolites

John was the disciple, fellow-ascetic and spiritual son of St Gregory of Decapolis, and shared his master's labours and sufferings for the holy icons in the second iconoclast persecution of the ninth century. Faithful to Gregory to the end, and himself a confessor of the veneration of images, he reposed in peace and is honoured on April 18.
The Holy Martyr John the New of Ioannina (1526)
Cosmas of Chalcedon and Auxentius

Cosmas, Bishop of Chalcedon, and his companion Auxentius were confessors of the holy icons in the iconoclast persecution. Cosmas, chosen bishop of Chalcedon across the water from Constantinople, withstood the heretical emperors and refused to surrender the veneration of the images; for this he was persecuted, deposed and exiled, and with his faithful companion Auxentius endured much for the faith before reposing in peace. They are kept together on April 18.
Raphael, Nicholas and Irene of Lesbos

The strangest entry in the modern Greek calendar, and one of the few saints in this collection whose whole biography reached the Church after their cult did. For five centuries the people of Lesbos walked up on Bright Tuesday to a ruined enclosure at Karyes, above the village of Thermi north-west of Mytilene, without being able to say why: there had been a monastery there, it was remembered, and the monks had been killed by the Turks, and that was all. In 1959 the ground was being cleared to build a chapel when the workmen uncovered a grave, and from that year the dead began — in the accounts of a very large number of islanders — to appear and to say who they were: Raphael, hieromonk and abbot, a native of Ithaca; Nicholas, his deacon, of Thessaloniki; Irene, the twelve-year-old daughter of the village headman; and with them Irene's parents Basil and Maria, the schoolmaster Theodore, and Irene's fifteen-year-old cousin Eleni. They were tortured, the accounts say, from Great Thursday until Bright Tuesday, 9 April 1463, ten years after the fall of Constantinople; Raphael died with a saw through his jaw, tied to a tree; Irene had an arm cut off before her parents' eyes and was suffocated in a burning earthenware jar. They asked for an icon, for a service, and for their graves to be found, and all three were given them: the icon by Photios Kontoglou, the office by the hymnographer Gerasimos Mikragiannanites, and the relics between 1959 and 1961. Their commemoration is movable — it is kept on the anniversary as the Church counts it, the Tuesday of the Renewal, and has no fixed date in the general calendar.
The Six Thousand Martyrs of David-Gareji

The largest single martyrdom in the history of the Georgian Church, and the one commemoration of the Georgian calendar that is fixed to Bright Week rather than to a day of the month. In 1616, in the aftermath of the devastation of Kakheti by Shah Abbas I of Persia, the whole brotherhood of the cave-monasteries of the David-Gareji wilderness — reckoned by the Georgian tradition at six thousand monks — was cut down by the shah's troops in the paschal season, at the altar, in their festal vestments, immediately after they had received Holy Communion. The tradition relates that the shah, hunting in the semi-desert, saw from his camp a line of lights moving on the mountain at midnight and was told that these were monks going round their church with candles for the Resurrection of Christ, and that he gave the order for their slaughter on the spot; that an angel warned the abbot Arsenius that night and left each man free to flee or to stay; that all but two novices stayed; and that the two who had hidden returned and were killed when they saw the crowns descending from heaven, two of which floated empty in the air. Their bones were gathered later in the century by King Archil and laid in a great stone vessel beside the altar, where they were reported to stream myrrh. The brotherhoods of the David and the Baptist monasteries asked Catholicos Anthony I to compose their service and to appoint the Tuesday of Bright Week as their day, and it has been kept so ever since.

British Isles and Ireland

St. Laserian of Innismurray and Arran (639)
St. Deicola, abbot of Bosham (7th C)
St. Cogitosus of Kildare (8th C)
SS. Bitheus and Genocus (6th C)

Troparia & kontakia

Apolytikion — Tone 1 (common of several martyrs)

By the sufferings which thy saints endured for thee, O Lord, be thou entreated; and heal all our pains, we pray thee, O Lover of mankind.

Apolytikion — Tone 4 (common of many martyrs)

Thy martyrs, O Lord, in their contest received incorruptible crowns from thee our God; for possessing thy strength, they cast down the tyrants and shattered the feeble insolence of the demons. At their supplications, O Christ our God, save our souls.

Kontakion — Tone 4 (composed for this repository)

Five hundred years ye lay unknown beneath the stones of Karyes, and the people came up to you year by year and could not name you; but in the appointed time ye rose upon the island like a great sign, and told your names, and asked for nothing but to be remembered. O Raphael and Nicholas and Irene, remember us.

Kontakion — Tone 8 (original composition on the matter of the day)

Vested as for the feast and fed with the Bread of immortality, ye went out to the sword as to a bridal chamber, O six thousand fathers of the wilderness; and the crowns that came down from heaven found none of you wanting save two, and them the Lover of mankind called back. Wherefore we cry to you: rejoice, O city of monks made a city of martyrs.

Troparion — Tone 4 (common of a bishop-confessor)

O God of our fathers, ever dealing with us according to Thy gentleness: take not Thy mercy from us, but by the prayers of Thy holy confessors Cosmas the bishop and Auxentius, direct our lives in peace.

Troparion — Tone 8 (common of an ascetic-confessor)

By a flood of tears thou didst make the desert fruitful, and by thy sufferings for the holy icons thou didst confess the faith; thou becamest a beacon shining upon the world by thy struggles, O John our father, disciple of Gregory: intercede with Christ God that our souls may be saved.

Readings

Epistle

Acts 2.14-21

¹⁴But Peter, standing up with the eleven, lifted up his voice, and said unto them, Ye men of Judæa, and all ye that dwell at Jerusalem, be this known unto you, and hearken to my words: ¹⁵For these are not drunken, as ye suppose, seeing it is but the third hour of the day. ¹⁶But this is that which was spoken by the prophet Joel; ¹⁷And it shall come to pass in the last days, saith God, I will pour out of my Spirit upon all flesh: and your sons and your daughters shall prophesy, and your young men shall see visions, and your old men shall dream dreams: ¹⁸And on my servants and on my handmaidens I will pour out in those days of my Spirit; and they shall prophesy: ¹⁹And I will shew wonders in heaven above, and signs in the earth beneath; blood, and fire, and vapour of smoke: ²⁰The sun shall be turned into darkness, and the moon into blood, before that great and notable day of the Lord come: ²¹And it shall come to pass, that whosoever shall call on the name of the Lord shall be saved.

Gospel

Luke 24.12-35

¹²Then arose Peter, and ran unto the sepulchre; and stooping down, he beheld the linen clothes laid by themselves, and departed, wondering in himself at that which was come to pass. ¹³And, behold, two of them went that same day to a village called Emmaus, which was from Jerusalem about threescore furlongs. ¹⁴And they talked together of all these things which had happened. ¹⁵And it came to pass, that, while they communed together and reasoned, Jesus himself drew near, and went with them. ¹⁶But their eyes were holden that they should not know him. ¹⁷And he said unto them, What manner of communications are these that ye have one to another, as ye walk, and are sad? ¹⁸And the one of them, whose name was Cleopas, answering said unto him, Art thou only a stranger in Jerusalem, and hast not known the things which are come to pass there in these days? ¹⁹And he said unto them, What things? And they said unto him, Concerning Jesus of Nazareth, which was a prophet mighty in deed and word before God and all the people: ²⁰And how the chief priests and our rulers delivered him to be condemned to death, and have crucified him. ²¹But we trusted that it had been he which should have redeemed Israel: and beside all this, to day is the third day since these things were done. ²²Yea, and certain women also of our company made us astonished, which were early at the sepulchre; ²³And when they found not his body, they came, saying, that they had also seen a vision of angels, which said that he was alive. ²⁴And certain of them which were with us went to the sepulchre, and found it even so as the women had said: but him they saw not. ²⁵Then he said unto them, O fools, and slow of heart to believe all that the prophets have spoken: ²⁶Ought not Christ to have suffered these things, and to enter into his glory? ²⁷And beginning at Moses and all the prophets, he expounded unto them in all the scriptures the things concerning himself. ²⁸And they drew nigh unto the village, whither they went: and he made as though he would have gone further. ²⁹But they constrained him, saying, Abide with us: for it is toward evening, and the day is far spent. And he went in to tarry with them. ³⁰And it came to pass, as he sat at meat with them, he took bread, and blessed it, and brake, and gave to them. ³¹And their eyes were opened, and they knew him; and he vanished out of their sight. ³²And they said one to another, Did not our heart burn within us, while he talked with us by the way, and while he opened to us the scriptures? ³³And they rose up the same hour, and returned to Jerusalem, and found the eleven gathered together, and them that were with them, ³⁴Saying, The Lord is risen indeed, and hath appeared to Simon. ³⁵And they told what things were done in the way, and how he was known of them in breaking of bread.