Memorial Saturday

Saints commemorated

• Saint of the day

  

  Hieromartyr Haralambos (Charalampus), bishop of Magnesia (202)

  Haralambos, or Charalampus, "the Wonderworker" (c. 89 – c. 202), is one of the most beloved and widely venerated saints of the Greek world — the aged bishop-priest of Magnesia who was martyred at about a hundred and thirteen years of age during the persecution of Septimius Severus. Denounced as the leader of the Christians of his city, he endured prolonged tortures — his flesh torn from his body with iron hooks — with such serene endurance that his very tormentors, the soldiers Porphyrius and Baptus, and three women who watched, confessed Christ and were themselves put to death. When even fire and the sword seemed to have no power over him and miracles multiplied around him, he was at last condemned to be beheaded, but gave up his soul to God before the sword could fall. He is invoked across the Orthodox world as a mighty intercessor against plague and pestilence and as a protector of crops, flocks, and the fruitfulness of the land; his relics, chiefly his venerable head, are treasured at the Meteora and in countless Greek churches that bear his name.

• Hieromartyr Haralambos

• St Scholastica of Italy, sister of St Benedict (543)

  Scholastica (c. 480 – c. 543) was the sister — by an early tradition the twin — of Benedict of Nursia, the father of Western monasticism, and is honoured as the first nun of the Benedictine way and a saint of the undivided Church. Consecrated to God from her youth, she settled in a community of women a few miles from her brother's monastery at Monte Cassino, and the brother and sister met once a year to speak of the things of God. Of that holy friendship the one story the tradition preserves — told by Pope Gregory the Great — is the most famous of her life: at their last meeting she begged Benedict to stay through the night in spiritual conversation, and when he refused for his Rule's sake, she bowed her head in prayer and a sudden storm broke that made his return impossible, so that "she was able to do more because she loved more." Three days later Benedict saw her soul rise to heaven as a dove, and had her buried in the tomb he had prepared for himself. She is kept on February 10.

• Our Venerable Father Prochorus of the Kiev Caves (1107)

  Prochorus of the Kiev Caves (died 1107), called Lebednik — "the goosefoot-eater" — was a monk of the Caves monastery famous for an extreme abstinence from bread and for two great wonders wrought through it in a time of famine and want. A native of Smolensk, he entered the Caves under the igumen John and refused ordinary bread, gathering instead the wild plant lebeda (orach or goosefoot) and baking it into loaves; in a great famine his bitter weed-bread turned sweet as honey in the mouths of those to whom he gave it with a blessing, but bitter to any who took it by theft. When war cut off the supply of salt and speculators drove up its price, he gathered the ashes from the monks' cells and distributed them, and in the hands of the faithful the ashes became pure salt — a wonder that drew the anger of the Grand Prince Svyatopolk, whose profiteering it undid, until the prince repented and became the saint's friend. Prochorus foretold his own death, was buried by the same Svyatopolk with his own hands, and rests in the Near (Anterior) Caves. He is commemorated on February 10.

• Anna of Novgorod

  Anna of Novgorod (c. 1001 – 1050) was a Swedish princess who became Grand Princess of Kiev and is venerated as one of the first canonised women saints of the Russian land. Born Ingegerd, daughter of the first Christian king of Sweden, Olof Skötkonung, she was given in marriage in 1019 to Yaroslav the Wise, Grand Prince of Kiev, taking in Rus' the name Irene; she bore him the children through whom his dynasty was bound to half the courts of Europe. A woman of deep faith and learning, she raised her children in the Christian way, shared in her husband's building of the great churches of Kiev and Novgorod, and at the end of her life received the monastic tonsure with the name Anna — the name by which the Church remembers her. She died at Novgorod and was buried in its cathedral of Holy Wisdom, and is honoured as the first of the princely women of Rus' to be glorified, kept on February 10 and among the Hierarchs of Novgorod on October 4.

• Ennatha, Valentina and Paula

  Ennatha, Valentina and Paula were three Christian virgins of Palestine martyred at Caesarea in the year 308, during the Great Persecution under Maximin, when the cruel governor Firmilian was putting the Christians of the province to death. Their passion is recorded by the eyewitness Eusebius of Caesarea in his Martyrs of Palestine. Ennatha (or Enniatha), a virgin of Gaza, was scourged and cruelly tormented for confessing Christ; Valentina, a virgin of Caesarea, brought to the altar to sacrifice, kicked it over and overthrew the fire upon it, and for this was tortured savagely; and the two were then burned together in one fire. Paula, a third, was beheaded. They are commemorated on February 10.

• Porphyrius and Baptus

  Porphyrius and Baptus were two soldiers of Magnesia who, set to torture the aged hieromartyr Charalampus during the persecution of Septimius Severus about the year 202, were converted by the serene endurance and the wonders of the old man they were tormenting. Confessing Christ openly before the magistrate, they were at once condemned and beheaded, and with them three women of the crowd who had likewise glorified God at the sight. They are commemorated on February 10 within the feast of Charalampus, and the synaxarion of the day keeps their memory in a couplet playing on the name Baptus ("Porphyrius and Baptus, by one common sword, dye a common purple in the dye of their contest").

• Zeno the Faster of Antioch

  Zeno the Faster (died c. 414) was a hermit of the region of Antioch, remembered as a disciple of Basil the Great and a model of extreme abstinence, from which he took his by-name. A man of rank and wealth who had served in the imperial courier-service, he was moved after Basil's death to renounce the world; he gave away all he possessed to the poor and shut himself in a rock-hewn tomb outside the walls of Antioch, where for some forty years he lived alone in the strictest asceticism — fasting, silence, and prayer — owning nothing, lighting no fire, fetching his own water from a distance, and admitting no one. His life is recorded by Theodoret of Cyrrhus, who knew the Antiochene ascetics at first hand. He is commemorated on February 10.

British Isles and Ireland

• St. Merewenna, abbess of Romsey (10th C)
• St. Trumwin, bishop of Abercorn (c.704)
• St. Erluph of Werden (830)

Troparia & kontakia

Readings