Beginning of the Great Fast

Saints commemorated

• Apostles of the Seventy Archippus and Philemon

  Archippus was an apostle of the Seventy and a minister of the church of Colossae in Phrygia, greeted by the Apostle Paul as "our fellow soldier" (Philemon 2) and charged in the Epistle to the Colossians to "take heed to the ministry which thou hast received in the Lord, that thou fulfil it" (Colossians 4:17). The Byzantine tradition remembers him as the son of Philemon and Apphia, in whose house the Colossian church assembled, and numbers him with his father among the Seventy. Under Nero he received the crown of martyrdom at Colossae, dragged before the mob and stoned to death — the hymnography singing that he "longed for the cornerstone Stone" and so "was battered with stones for love of Him." He is kept with the whole Colossian household on November 22, and again on February 19, where the day is led by his own name and his proper hymns.

• Our Venerable Mother Philothea of Athens (1589)

  Philothei of Athens (1522–1589), born Regoula Benizelou to one of the noblest families of Ottoman Athens, is the great nun-martyr and philanthropist of the enslaved city — venerated as a patroness of Athens, where her incorrupt relics rest in the Metropolitan Cathedral. Married against her will as a girl and widowed within a few years, she refused all further marriage and, after her parents' death, took the monastic name Philothei and founded on her own estate the convent of St Andrew, gathering about it a great complex of schools, workshops, hospices and refuges. From it she ransomed Christian captives, and above all sheltered and spirited to safety women fleeing the harems and the slavery of the conquerors — for which the Turkish authorities seized her at a night vigil, beat her savagely, and left her mortally hurt. She lingered some months and reposed of her wounds on February 19, 1589, and was numbered among the new martyrs of the Church under the Turkish yoke.

• Conon of Penthucla

  Conon (sixth century) was a Cilician who from his youth was a monk of the monastery of Penthucla near the Jordan, ordained presbyter and appointed to baptize the many pilgrims and converts who came down to the holy river. Grievously troubled at having, by the rite, to anoint women with the holy oil, he resolved to abandon his charge and flee — until John the Baptist appeared to him and strengthened him, promising to bear the struggle for him, so that thereafter he ministered the baptism in peace and without disturbance for many years. He reposed in great old age and is commemorated on February 19.

• Dositheus of Gaza

  Dositheus (sixth century) was the young disciple of Abba Dorotheus of Gaza, and the living illustration of his master's teaching on obedience. A pampered youth of a rich house, ignorant of the faith, he was converted by a vision at the holy places of Jerusalem and entered the coenobium of Abba Seridos near Gaza, where he was given wholly into the care of Dorotheus. In some five years he was so refined by a perfect, unquestioning obedience — cutting off his own will in the smallest things, even his fondness for fine food and his craft as an infirmarian — that when he died young of consumption, the great elders Barsanuphius and John declared his measure equal to that of the aged ascetics. His Life, written by Dorotheus, and the sayings that frame it, are a classic of the literature of monastic obedience.

• Eugene and Macarius of Antioch

  Eugene and Macarius were presbyters of the Church of Antioch who, under the emperor Julian the Apostate (361–363), boldly reproached him to his face for his apostasy from Christ and his restoration of the worship of idols. For this they were tortured and sent into a harsh exile — the tradition places it in the desert of Mauretania (or Arabia) — where, near a spring of poisonous water made sweet and healing by their prayer, they ended their lives about the year 363, confessors who sealed their witness with death. They are commemorated on February 19.

• Philemon, Archippus, Onesimus and Apphia

  Philemon and his wife Apphia were a Christian couple of Colossae in Phrygia whose house became the church addressed in the Apostle Paul's shortest surviving letter, the Epistle to Philemon; Archippus, greeted in the same letter as Paul's "fellow soldier," is remembered as their son, and Onesimus is the runaway slave whose return the letter pleads for, later himself a bishop and martyr. Counted among the Seventy Apostles, Philemon and Archippus laboured for the Gospel throughout Phrygia — Philemon becoming, by the tradition, bishop of Gaza — and under Nero the three of Colossae received the crown of martyrdom, Archippus cut down with knives and Philemon and Apphia stoned. They are commemorated together on November 22 and again on February 19; Onesimus keeps his own principal feast on February 15.

• Rabulas of Samosata

  Rabulas (c. 450 – c. 530) was a Syrian ascetic of Samosata on the Euphrates who, after taking the monastic habit young and long labouring as a solitary in the deserts and mountains after the pattern of the Prophet Elijah and John the Forerunner, passed into Phoenicia and there became a renowned founder of monasteries. Aided by the emperors Zeno and Anastasius, he built a great house of prayer near Berytus (Beirut) and others besides, governing them in meekness and mercy and famed for the gift of intercession. Warned of his end by a heavenly voice — "Come unto me, all ye that labour and are heavy laden" — he reposed in peace at a great age about the year 530, and is commemorated on February 19.

• Theodotus, Asclepiodota and Maximus of Adrianople

  Theodotus, Asclepiodota and Maximus were martyrs of Thrace under the emperor Galerius (305–311). Maximus and Asclepiodota, eminent citizens of Marcianopolis whose Christian life had drawn many to baptism, were arrested by Tiris, governor of Thrace; Theodotus was seized for rebuking the governor's cruelty. Tortured at Marcianopolis and again at Adrianople — where the beasts of the arena refused to touch them — they were beheaded near the village of Saltys on the road to Philippopolis, and the tradition adds that the governor was struck dead by lightning on his judgment seat. They are commemorated together on September 15.

British Isles and Ireland

• St. Odran the Martyr (452)

Troparia & kontakia

Readings