Ven. Benedict of Nursia

Saints commemorated

• Saint of the day

  

  Ven. Benedict of Nursia

  Benedict of Nursia (c. 480 – c. 547) is honoured as the father of Western monasticism and one of the great ascetic fathers of the undivided Church. Born of a well-born Umbrian family and sent to study at Rome, he fled the corruption of the city while still young and became a hermit in a cave at Subiaco, where he was fed by the monk Romanus and slowly gathered disciples. From twelve small communities at Subiaco he passed to the mountain of Monte Cassino, where he destroyed the last shrine of Apollo, built his great monastery, and composed the Rule that bears his name — a "little rule for beginners," drawn from Scripture and from the Eastern fathers (Basil, Cassian, the anonymous Rule of the Master), which became the charter of monastic life throughout the Latin West. His life is known almost wholly from the second book of the Dialogues of Pope Gregory the Great (the Dialogist), which tells of his miracles, his gift of prophecy, his yearly meetings with his sister Scholastica, and his death standing in prayer before the altar. The Byzantine calendar keeps him on March 14.

• St Theognostus, Metropolitan of Kiev (1353)

  Theognostus (died 1353) was a Greek of Constantinople who served for twenty-five years as Metropolitan of Kiev and All Russia, the chief hierarch of the Rus' Church, in the age when its centre was passing from Kiev to Moscow. Consecrated at Constantinople and sent north in 1328, he made Moscow his residence, confirmed the union of the metropolitan's see with the rising city, and upheld the Church's unity and its liberties against both the fragmentation of the princes and the demands of the Golden Horde, from whose khan he obtained the confirmation of the Church's ancient privileges — enduring, the tradition says, imprisonment and ill-usage rather than surrender them. He glorified his predecessor Peter as a saint and named Alexis his successor. He reposed in 1353 and is venerated among the holy hierarchs of Russia, kept on March 14.

• Alexander of Pydna

  Alexander (died c. 305) was a priest of Pydna, a town on the coast of Macedonia south of Thessalonica, and a hieromartyr of the last great persecution. Zealous in preaching Christ and in turning the people from the worship of idols, he was seized in the persecution under the emperor Maximian (Galerius), subjected to cruel tortures which he bore unmoved, and at the last beheaded for his confession. His memory was cherished in Macedonia and on the Holy Mountain, where his skull is venerated among the treasures of the Great Lavra of Athos. The Greek synaxaria, which sometimes style him "of Thessalonica" from the region of his labours, keep him on March 14.

• Euschemon of Lampsacus

  Euschemon (ninth century) was bishop of Lampsacus on the Hellespont and a confessor of the holy icons in the second iconoclast persecution. Formed from his youth in a virtuous and ascetic life, and honoured in his own day as a wonderworker, he was raised to the see of Lampsacus and, when the emperor Theophilus (829–842) renewed the war on the images, stood firm in their veneration; for this he was seized, ill-treated, and driven into banishment, in which he ended his life, a confessor who suffered for the faith without dying by the sword. He is kept on March 14.

• Rostislav-Michael of Kiev

  Rostislav Mstislavich (c. 1110 – 1167), called Michael in holy baptism, was Prince of Smolensk and thrice Grand Prince of Kiev, a grandson of Vladimir Monomakh and one of the most respected rulers of the divided Rus' of the twelfth century. Founder of the enduring line of the princes of Smolensk, he raised that city to greatness, established its bishopric, and adorned it with churches; as Grand Prince he laboured to keep peace among the quarrelling princes and to uphold the order of the Church, defending the rights of the metropolitan see of Kiev. Devout from his youth and longing in his last years for the monastic life, he died on his way home from Novgorod, receiving the news of his end with joy and prayer. He is venerated among the right-believing princes of Rus' and kept on March 14.

British Isles and Ireland

• St. Kyrin, bishop of Ross (660)
• St. Talmach, disciple of Saint Finbar (7th C)

Troparia & kontakia

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