23rd Sunday after Pentecost

Saints commemorated

• Greatmartyr Catherine of Alexandria

  Catherine of Alexandria (†c. 305) is among the most celebrated of the virgin-martyrs, a noblewoman of Alexandria of rare learning and beauty who, converted to Christ through a vision of the Theotokos, confronted the emperor during a pagan festival and was set to dispute with fifty of the empire's foremost philosophers, whom she confounded and converted, so that they went to the fire confessing Christ. Imprisoned, she drew the empress Augusta, the general Porphyrius and two hundred soldiers to the faith; when the spiked wheel prepared for her was shattered by an angel, she was beheaded. Her relics, tradition says, were borne by angels to Mount Sinai, where the great monastery that bears her name preserves them. She is invoked by students, philosophers and women in childbirth, and her cult, immense in both East and West, is kept on November 24 (Greek usage November 25).

• Holy Hieromartyr Clement, Bishop of Rome (ca. 100)

• Holy Hieromartyr Peter of Alexandria (312)

• Holy Martyr Mercurius of Smolensk (1238)

  Mercurius of Smolensk (†c. 1238) is the soldier-martyr and patron of the city of Smolensk, a warrior of Slavic — the tradition says Moravian and princely — birth who served the prince of Smolensk and secretly led an ascetic life. When a Tatar host under Batu's invasion threatened the city, the Mother of God, it is related, summoned him through her wonderworking Smolensk icon to go out against the enemy; he fell upon the Tatar camp by night, slew their champion and struck down many, aided by radiant heavenly warriors and by the Virgin herself, until he died in the battle. Buried in the Dormition cathedral of Smolensk, where his sandals were long preserved, he was venerated as the city's special defender from the sixteenth century. He is commemorated on November 24.

• Mercurius of Caesarea

  Mercurius of Caesarea (†c. 250) is the great-martyr and soldier-saint of the persecutions of Decius and Valerian, a young officer of Scythian descent who, armed by an angel with a sword, won a great victory for the Roman army and was made its commander, but who then cast down his honours and confessed Christ, enduring fierce tortures and beheading at Caesarea in Cappadocia. He is venerated above all for a wonder wrought a century after his death: in answer to the prayer of Basil the Great, the martyr — depicted spear in hand upon an icon of the Theotokos — was sent from heaven to slay Julian the Apostate on his Persian campaign, the tradition to which the dying emperor's cry, "Thou hast conquered, O Galilean," is joined. His feast is November 24 (Greek usage November 25).

• Mercurius of the Kiev Near Caves

  Mercurius was a monk of the Kiev Caves who was taken from the cave to the episcopal throne of Smolensk, and who died in his city under the Tatar sword — by the Russian reckoning in 1239, in the aftermath of Batu's invasion of Rus'. The tradition preserves one wholly characteristic detail: dying, he directed that his body be laid in a coffin and set adrift on the Dnieper, to be buried wherever it should come to land; the coffin floated down to the Caves monastery at Kiev, his own house of profession, and he was laid in the Near (Antoniev) Caves, where his relics rest. His memory is kept on August 7, and again on November 24 with the great-martyr whose name he bore.

British Isles and Ireland

• St. Colman, bishop of Cloyne (606)
• St. Kenan, bishop of Darnleag (500)
• St. Enfleda, abbess of Whitby (c.704)
• Holy Martyr Bieuzy, disciple of Gildas (7th C)

Troparia & kontakia

Readings