Thursday 29 May 2031
Virgin Martyr Theodosia of Tyre; Rep. Bl. John of Ustiug
Thursday of the 7th Sunday of Pascha
Ascensiontide, day 8 · 46 days since Pascha
Saints commemorated
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Saint of the day
Virgin Martyr Theodosia of Tyre
Theodosia was a nun of the monastery of the Martyr Anastasia at Constantinople who, when soldiers of the emperor Leo III the Isaurian came to take down the venerated image of Christ that hung above the great bronze Chalke Gate of the imperial palace, ran with other women of the city, shook the ladder until the officer on it fell to his death, and was seized, beaten through a week of imprisonment, dragged to the Forum of the Ox and killed by a ram's horn driven into her throat. She is honoured as the first martyr of the iconoclast persecution — a monastic woman who met the first act of official iconoclasm with her own hands — and her shrine at the church of St Euphemia en to Petrio, afterwards renamed for her, became one of the great healing-shrines of Byzantine Constantinople. She is not Theodosia of Tyre, the maiden martyred in Palestine in 307, with whom the calendars constantly confuse her.
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Saint of the day
Rep. Bl. John of Ustiug
John of Ustyug (†29 May 1494) is the second of the two great fools-for-Christ of Great Ustyug in the Russian north, and one of the purest examples of the type: a young man of peasant stock who fasted from childhood, went barefoot and in rags through the Ustyug winters, slept on dung-heaps, prayed the nights through in a hut beside the city's Dormition cathedral, and bore the mockery of the town as his ascetic labour. He died young, and his tomb by the cathedral at once became a place of healing; the Russian Church honours him as a wonderworker and as an intercessor in the wars and invasions of the northern lands. He is the direct successor in that city of Procopius of Ustyug (†1303), the first Russian holy fool, with whom he is venerated as one of the Ustyug wonderworkers.
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Commemoration of the First Ecumenical Council (325)
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The Fall of Constantinople (1453); "Blessed Constantine XII, last of the Byzantine emperors, martyred by the Turks (1453)"
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Alexander of Alexandria
Alexander, archbishop and pope of Alexandria from 313 until his death, is the hierarch who first identified and condemned the heresy of Arius — a priest of his own city and of his own clergy — and who thereby began the struggle that produced the First Ecumenical Council at Nicaea in 325 and the Creed of the Church. He deposed Arius in synod, circulated encyclical letters that put the whole episcopate on notice, went up to Nicaea as the chief accuser, and left as his successor his deacon and secretary Athanasius the Great, whom he had formed. He reposed within a few years of the Council, and the Church keeps his memory on May 29, close by the commemoration of the Fathers whose work he began.
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Hypomone the Empress
Hypomone — "Patience" — was the monastic name of Helena Dragaš, the Serbian-born empress of Manuel II Palaiologos, mother of two Byzantine emperors and grandmother of none, who after her husband's death took the veil in the convent of Kyra Martha at Constantinople and lived out her life there as a nun while remaining the moral centre of the imperial house. She bore John VIII and Constantine XI, the last emperor, who took her family name and reigned as Constantine Dragases Palaiologos; she governed as regent in the interval between their reigns; and she held firmly against the union of Florence. She died on 23 March 1450, three years before the City fell, and the Greek Church keeps her memory on May 29 — the day of the fall — so that the mother is commemorated with the son and the end of the empire.
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Luke of Simferopol
Luke of Simferopol — in the world Valentin Felixovich Voino-Yasenetsky (1877–1961) — was one of the foremost surgeons of the Russian twentieth century and, at the same time, a bishop who spent eleven years in Soviet prisons and exile for refusing to be silent. He pioneered regional anaesthesia, wrote the Essays on the Surgery of Purulent Infections that trained generations of Russian surgeons, operated in a cassock with an icon in the theatre, was tonsured and consecrated in secret in 1923, was arrested three times, ran the military hospitals of Krasnoyarsk as an exile through the Second World War, was given the Stalin Prize in 1946 and gave most of it away, governed the see of Simferopol and Crimea from 1946, went blind in his last years and went on preaching, and died on 29 May (civil 11 June) 1961. His relics were uncovered in 1996 and he is venerated with extraordinary warmth in Russia, Ukraine and above all in Greece, where he is invoked before surgery as the physician-hierarch of the modern world.
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Martyred Fathers and Mothers of Atchara
The Martyred Fathers and Mothers of Atchara are the Christians — men and women, and by the name of the commemoration chiefly the elderly — of the mountainous Georgian province on the Black Sea coast who, through the long generations of Ottoman rule, were put to death for refusing to renounce Christ and accept Islam. They are venerated as a company rather than as named individuals: the hangings and beheadings were carried out village by village over roughly a century, with the year 1790 transmitted as the culminating persecution, and the bridge over the Atcharistsqali river — the medieval "Bridge of Queen Tamar" — remembered as the chief place of execution. The Georgian Church canonised them collectively, and keeps their memory on May 29.
Readings
Epistle
Acts 25.13-19
13And after certain days king Agrippa and Bernice came unto Cæsarea to salute Festus. 14And when they had been there many days, Festus declared Paul’s cause unto the king, saying, There is a certain man left in bonds by Felix: 15About whom, when I was at Jerusalem, the chief priests and the elders of the Jews informed me, desiring to have judgment against him. 16To whom I answered, It is not the manner of the Romans to deliver any man to die, before that he which is accused have the accusers face to face, and have licence to answer for himself concerning the crime laid against him. 17Therefore, when they were come hither, without any delay on the morrow I sat on the judgment seat, and commanded the man to be brought forth. 18Against whom when the accusers stood up, they brought none accusation of such things as I supposed: 19But had certain questions against him of their own superstition, and of one Jesus, which was dead, whom Paul affirmed to be alive.
Gospel
John 16.23-33
23And in that day ye shall ask me nothing. Verily, verily, I say unto you, Whatsoever ye shall ask the Father in my name, he will give it you. 24Hitherto have ye asked nothing in my name: ask, and ye shall receive, that your joy may be full. 25These things have I spoken unto you in proverbs: but the time cometh, when I shall no more speak unto you in proverbs, but I shall shew you plainly of the Father. 26At that day ye shall ask in my name: and I say not unto you, that I will pray the Father for you: 27For the Father himself loveth you, because ye have loved me, and have believed that I came out from God. 28I came forth from the Father, and am come into the world: again, I leave the world, and go to the Father. 29His disciples said unto him, Lo, now speakest thou plainly, and speakest no proverb. 30Now are we sure that thou knowest all things, and needest not that any man should ask thee: by this we believe that thou camest forth from God. 31Jesus answered them, Do ye now believe? 32Behold, the hour cometh, yea, is now come, that ye shall be scattered, every man to his own, and shall leave me alone: and yet I am not alone, because the Father is with me. 33These things I have spoken unto you, that in me ye might have peace. In the world ye shall have tribulation: but be of good cheer; I have overcome the world.
Troparia & kontakia
Apolytikion — Tone 4 (common of a hierarch)
The truth of things hath shown thee to thy flock as a rule of faith, an image of meekness and a teacher of temperance; therefore thou hast attained the heights by humility and riches by poverty. O father and hierarch Alexander, intercede with Christ God that our souls may be saved.
Apolytikion — Tone 8 (common of a venerable woman)
In thee, O mother, the image of God was preserved with exactness; for taking up the Cross, thou didst follow Christ, and by thy deeds thou didst teach us to despise the flesh, which passeth away, and to care for the soul, a thing immortal. Wherefore, O venerable Hypomone, thy spirit rejoiceth with the angels.
Apolytikion — Tone 4 (common of a hierarch)
The truth of things hath shown thee to thy flock as a rule of faith, an image of meekness and a teacher of temperance; therefore thou hast attained the heights by humility and riches by poverty. O father and hierarch Luke, intercede with Christ God that our souls may be saved.
Kontakion — Tone 2
Thou didst discern the wolf in the sheepfold and didst not spare him, O wise hierarch, but didst cast down the blasphemy that made the Word a creature; and having summoned the shepherds of the whole earth to the judgement of the truth, thou didst leave Athanasius as thine heir. O father Alexander, pray for us who honour thee.
Kontakion — Tone 2
Thou wast crowned in the Great Church as empress and didst lay the crown down for the black habit, and thy very name became thy labour; for thou didst endure the ruin of the City's hope, and didst keep the faith undivided when others would have bartered it. O venerable mother Hypomone, teach us thy patience.
Kontakion — Tone 8
From thy childhood thou didst fast, and in thy youth thou didst cast away the honour of men; thou hadst a hut for thy cell and the dung-heap for thy bed, and the city that laughed at thee now runs to thy tomb for healing. Rejoice, O blessed John, boast of Ustyug and helper in the day of invasion.
Kontakion — Tone 2
Thou didst take the knife to heal and the cross to preach, and neither prison nor the northern ice could part thee from either; blind at the last, thou didst see more than thy persecutors. O holy hierarch and physician Luke, stretch out thy hand over those who lie under the surgeon's knife, and pray for our souls.
Kontakion — Tone 2
The fathers and mothers of Atchara would not sell Christ for their fields and their peace, and being grey-headed they were led to the bridge over the river and slain; their names are written in no book of ours, but in the book of life. O holy martyrs of Atchara, pray for the land that the Apostle first hallowed.
Kontakion — Tone 2
Thou didst spend thy patrimony upon the holy images, and for an image thou didst give thy blood; for when the destroyer set his hand to the Saviour's likeness above the gate, thou didst cast him down, O bride of Christ, and didst receive the ram's horn as a crown. Wherefore, O venerable martyr Theodosia, pray that our souls may be kept in the true faith.
Troparion — Tone 4 (common of a fool-for-Christ)
Thou didst hear the Apostle crying, *We are fools for Christ's sake*, and didst make his word thy whole life; naked and mocked thou didst walk the streets of thy city, and in the ashes of the furnace thou wast not burned, for the fire of the Spirit was within thee. O blessed John, pray to Christ God that our souls may be saved.
Troparion — Tone 4 (common of several 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. By their intercessions save our souls.
Troparion — Tone 4 (common of a woman-martyr)
Thy lamb, O Jesus, crieth with a loud voice: Thee, O my Bridegroom, do I love, and seeking Thee I pass through many sufferings; I am crucified and buried with Thee in Thy baptism, and I suffer for Thy sake that I may reign with Thee; I die for Thee that I may live in Thee. Accept me as a spotless sacrifice offered in love. By her prayers, O merciful One, save our souls.