Sunday before Elevation
Saints commemorated
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Hieromartyr Autonomus, Bishop in Italy
Autonomus (†c. 313) was a bishop in Italy who, when the great persecution broke out under Diocletian, crossed to Bithynia and made the village of Soreoi, near the gulf of Nicomedia, the base of a wide-ranging mission. He evangelised there and in Lycaonia and Isauria, raised a church of the Archangel Michael, and ordained his host and convert Cornelius to serve it. When his converts demolished a pagan sanctuary nearby, the pagans took revenge during the Divine Liturgy: Autonomus was cut down — the Greek verses say stoned — at the very altar, and the deaconess Maria buried his body, later found incorrupt. He is commemorated on September 12.
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Our Holy Father Athanasius the Elder of Vysotsk (early 15th c.), and his disciple Athanasius the Younger (1395)
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Cornutus of Iconium
Cornutus, bishop of Iconium — the Slavic calendars call him Coronatus, bishop of Nicomedia, and the see is transmitted both ways — was martyred under the persecutions of Decius and Valerian, in the years around 249–259. When the governor Perennius scoured the region and the Christians hid themselves, the aged bishop presented himself of his own accord; his legs were bound tightly with thin cords that cut to the bone, and he was led through the city in torment before being beheaded. He is commemorated on September 12.
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Eanswythe of Folkestone
Eanswythe was a princess of Kent, granddaughter of Æthelberht, the first Christian king of the English, and daughter of King Eadbald; and she is remembered as the founder, about the year 630, of the community at Folkestone on the Kentish coast — by long tradition the first monastic house for women in England, and Eanswythe as the first English abbess. She refused a marriage offered her by a pagan Northumbrian prince, took the veil with her father's support, and died young. Almost nothing is transmitted of her life beyond that outline: she is a saint known from a cultus rather than from a biography. But in 1885 a leaden reliquary containing the bones of a young woman was found walled up in the parish church that bears her name, and in 2020 those bones were radiocarbon-dated to the middle of the seventh century and identified as those of a woman who died between about seventeen and twenty-two years of age — which makes Eanswythe one of the very few Anglo-Saxon saints whose relics can be shown to be plausibly her own.
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Julian of Galatia and his Forty Companions
Julian was a priest of Galatia in the fourth century who, in time of persecution, hid in a cave near Ancyra with forty companions and continued to celebrate the divine services there. Arrested, he refused either to betray his companions or to sacrifice to the idols; stretched on a red-hot iron grate, he signed himself with the Cross and was preserved unharmed by an angel, and he was finally beheaded, praying that blessing would rest on all who took earth from his grave. The forty, hearing the heavenly voice that received him, came out of hiding, confessed Christ, and were beheaded in their turn. They are commemorated together on September 12.
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Simeon of Verkhoturye
Simeon of Verkhoturye (c. 1607–1642) is the most beloved saint of the Russian Urals and Siberia — a nobleman who hid his birth to live as a poor wanderer among the newly settled and half-Christianised peoples of the frontier. Making his home by the village church of Merkushino near Verkhoturye, he supported himself by sewing coats for the poor, deliberately leaving each garment a little unfinished so as to earn reproach rather than praise, and he taught the faith to the local Russians and native peoples while fishing and praying in the wilderness. He died young and obscure, but in 1692 his coffin rose from the earth and his incorrupt relics began to work abundant healings; their translation to Verkhoturye in 1704 is his second feast.
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Theodore of Alexandria
Theodore of Alexandria is remembered in the Byzantine synaxaria as a bishop of that city and a martyr: a bold preacher whom the pagans seized in the midst of his preaching, mocked and abused, and cast into the sea — the Russian tradition says from a cliff — from which he was brought out unharmed, before being beheaded and buried in Alexandria. Nothing else, not even his date, is transmitted. The OCA, against the Greek and Slavic service books, treats him as a lay Christian, distinct from Theodore the Archbishop of Alexandria kept on December 3, with whose thin record his own is easily entangled. He is commemorated on September 12.
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Ailbe of Emly
Ailbe (Ailbhe, Latin Albeus) is the patron of Munster and by tradition the first bishop of Emly (Imlech Ibair) in Tipperary, remembered in Ireland as the greatest of the "pre-Patrician" saints — the four bishops (Ailbe, Declan, Ibar and Ciarán) said to have preached in the south of Ireland before Patrick came. The medieval Life of Declan has Patrick himself style him "Ailbe, the Patrick of Munster." His Latin Life tells of an infant exposed at a rock and suckled by a she-wolf, a journey to Rome, and the see of Emly received under King Óengus of Cashel; the Annals of Ulster record his repose under the years 527, 534 and 542. An Old Irish monastic Rule of Ailbe bears his name, and Welsh tradition — where he is Eilfyw, in English famously St Elvis — makes him the baptizer of David of Wales. All the Irish martyrologies keep his feast on September 12.
Troparia & kontakia
Kontakion — Tone 2
Blamelessly and with wisdom didst thou minister the divine Mysteries, and thou wast made an acceptable sacrifice, O divinely blessed one: for thou didst drink the Cup of Christ, O glorious Autonomus, lamp of the whole world, praying unceasingly for us all.
Kontakion — Tone 2 (common)
Refusing an earthly bridegroom, thou didst take the Bridegroom who dieth not, and on the cliff above the sea thou wast the first mother of the daughters of the English: O venerable Eanswythe, entreat Christ God for our souls.
Kontakion — Tone 2
Thou didst renounce the vain world to inherit the good things of eternal life, loving guilelessness and purity of soul and body. Thou hast gained what thou didst love, for thy grave and the incorruption of thy relics bear witness thereto, and the grace of wonderworking most of all; for thou pourest forth healings upon all who run to thee, and upon the unenlightened, O blessed Simeon, most marvellous wonderworker.
Troparion — Tone 4 (common of a hierarch)
A rule of faith and an image of meekness, a teacher of temperance hath the reality shown thee unto thy flock; wherefore thou didst gain by humility the things on high, and by poverty the things that are rich. O Father and Hierarch Ailbe, intercede with Christ God that our souls may be saved.
Troparion — Tone 4
As a sharer of the ways of the Apostles and a successor to their throne, thou didst find thy deeds, O God-inspired one, an ascent to divine vision; wherefore, rightly dividing the word of truth, thou didst suffer for the faith even unto blood: Hieromartyr Autonomus, intercede with Christ God that our souls may be saved.
Troparion — Tone 4 (from the common of a hieromartyr)
As a sharer of the ways of the Apostles and a successor to their throne, thou didst find thy deeds, O God-inspired one, an ascent to divine vision; wherefore, rightly dividing the word of truth, thou didst suffer for the faith even unto blood: Hieromartyr Cornutus, intercede with Christ God that our souls may be saved.
Troparion — Tone 8 (common of a venerable woman)
In thee, O mother, was preserved unimpaired that which is according to the image: for taking up thy cross, thou didst follow Christ; and by thy deeds thou didst teach us to despise the flesh, for it passeth away, and to care for the soul, which is a thing immortal. Wherefore, O venerable Eanswythe, thy spirit rejoiceth with the angels.
Troparion — Tone 4 (from the common of 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
Fleeing the tumult of the world, thou didst turn all thy longing toward God, that thou mightest find the ascent to the vision of things on high; and turning not aside into the guile of the heart, but cleansing soul and body, thou didst receive the grace to pour forth healings upon the faithful and the faithless who run to thee, O righteous Simeon. Therefore, by the gift given thee, ask of Christ God healing for us who are sick with the passions of the soul, and pray that our souls may be saved.
Troparion — Tone 4 (from the common of martyrs)
Thy martyr, O Lord, in his contest received the incorruptible crown from Thee, our God; for possessing Thy strength he cast down the tyrants and shattered the feeble insolence of the demons. By his intercessions save our souls.
Readings
1st Matins Gospel
Matthew 28.16-20
16Then the eleven disciples went away into Galilee, into a mountain where Jesus had appointed them. 17And when they saw him, they worshipped him: but some doubted. 18And Jesus came and spake unto them, saying, All power is given unto me in heaven and in earth. 19Go ye therefore, and teach all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost: 20Teaching them to observe all things whatsoever I have commanded you: and, lo, I am with you alway, even unto the end of the world. Amen.
Epistle
Galatians 6.11-18 (Sunday before Elevation)
11Ye see how large a letter I have written unto you with mine own hand. 12As many as desire to make a fair shew in the flesh, they constrain you to be circumcised; only lest they should suffer persecution for the cross of Christ. 13For neither they themselves who are circumcised keep the law; but desire to have you circumcised, that they may glory in your flesh. 14But God forbid that I should glory, save in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, by whom the world is crucified unto me, and I unto the world. 15For in Christ Jesus neither circumcision availeth any thing, nor uncircumcision, but a new creature. 16And as many as walk according to this rule, peace be on them, and mercy, and upon the Israel of God. 17From henceforth let no man trouble me: for I bear in my body the marks of the Lord Jesus. 18Brethren, the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with your spirit. Amen.
1 Corinthians 15.1-11
1Moreover, brethren, I declare unto you the gospel which I preached unto you, which also ye have received, and wherein ye stand; 2By which also ye are saved, if ye keep in memory what I preached unto you, unless ye have believed in vain. 3For I delivered unto you first of all that which I also received, how that Christ died for our sins according to the scriptures; 4And that he was buried, and that he rose again the third day according to the scriptures: 5And that he was seen of Cephas, then of the twelve: 6After that, he was seen of above five hundred brethren at once; of whom the greater part remain unto this present, but some are fallen asleep. 7After that, he was seen of James; then of all the apostles. 8And last of all he was seen of me also, as of one born out of due time. 9For I am the least of the apostles, that am not meet to be called an apostle, because I persecuted the church of God. 10But by the grace of God I am what I am: and his grace which was bestowed upon me was not in vain; but I laboured more abundantly than they all: yet not I, but the grace of God which was with me. 11Therefore whether it were I or they, so we preach, and so ye believed.
Philippians 2.5-11 (Theotokos)
5Let this mind be in you, which was also in Christ Jesus: 6Who, being in the form of God, thought it not robbery to be equal with God: 7But made himself of no reputation, and took upon him the form of a servant, and was made in the likeness of men: 8And being found in fashion as a man, he humbled himself, and became obedient unto death, even the death of the cross. 9Wherefore God also hath highly exalted him, and given him a name which is above every name: 10That at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, of things in heaven, and things in earth, and things under the earth; 11And that every tongue should confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.
Gospel
John 3.13-17 (Sunday before Elevation)
13And no man hath ascended up to heaven, but he that came down from heaven, even the Son of man which is in heaven. 14And as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, even so must the Son of man be lifted up: 15That whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have eternal life. 16For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life. 17For God sent not his Son into the world to condemn the world; but that the world through him might be saved.
Matthew 19.16-26
16And, behold, one came and said unto him, Good Master, what good thing shall I do, that I may have eternal life? 17And he said unto him, Why callest thou me good? there is none good but one, that is, God: but if thou wilt enter into life, keep the commandments. 18He saith unto him, Which? Jesus said, Thou shalt do no murder, Thou shalt not commit adultery, Thou shalt not steal, Thou shalt not bear false witness, 19Honour thy father and thy mother: and, Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself. 20The young man saith unto him, All these things have I kept from my youth up: what lack I yet? 21Jesus said unto him, If thou wilt be perfect, go and sell that thou hast, and give to the poor, and thou shalt have treasure in heaven: and come and follow me. 22But when the young man heard that saying, he went away sorrowful: for he had great possessions. 23Then said Jesus unto his disciples, Verily I say unto you, That a rich man shall hardly enter into the kingdom of heaven. 24And again I say unto you, It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle, than for a rich man to enter into the kingdom of God. 25When his disciples heard it, they were exceedingly amazed, saying, Who then can be saved? 26But Jesus beheld them, and said unto them, With men this is impossible; but with God all things are possible.
Luke 10.38-42, 11.27-28 (Theotokos)
38Now it came to pass, as they went, that he entered into a certain village: and a certain woman named Martha received him into her house. 39And she had a sister called Mary, which also sat at Jesus’ feet, and heard his word. 40But Martha was cumbered about much serving, and came to him, and said, Lord, dost thou not care that my sister hath left me to serve alone? bid her therefore that she help me. 41And Jesus answered and said unto her, Martha, Martha, thou art careful and troubled about many things: 42But one thing is needful: and Mary hath chosen that good part, which shall not be taken away from her. 27And it came to pass, as he spake these things, a certain woman of the company lifted up her voice, and said unto him, Blessed is the womb that bare thee, and the paps which thou hast sucked. 28But he said, Yea rather, blessed are they that hear the word of God, and keep it.
Leavetaking Nativity Theotokos