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Thursday 18 May 2034

Ascension of the Lord

The Ascension of our Lord, God, and Saviour Jesus Christ

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No Fast Tone 5

Ascensiontide, day 1 · 39 days since Pascha

Ascension of the Lord

About Ascension of the Lord →

Ascension of the Lord
AD 586, Syriac — the Ascension miniature on folio 13v of the Rabbula Gospels, written and illuminated at the monastery of Saint John at Beth Zagba in the Syrian Orient; Biblioteca Medicea Laurenziana, Florence, Plut. I, 56 · Wikimedia Commons · Faithful flat reproduction (Biblioteca Medicea Laurenziana scan) of a sixth-century manuscript miniature; Commons: public domain (PD-Art / PD-old-100).

Saints commemorated

  • Martyr Theodotus of Ancyra

    Theodotus was an innkeeper of Ancyra in Galatia — a married layman, a wine-seller, whose tavern became in the Great Persecution the hiding-place of the hunted Church, the house where the Liturgy was served when the churches were pulled down, and the office from which the bodies of the martyrs were ransomed and buried. With him are honoured seven aged consecrated virgins — Tecusa his own aunt, Alexandra, Claudia, Phaina, Euphrasia, Matrona and Julitta — who were seized under the governor Theoteknos, refused to serve as priestesses at the washing of the images of Artemis and Athena, were handed over to be violated and preserved their purity, and were at last drowned in the lake outside the city with stones tied to them. Theodotus recovered their bodies by night and buried them, and for that act was betrayed, tortured and beheaded, about the year 303–304. Their passion, told by an eyewitness named Nilus, is one of the most vivid and most disputed documents of the Diocletianic persecution in Asia Minor.

  • Holy Martyrs Peter, Dionysius, Christina, Andrew, Paul, Benedimus, Paulinus, and Heraclius (250)

    These eight are the company whose names open the Byzantine notice for May 18: Peter, Dionysius, Christina the virgin, Andrew, Paul, Benedimus, Paulinus and Heraclius, martyred in the persecution of the emperor Decius (249–251). They are in fact two separate companies joined in one commemoration: five who suffered on the Hellespont, at Lampsacus and Troas, under a proconsul the acts name Optimus — Peter broken on a wheel and beheaded for refusing to bow to Aphrodite, the two soldiers Andrew and Paul stoned to death with Dionysius, and the sixteen-year-old Christina beheaded after she had cried out in open court against an apostate; and three who suffered at Athens — Heraclius, Paulinus and Benedimus, preachers against the idols, who were cast into a burning furnace. The Greek Menaion places all eight in a single notice, and this collection follows it.

  • David and Tarichan of Georgia

    David and Tarichan were two Georgian boys, the children of the nobleman Vardan and his wife Tagine, kinsfolk of the royal house, murdered in the year 693 by their own uncle Theodosius because they would not leave the faith of their baptism. Theodosius, a pagan, had seized their dead father's estate and tried to secure it by adopting the boys into his own religion — offering them sweets, an inheritance and the affection of a father; they answered that they were content with the faith of their father and would keep it until their souls left their bodies. Their mother fled with them to the province of Tao, where they kept sheep on a mountainside; there Theodosius ambushed them and stabbed them both. The Georgian tradition surrounds their deaths with wonders — David's shepherd's staff struck root and became a tree, the murderer was struck blind on the spot, and Tagine restored his sight with earth soaked in her son's blood, forgiving him — and the story ends not with vengeance but with the uncle's baptism and the building of two churches over the boys' graves.

  • Potamon of Heraclea

    Potamon, Bishop of Heraclea in Egypt, is the rare saint who was twice a martyr's victim: maimed by the pagans and killed by fellow Christians. In the persecution of Maximinus Daia, about the year 310, he confessed Christ, was mutilated — he lost an eye and was crippled — and was sent to the mines; he came to the First Ecumenical Council at Nicaea in 325 with his wounds on him, one of the scarred confessors whose presence gave that council its moral authority, and there stood against Arius. Ten years later, at the Synod of Tyre, it was Potamon who rose and challenged Eusebius of Caesarea to his face to explain how he had come out of the same prison whole. He remained to the end a defender of Athanasius; and when the Arian intruder Gregory and the prefect Philagrius were breaking the Egyptian Church by force, the old confessor was beaten with clubs and left for dead, and died of it about the year 341 — a hieromartyr, as Athanasius himself records, at the hands of Christians.

  • Simeon, Isaac and Bachtisius of Persia

    Simeon, Isaac and Bachtisius were Christians of the Persian empire who died for refusing to renounce Christ and to conform to the state religion of the Sasanians. Brought before their judges and required to worship the fire and the sun, they answered that they would not turn from the Creator of all things to reverence His creatures; they were tortured, shut up in prison and left seven days without food, and at the last beheaded. Their names are Syriac and Persian rather than Greek — Bachtisius represents the Syriac Bokhtishoʿ, "Jesus has delivered" — and they belong to the vast company of the martyrs of the Church of the East under Shapur II, whose forty-year persecution (from about 339) produced more martyrs than any single Roman persecution and of whom the Byzantine calendar preserves only a fraction, often reduced, as here, to a name and a manner of death.

British Isles and Ireland

  • St. Elgiva, mother of St. Edgar and abbess of Shaftesbury (944)
  • St. Feredarius, abbot of Iona (c.863)

Troparia & kontakia

Apolytikion — Tone 4

Thou wast taken up in glory, O Christ our God, and didst gladden thy disciples with the promise of the Holy Spirit; and by the blessing they were made certain that thou art the Son of God, the Redeemer of the world.

Apolytikion — Tone 4 (common of several martyrs)

Thy martyrs, O Lord, in their contests 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 supplications, O Christ God, save our souls.

Apolytikion — Tone 4 (common of several martyrs)

Thy martyrs, O Lord, in their contests 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 supplications, O Christ God, save our souls.

Apolytikion — Tone 4 (common of a hieromartyr)

As a sharer in the ways and a successor to the thrones of the Apostles, O divinely-inspired one, thou didst find in contemplation the means to ascend to divine heights; rightly dividing the word of truth, thou didst struggle for the faith even unto blood, O hieromartyr Potamon: intercede with Christ God that our souls may be saved.

Apolytikion — Tone 4 (common of several martyrs)

Thy martyrs, O Lord, in their contests 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 supplications, O Christ God, save our souls.

Apolytikion — Tone 4 (common of several martyrs)

Thy martyrs, O Lord, in their contests 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 supplications, O Christ God, save our souls.

Exapostilarion — Tone 2 (sung three times)

Before the eyes of thy disciples thou wast taken up, O Christ, to be enthroned together with the Father; and the angels running on before thee cried aloud: Lift up the gates, lift them up, for the King has gone up to the glory that is the source of light.

Kontakion — Tone 6

Having fulfilled the dispensation for our sake, and united the things of earth with the things of heaven, thou wast taken up in glory, O Christ our God, in no way parted from us, but remaining inseparable and crying to those who love thee: I am with you, and no one is against you. Leaving on earth the things of earth, and yielding the ashes to the dust, come, let us wake and lift up our eyes and our thoughts on high; let us mortals send our sight and our senses together flying toward the gates of heaven; let us reckon that we are on the Mount of Olives and are gazing upon the Redeemer as he is borne upon a cloud.

Kontakion — Tone 2 (common of martyrs)

O athletes who shone forth as stars in the firmament of the Church, ye did not spare your bodies for the love of the Master; the wine-seller and the seven aged virgins are glorified together, for the lake became for them a font, and the grave a fountain of healing.

The

O Lord, having in thy goodness fulfilled the mystery hidden from the ages and from the generations, thou didst come with thy disciples to the Mount of Olives, having with thee her who bore thee, the Maker and Fashioner of all things; for she who as a mother grieved above all others in thy Passion had also to enjoy the surpassing joy of the glorifying of thy flesh — in which we too, sharing it, glorify at thine ascent into the heavens, O Master, thy great mercy that has come upon us.

Readings

Vespers

Isaiah 2.2-3

2And it shall come to pass in the last days, that the mountain of the LORD’s house shall be established in the top of the mountains, and shall be exalted above the hills; and all nations shall flow unto it. 3And many people shall go and say, Come ye, and let us go up to the mountain of the LORD, to the house of the God of Jacob; and he will teach us of his ways, and we will walk in his paths: for out of Zion shall go forth the law, and the word of the LORD from Jerusalem.

Composite 21 - Isaiah 62.10-63.3, 7-9

1Thus says the Lord: Walk, go through my gates; prepare my way and make a way for my people, and cast the stones out of the way; raise up a standard for the nations. For see, the Lord has made it heard to the ends of the earth: Say to the daughter of Sion: See, your Saviour has come, and his reward is with him, and his work before his face. And he will call it a holy people, redeemed by the Lord; while you will be called a city sought after, and not forsaken. Who is this who comes from Edom, the scarlet of his garments from Bosor, thus beautiful in his apparel? He cries out with much strength. I reason of justice and judgement of salvation. Why are your garments red, and your clothing as from a trodden winepress? I am full of the trodden grape; I have trampled the winepress quite alone, and no man from the nations was with me. I have remembered the mercy of the Lord, I will recall the Lord’s virtues, the Lord’s praise for all the things with which He rewards us. The Lord is a good judge for the house of Israel; he deals with us according to his mercy and according to the multitude of his justice. And he said: Are you not my people? Children will surely not be rebellious; and he became for them salvation out of their every distress. It was not an emissary, not an Angel, but the Lord himself saved them because he loved them and spared them. He redeemed them and took them up and exalted them all the days of the age.

Composite 22 - Zechariah 14.1, 4, 8-11

1Thus says the Lord: See, the day of the Lord is coming, and on that day his feet will stand upon the mount of Olives, opposite Jerusalem, where the sun rises. And on that day living water will come out from Jerusalem, half towards the first sea and half towards the last sea; in spring and in summer it shall be so; and the Lord will be for a King over all the earth; in that day there shall be one Lord, and his name, compassing all the earth and the wilderness from Gabaa as far as Remmon, south of Jerusalem; and he shall be exalted and remain on his place from the gate of Benjamin as far as the place of the first gate, as far as the gate of Gomor and as far as the tower of Anameël and as far as the tower of the corners and as far as the king’s winepresses; they shall dwell in it and there shall be no more curse and Jerusalem shall dwell confidently.

Matins Gospel

Mark 16.9-20

9Now when Jesus was risen early the first day of the week, he appeared first to Mary Magdalene, out of whom he had cast seven devils. 10And she went and told them that had been with him, as they mourned and wept. 11And they, when they had heard that he was alive, and had been seen of her, believed not. 12After that he appeared in another form unto two of them, as they walked, and went into the country. 13And they went and told it unto the residue: neither believed they them. 14Afterward he appeared unto the eleven as they sat at meat, and upbraided them with their unbelief and hardness of heart, because they believed not them which had seen him after he was risen. 15And he said unto them, Go ye into all the world, and preach the gospel to every creature. 16He that believeth and is baptized shall be saved; but he that believeth not shall be damned. 17And these signs shall follow them that believe; In my name shall they cast out devils; they shall speak with new tongues; 18They shall take up serpents; and if they drink any deadly thing, it shall not hurt them; they shall lay hands on the sick, and they shall recover. 19So then after the Lord had spoken unto them, he was received up into heaven, and sat on the right hand of God. 20And they went forth, and preached every where, the Lord working with them, and confirming the word with signs following. Amen.

Epistle

Acts 1.1-12

1The former treatise have I made, O Theophilus, of all that Jesus began both to do and teach, 2Until the day in which he was taken up, after that he through the Holy Ghost had given commandments unto the apostles whom he had chosen: 3To whom also he shewed himself alive after his passion by many infallible proofs, being seen of them forty days, and speaking of the things pertaining to the kingdom of God: 4And, being assembled together with them, commanded them that they should not depart from Jerusalem, but wait for the promise of the Father, which, saith he, ye have heard of me. 5For John truly baptized with water; but ye shall be baptized with the Holy Ghost not many days hence. 6When they therefore were come together, they asked of him, saying, Lord, wilt thou at this time restore again the kingdom to Israel? 7And he said unto them, It is not for you to know the times or the seasons, which the Father hath put in his own power. 8But ye shall receive power, after that the Holy Ghost is come upon you: and ye shall be witnesses unto me both in Jerusalem, and in all Judæa, and in Samaria, and unto the uttermost part of the earth. 9And when he had spoken these things, while they beheld, he was taken up; and a cloud received him out of their sight. 10And while they looked stedfastly toward heaven as he went up, behold, two men stood by them in white apparel; 11Which also said, Ye men of Galilee, why stand ye gazing up into heaven? this same Jesus, which is taken up from you into heaven, shall so come in like manner as ye have seen him go into heaven. 12Then returned they unto Jerusalem from the mount called Olivet, which is from Jerusalem a sabbath day’s journey.

Gospel

Luke 24.36-53

36And as they thus spake, Jesus himself stood in the midst of them, and saith unto them, Peace be unto you. 37But they were terrified and affrighted, and supposed that they had seen a spirit. 38And he said unto them, Why are ye troubled? and why do thoughts arise in your hearts? 39Behold my hands and my feet, that it is I myself: handle me, and see; for a spirit hath not flesh and bones, as ye see me have. 40And when he had thus spoken, he shewed them his hands and his feet. 41And while they yet believed not for joy, and wondered, he said unto them, Have ye here any meat? 42And they gave him a piece of a broiled fish, and of an honeycomb. 43And he took it, and did eat before them. 44And he said unto them, These are the words which I spake unto you, while I was yet with you, that all things must be fulfilled, which were written in the law of Moses, and in the prophets, and in the psalms, concerning me. 45Then opened he their understanding, that they might understand the scriptures, 46And said unto them, Thus it is written, and thus it behoved Christ to suffer, and to rise from the dead the third day: 47And that repentance and remission of sins should be preached in his name among all nations, beginning at Jerusalem. 48And ye are witnesses of these things. 49And, behold, I send the promise of my Father upon you: but tarry ye in the city of Jerusalem, until ye be endued with power from on high. 50And he led them out as far as to Bethany, and he lifted up his hands, and blessed them. 51And it came to pass, while he blessed them, he was parted from them, and carried up into heaven. 52And they worshipped him, and returned to Jerusalem with great joy: 53And were continually in the temple, praising and blessing God. Amen.