Saturday before Elevation

Saints commemorated

• Saint of the day

  

  Righteous Joachim and Anna

  Joachim and Anna were the parents of the Most Holy Theotokos and the grandparents of Christ according to the flesh, honoured by the Church with the unique title "Ancestors of God" (Theopatores). An aged couple childless through fifty years of marriage, they bore the reproach of barrenness with patience and prayer until an angel announced to each of them the conception of a daughter whose name would be spoken of in all the world; their embrace at the Golden Gate of Jerusalem, and the birth of Mary that followed, are the matter of the feast of September 8. They are commemorated together on September 9, the day after the Nativity of the Theotokos, and are invoked by name at the dismissal of every Orthodox service.

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• Ven. Joseph of Volotsk

• Holy Ancestors of God Joachim and Anna

• Commemoration of the Third Ecumenical Council (431)

• Holy Martyr Severian of Sebaste (320)

  Severian (†320) was a nobleman of Sebaste in Armenia who suffered martyrdom under the emperor Licinius, in the same persecution and the same city as the famous Forty Martyrs of Sebaste. Before his own arrest he had visited the Forty in prison, encouraging them to endure to the end; about half a year after their death in the frozen lake he was himself brought to trial, scourged, torn with iron scrapers, and finally hanged upon the city wall with a heavy stone bound to his body until he died. His memory is kept on September 9, and the Menaion styles him the "trainer" of the Forty whom he had strengthened for their contest.

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• Our Holy Father Ciaran of Clonmacnoise (549)

  Ciaran the Younger (c. 512 – c. 549), called in Irish mac in tSaír, "son of the wright", was one of the Twelve Apostles of Ireland and the founder and first abbot of Clonmacnoise on the Shannon, which became one of the greatest monastic schools of Ireland. Born in Connacht of a chariot-builder's family, he studied under Finnian at Clonard and under Enda of Aran, founded a monastery on an island of Lough Ree, and at last, with a small band of companions, founded Clonmacnoise — only to die of the plague in his thirty-third year, some seven months later. The ninth-century Martyrology of Óengus already calls September 9 "the fair feast of Ciarán of Clúain," a festival "that filleth countries." He is to be distinguished from Ciaran the Elder, bishop of Saighir (March 5), and from Ciaran, abbot of Bellach-Duin (June 14).

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• Theodosius of Chernigov

  Theodosius (Uglitsky) of Chernigov (c. 1630s–1696) was one of the last great hierarchs of pre-Petrine Rus' and Ukraine, Archbishop of Chernigov from 1692 and a wonderworker glorified two centuries after his repose. Born of a priestly family in Podolia and formed at the Kiev collegium, he rose through the great Ukrainian monasteries — abbot of the Krupitsky Saint Nicholas and of the Kiev Vydubitsky houses, then archimandrite of the Eletsky Dormition Monastery at Chernigov — before his consecration as archbishop. Renowned in life for gentleness, almsgiving, and care for monasticism and learning, he reposed on February 5, 1696, and was buried in the Chernigov cathedral. His relics were found incorrupt, and through the many miracles worked at his tomb — above all upon his successor John (Maximovich) — he was solemnly canonized by the Russian Church in 1896, one of the last glorifications of imperial Russia.

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• Theophanes of Mount Diabenos

  Theophanes the Confessor and Faster (†c. 300) was an ascetic of the generation before the great persecutions ended, born of pagan parents, who came to faith in Christ in his youth, was baptized, and fled secretly to an aged hermit on the mountain the sources call Dabis or Diabenos. After five years under the elder he spent fifty-eight years alone in his cave; coming down at last to preach Christ among the pagans, he converted many, was seized and tortured under the emperor Carus and his sons, survived his confession, and returned to the mountain, where he lived some seventeen years more and reposed in peace. He is commemorated on September 9.

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• Bettelin of Crowland

  Bettelin (Bertram), an eighth-century hermit of Crowland in the English fenland, was a disciple of St Guthlac and is commonly identified with the Beccel who appears in Felix's near-contemporary Life of Guthlac as the saint's attendant. After Guthlac's death in 714 he continued the solitary life in a cell near Crowland, with other companions of his master, under Kenulf, the first abbot there, and died in sanctity in the course of the eighth century. His relics are said to have been translated to Staffordshire before the Danes destroyed Crowland, and at Stafford he was long venerated as patron. He is commemorated on September 9 — "which seems to be his true day" (Stanton) — and is to be distinguished from the Bettelin (Bertram) of Stafford whom the same calendar keeps on August 10, the records of the two being entangled and possibly those of one man.

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• Wulfhild of Barking

  Wulfhild (†c. 1000) was a tenth-century English abbess of noble birth, educated at the nunnery of Wilton, who as a young woman refused the attentions of King Edgar; the king, desisting, made her abbess of the restored abbey of Barking in Essex, and she founded and endowed a second house at Horton from her own estate, ruling both together. Expelled from Barking by Queen Ælfthryth after Edgar's death, she lived some twenty years at Horton before being restored — as she herself had foretold, the tradition says — under King Æthelred, and died about the year 1000. Her body was found incorrupt at its translation, and she came to be venerated at Barking equally with the abbey's first saints, Ethelburga and Hildelith. Her Life was written by Goscelin of Saint-Bertin. She is not to be confused with her kinswoman Wilfrida (Wulfthryth) of Wilton, mother of St Edith.

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British Isles and Ireland

• St. Ciaran the Younger of Clonmacnois (c.545)
• St. Wulfhild, abbess of Bar and Horton (c.1000)
• Osmanna (Argariarga) (c.650)

Readings

Troparia & kontakia