Wednesday, 1 April 2026

Ven. Euthymius of Suzdal

Wednesday of the Sixth Week of Lent

11 days before Pascha · Tone 1 · Red squigg (doxology typikon symbol) · Lenten Fast

Presanctified Liturgy

Saints commemorated

Holy Martyr Abraham the Bulgarian

The Holy Martyr Abraham of Bulgaria (died 1 April 1229) was a Christian convert from Islam who suffered martyrdom on the banks of the Volga. He was born among the Volga Bulgars, in what is now Tatarstan in Russia, and grew up to become a wealthy Muslim merchant noted for his kindness and generosity to the destitute. The exact circumstances of his conversion are not preserved, but having embraced Christ he received the name Abraham at his baptism. Travelling in the course of his trade to the city of Bolgar (Bulgar) on the lower reaches of the Volga, then capital of Volga Bulgaria, Abraham began to preach openly to his countrymen the faith of Christ, calling them to abandon Islam and to seek salvation in the God-Man Jesus Christ. The townspeople grew angry and pressed him repeatedly to deny Christ. He refused. Finding that he was not a subject of the prince of Vladimir-Suzdal and so enjoyed no protection, they arrested him. After a long detention and many tortures, on 1 April 1229 he was hewn limb from limb with the sword and beheaded on the bank of the Volga. His body was gathered up by Russian merchants who buried him in the Christian cemetery at Bolgar. Healings began at his tomb, and Grand Prince George (Yury) Vsevolodovich of Vladimir, hearing of the miracles, in 1230 ordered the relics to be translated to the Cathedral of the Mother of God in Vladimir, where they were placed in the convent founded by his sister, the Princess Theodulia. He was glorified by the Russian Church and is honoured as one of the holy martyrs of Old Russia.

Our Holy Mother Mary of Egypt

4th-6th c.

Her radiant life is also commemorated on the Fifth Sunday of the Great Fast. The Life of St Mary of Egypt, written by St Sophronios of Jerusalem, is read in its entirety on the Thursday of the Great Canon during Lent. Click on the link to read it. The date of her repose is very unclear: it is given variously as 378, 437, and 522.

Venerable Euthymius of Suzdal

Saint Euthymius of Suzdal was born at Nizhni-Novgorod in 1316 to pious parents. From childhood he was drawn to the church, and as a young man he received monastic tonsure at the Caves Monastery of Nizhni-Novgorod under its founder, Saint Dionysius (later Archbishop of Suzdal). There he led a strict life of obedience, vigil and prayer. In 1352 Prince Boris Konstantinovich of Suzdal asked the Caves community to send a monk capable of founding a monastery in his city. The choice fell upon Saint Euthymius. With the blessing of Saint Dionysius and Bishop John of Suzdal, he founded the Spaso-Evfimiev (Saviour-Euthymius) Monastery of the Transfiguration on the bank of the river Kamenka. Soon more than three hundred monks gathered around him, and Euthymius became the first archimandrite of the new house. He was a strict ascetic and a man of unceasing prayer; in cell, refectory and in the labour of the brethren he laboured alongside them, and the spiritual writings record that he loved silence and tears. Saint Euthymius was a close friend of Saint Sergius of Radonezh and of Saint Dionysius of Suzdal, with whom he kept correspondence. He guided the brotherhood for fifty-two years, reposing in peace at Suzdal on 1 April 1404. On 4 July 1507, while a foundation trench was being dug for a new cathedral church in his monastery, his relics were uncovered incorrupt, and he was glorified at the Council of 1549 under Saint Macarius, Metropolitan of Moscow.

Venerable Macarius the Confessor of Pelekete

Saint Macarius (Makarios), born Christophoros at Constantinople around the year 750, was orphaned in infancy and raised by an uncle, who saw to his sacred education. Drawn to monastic life, he left the imperial city for the Pelekete monastery on the southern shore of the Sea of Marmara in Bithynia, where he received the angelic schema and the new name Macarius. After serving in many of the obediences of the community and acquiring the virtues, especially humility, he was chosen abbot of the brotherhood and was ordained priest. Numerous miracles of healing are attributed to him, for which reason he is also styled the Wonderworker. During the second iconoclast persecution under Leo V the Armenian (813 to 820), Saint Macarius was seized for venerating the holy icons. He was tortured and imprisoned. Released by Michael II the Stammerer (820 to 829), who attempted by flattery to persuade him to deny the veneration of icons, Macarius refused. He was then exiled to the small island of Aphousia in the Sea of Marmara near Alona, where he lived in privation, working miracles and giving thanks to God to the end of his days. He reposed in exile, traditionally on 18 August around 840; his memory is kept on 1 April in the Greek synaxaria, the day of his name in the calendar of the Pelekete brotherhood.

Venerable Mary of Egypt

522

Saint Mary of Egypt is one of the most revered desert ascetics of the Eastern Christian tradition. According to the Life composed by Saint Sophronius, Patriarch of Jerusalem (634 to 638), and based on oral tradition received from the monks of Palestine, Mary was born in Egypt and at the age of twelve ran away from her parents to Alexandria, where she lived for seventeen years in unrestrained debauchery, supporting herself by begging and the work of her hands so that her sin might be the more abundant. Drawn by curiosity rather than devotion, she boarded a ship of pilgrims travelling to Jerusalem for the feast of the Exaltation of the Cross. At the church of the Holy Sepulchre an unseen force prevented her from entering until, beholding an icon of the Mother of God in the courtyard, she repented with tears and was permitted to venerate the Wood of the Cross. Following a voice that bade her cross the Jordan, Mary withdrew into the desert beyond, where she lived in solitude for forty-seven years with no human contact, no shelter and only three small loaves of bread, sustained thereafter by the wild plants of the wilderness. Her clothing rotted away and her hair grew white. After many years of struggle against the passions, she received the gift of dispassion and the grace of clairvoyance. Toward the end of her life she was discovered by the hieromonk Zosimas, who had withdrawn into the wilderness during Great Lent. She told him her life and asked him to bring her Holy Communion the following year on Holy Thursday at the banks of the Jordan. He did so, and saw her cross the river by walking upon the water. The next year, returning, he found her body undecayed with an inscription in the sand giving her name and asking that she be buried. According to the Life she reposed on the night of the saving Passion of Christ, on or about 1 April in the year 522, having received the Mystical Supper from Saint Zosimas. Her Life is read in its entirety at Matins of the Thursday of the fifth week of Great Lent (the Great Canon of Saint Andrew of Crete), and the fifth Sunday of Great Lent is dedicated to her memory. The Life was cited at the Second Council of Nicaea (787) in defence of the veneration of holy icons.

Daily readings

6th Hour

weekly cycle

Isaiah — Isaiah 58.1-11

¹Cry aloud, spare not, lift up thy voice like a trumpet, and shew my people their transgression, and the house of Jacob their sins. ²Yet they seek me daily, and delight to know my ways, as a nation that did righteousness, and forsook not the ordinance of their God: they ask of me the ordinances of justice; they take delight in approaching to God.

³Wherefore have we fasted, say they, and thou seest not? wherefore have we afflicted our soul, and thou takest no knowledge? Behold, in the day of your fast ye find pleasure, and exact all your labours. ⁴Behold, ye fast for strife and debate, and to smite with the fist of wickedness: ye shall not fast as ye do this day, to make your voice to be heard on high. ⁵Is it such a fast that I have chosen? a day for a man to afflict his soul? is it to bow down his head as a bulrush, and to spread sackcloth and ashes under him? wilt thou call this a fast, and an acceptable day to the LORD? ⁶Is not this the fast that I have chosen? to loose the bands of wickedness, to undo the heavy burdens, and to let the oppressed go free, and that ye break every yoke? ⁷Is it not to deal thy bread to the hungry, and that thou bring the poor that are cast out to thy house? when thou seest the naked, that thou cover him; and that thou hide not thyself from thine own flesh?

⁸Then shall thy light break forth as the morning, and thine health shall spring forth speedily: and thy righteousness shall go before thee; the glory of the LORD shall be thy rereward. ⁹Then shalt thou call, and the LORD shall answer; thou shalt cry, and he shall say, Here I am. If thou take away from the midst of thee the yoke, the putting forth of the finger, and speaking vanity; ¹⁰And if thou draw out thy soul to the hungry, and satisfy the afflicted soul; then shall thy light rise in obscurity, and thy darkness be as the noonday: ¹¹And the LORD shall guide thee continually, and satisfy thy soul in drought, and make fat thy bones: and thou shalt be like a watered garden, and like a spring of water, whose waters fail not.

Vespers

weekly cycle

Genesis — Genesis 43.26-31, 45.1-16

²⁶And when Joseph came home, they brought him the present which was in their hand into the house, and bowed themselves to him to the earth. ²⁷And he asked them of their welfare, and said, Is your father well, the old man of whom ye spake? Is he yet alive? ²⁸And they answered, Thy servant our father is in good health, he is yet alive. And they bowed down their heads, and made obeisance. ²⁹And he lifted up his eyes, and saw his brother Benjamin, his mother’s son, and said, Is this your younger brother, of whom ye spake unto me? And he said, God be gracious unto thee, my son. ³⁰And Joseph made haste; for his bowels did yearn upon his brother: and he sought where to weep; and he entered into his chamber, and wept there. ³¹And he washed his face, and went out, and refrained himself, and said, Set on bread.

¹Then Joseph could not refrain himself before all them that stood by him; and he cried, Cause every man to go out from me. And there stood no man with him, while Joseph made himself known unto his brethren. ²And he wept aloud: and the Egyptians and the house of Pharaoh heard. ³And Joseph said unto his brethren, I am Joseph; doth my father yet live? And his brethren could not answer him; for they were troubled at his presence. ⁴And Joseph said unto his brethren, Come near to me, I pray you. And they came near. And he said, I am Joseph your brother, whom ye sold into Egypt. ⁵Now therefore be not grieved, nor angry with yourselves, that ye sold me hither: for God did send me before you to preserve life. ⁶For these two years hath the famine been in the land: and yet there are five years, in the which there shall neither be earing nor harvest. ⁷And God sent me before you to preserve you a posterity in the earth, and to save your lives by a great deliverance. ⁸So now it was not you that sent me hither, but God: and he hath made me a father to Pharaoh, and lord of all his house, and a ruler throughout all the land of Egypt. ⁹Haste ye, and go up to my father, and say unto him, Thus saith thy son Joseph, God hath made me lord of all Egypt: come down unto me, tarry not: ¹⁰And thou shalt dwell in the land of Goshen, and thou shalt be near unto me, thou, and thy children, and thy children’s children, and thy flocks, and thy herds, and all that thou hast: ¹¹And there will I nourish thee; for yet there are five years of famine; lest thou, and thy household, and all that thou hast, come to poverty. ¹²And, behold, your eyes see, and the eyes of my brother Benjamin, that it is my mouth that speaketh unto you. ¹³And ye shall tell my father of all my glory in Egypt, and of all that ye have seen; and ye shall haste and bring down my father hither. ¹⁴And he fell upon his brother Benjamin’s neck, and wept; and Benjamin wept upon his neck. ¹⁵Moreover he kissed all his brethren, and wept upon them: and after that his brethren talked with him.

¹⁶And the fame thereof was heard in Pharaoh’s house, saying, Joseph’s brethren are come: and it pleased Pharaoh well, and his servants.

Vespers

weekly cycle

Proverbs — Proverbs 21.23-22.4

²³Whoso keepeth his mouth and his tongue keepeth his soul from troubles. ²⁴Proud and haughty scorner is his name, who dealeth in proud wrath.

²⁵The desire of the slothful killeth him; for his hands refuse to labour. ²⁶He coveteth greedily all the day long: but the righteous giveth and spareth not. ²⁷The sacrifice of the wicked is abomination: how much more, when he bringeth it with a wicked mind? ²⁸A false witness shall perish: but the man that heareth speaketh constantly. ²⁹A wicked man hardeneth his face: but as for the upright, he directeth his way.

³⁰There is no wisdom nor understanding nor counsel against the LORD. ³¹The horse is prepared against the day of battle: but safety is of the LORD.

¹A good name is rather to be chosen than great riches, and loving favour rather than silver and gold. ²The rich and poor meet together: the LORD is the maker of them all. ³A prudent man foreseeth the evil, and hideth himself: but the simple pass on, and are punished. ⁴By humility and the fear of the LORD are riches, and honour, and life.