Thursday, 2 April 2026

Ven. Titus the Wonderworker

Thursday of the Sixth Week of Lent

10 days before Pascha · Tone 1 · Liturgy · Lenten Fast

Saints commemorated

Holy Martyrs Amphianus and Edesius of Lycia

The Holy Martyrs Amphianus (Apphianus) and Edesius (Aedesius) were brothers from Patara in Lycia, sons of a pagan governor. Sent to Beirut to study the pagan sciences, they were instead drawn to the Christian faith. Returning home they found their pagan family unwilling to receive their new convictions, and so they left and travelled to Caesarea in Palestine, where they entered the school of the priest and martyr Pamphilius. Under his guidance they advanced in prayer, ascetic struggle and the study of the sacred Scriptures.

When the emperor Maximinus Daia (305 to 313) ordered all the inhabitants of Caesarea to offer public sacrifice, Saint Amphianus, fired with zeal, went into the temple where the city prefect Urban was preparing to offer sacrifice. He seized the prefect's hand and rebuked him, calling him to abandon his error and to confess Christ. He was at once arrested. After cruel tortures, in which his legs were wrapped in oil-soaked cloths and set ablaze, he was thrown into the sea with a stone tied around his neck. The sea cast his body back upon the shore at Caesarea, where Christians buried it. He was about twenty years old.

Saint Edesius, who had also confessed Christ, was condemned to hard labour in the copper mines of Palestine and afterwards sent in chains to Egypt. At Alexandria, learning that the prefect Hierocles was forcing consecrated virgins and pious Christian women into brothels, he could not bear it: he came forward, struck Hierocles in the face and rebuked him publicly. For this he was tortured and, like his brother, drowned in the sea. They suffered around the year 306. Their martyrdom is recorded by Eusebius of Caesarea in his book On the Martyrs of Palestine.

Venerable Gregory the Sinaite

Saint Gregory the Sinaite (c. 1265 to 27 November 1346) was a Greek monk and one of the principal teachers of the Hesychast renewal of the fourteenth century. Born in Klazomenai near Smyrna in Asia Minor of a wealthy family, he was captured as a young man during a Turkish raid and taken to Laodicea, but the local Christians ransomed him. He travelled first to Cyprus, where he received the rason from a hermit, and then to the Monastery of Saint Catherine on Mount Sinai (whence his epithet "the Sinaite"), where he was tonsured and laboured for many years in obediences as cook, baker and copyist of sacred manuscripts. Leaving Sinai for Jerusalem, and afterwards passing to Crete, he was instructed there by the elder Arsenios in the watchful prayer of the heart. Around 1310 he settled on Mount Athos, dwelling at the skete of Magoula near the monastery of Philotheou. There he taught many disciples the practice of unceasing noetic prayer and the inner watchfulness of the mind, and gathered around himself the future leaders of the hesychast movement, among them the Patriarchs Isidore and Kallistos and Saint Theodosius of Tarnovo. Driven from Athos by Turkish raids, he withdrew with his disciples to Paroria in the Strandzha mountains of southeastern Bulgaria, where, under the protection of the Bulgarian Tsar Ivan Alexander, he founded a monastery and several cells. From Paroria the hesychast tradition spread to Bulgaria, Serbia, the Romanian lands and Russia. He reposed at Paroria on 27 November 1346. The Philokalia preserves five of his works, including On Commandments and Doctrines, On Stillness and Prayer, and On the Signs of Grace and Delusion. He is also commemorated on 6 and 8 August. Greek calendars frequently keep his memory together with Saint Titus the Wonderworker on 2 April.

Venerable Theodora of Thessalonica

Saint Theodora of Thessalonica (812 to 892), known in the world as Agape, was born in the village of Paliachora on the island of Aegina, the third child of the priest Anthony and his wife Chrysanthi. At the age of seven her father betrothed her to a pious young man named Theodorinos, and when Saracen raids forced the family from Aegina they settled in Thessalonica, where Agape married. After the early deaths of her husband and of two of her three children, at the age of about twenty-five she distributed all her possessions to the poor and entered the monastery of Saint Stephen the Protomartyr in Thessalonica, where she received tonsure with the name Theodora. There she lived for fifty-five years in strict obedience, fasting and silence, hidden from the world. The longest hagiography of any holy woman in Byzantium, written shortly after her repose by the priest Gregory of Thessalonica, records her unceasing struggle against the passions, her loving service of the sisters, and her gift of tears. She reposed in peace on 29 August 892. A year after her repose myrrh began to flow from her tomb, and many were healed by it. The community took her name, and the Monastery of Saint Stephen was renamed the Monastery of Saint Theodora in 893; the monastery still stands in the centre of Thessalonica with her relics enshrined there. Although her primary commemoration in the Greek synaxaria is fixed at 29 August (the day of her repose), her uncovering and translation, with associated wonders, is also kept on 3 April; the New Calendar Slavonic and Antiochian usage commemorates her on 2 April with Saint Titus the Wonderworker.

Venerable Titus the Wonderworker

Saint Titus the Wonderworker labored in asceticism in the ninth century at the Studion Monastery near Constantinople. From his youth he displayed zeal for the monastic life, and at the Studion he gave himself to fasting, vigil and meekness of disposition, gaining the love of the brethren. At their request he was ordained hieromonk, and in time became abbot of his monastery.

Because of the purity of his soul and his virtuous life, God granted him the gift of working miracles. During the renewed iconoclast persecution he stood unswervingly for the holy icons, encouraging the brethren of the Studion and of other communities not to yield to the heresy. He remained steadfast in the Orthodox faith until the end of his life, and reposed in peace in old age in the ninth century. The synaxaria of Constantinople and of the Stoudios style him "the Wonderworker" both for his miracles in life and for the healings worked through his relics.

Daily readings

6th Hour

weekly cycle

Isaiah — Isaiah 65.8-16

⁸Thus saith the LORD, As the new wine is found in the cluster, and one saith, Destroy it not; for a blessing is in it: so will I do for my servants’ sakes, that I may not destroy them all. ⁹And I will bring forth a seed out of Jacob, and out of Judah an inheritor of my mountains: and mine elect shall inherit it, and my servants shall dwell there. ¹⁰And Sharon shall be a fold of flocks, and the valley of Achor a place for the herds to lie down in, for my people that have sought me.

¹¹But ye are they that forsake the LORD, that forget my holy mountain, that prepare a table for that troop, and that furnish the drink offering unto that number. ¹²Therefore will I number you to the sword, and ye shall all bow down to the slaughter: because when I called, ye did not answer; when I spake, ye did not hear; but did evil before mine eyes, and did choose that wherein I delighted not. ¹³Therefore thus saith the Lord GOD, Behold, my servants shall eat, but ye shall be hungry: behold, my servants shall drink, but ye shall be thirsty: behold, my servants shall rejoice, but ye shall be ashamed: ¹⁴Behold, my servants shall sing for joy of heart, but ye shall cry for sorrow of heart, and shall howl for vexation of spirit. ¹⁵And ye shall leave your name for a curse unto my chosen: for the Lord GOD shall slay thee, and call his servants by another name: ¹⁶That he who blesseth himself in the earth shall bless himself in the God of truth; and he that sweareth in the earth shall swear by the God of truth; because the former troubles are forgotten, and because they are hid from mine eyes.

Vespers

weekly cycle

Genesis — Genesis 46.1-7

¹And Israel took his journey with all that he had, and came to Beer-sheba, and offered sacrifices unto the God of his father Isaac. ²And God spake unto Israel in the visions of the night, and said, Jacob, Jacob. And he said, Here am I. ³And he said, I am God, the God of thy father: fear not to go down into Egypt; for I will there make of thee a great nation: ⁴I will go down with thee into Egypt; and I will also surely bring thee up again: and Joseph shall put his hand upon thine eyes.

⁵And Jacob rose up from Beer-sheba: and the sons of Israel carried Jacob their father, and their little ones, and their wives, in the wagons which Pharaoh had sent to carry him. ⁶And they took their cattle, and their goods, which they had gotten in the land of Canaan, and came into Egypt, Jacob, and all his seed with him: ⁷His sons, and his sons’ sons with him, his daughters, and his sons’ daughters, and all his seed brought he with him into Egypt.

Vespers

weekly cycle

Proverbs — Proverbs 23.15-24.5

¹⁵My son, if thine heart be wise, my heart shall rejoice, even mine. ¹⁶Yea, my reins shall rejoice, when thy lips speak right things.

¹⁷Let not thine heart envy sinners: but be thou in the fear of the LORD all the day long. ¹⁸For surely there is an end; and thine expectation shall not be cut off.

¹⁹Hear thou, my son, and be wise, and guide thine heart in the way. ²⁰Be not among winebibbers; among riotous eaters of flesh: ²¹For the drunkard and the glutton shall come to poverty: and drowsiness shall clothe a man with rags. ²²Hearken unto thy father that begat thee, and despise not thy mother when she is old. ²³Buy the truth, and sell it not; also wisdom, and instruction, and understanding. ²⁴The father of the righteous shall greatly rejoice: and he that begetteth a wise child shall have joy of him. ²⁵Thy father and thy mother shall be glad, and she that bare thee shall rejoice. ²⁶My son, give me thine heart, and let thine eyes observe my ways. ²⁷For a whore is a deep ditch; and a strange woman is a narrow pit. ²⁸She also lieth in wait as for a prey, and increaseth the transgressors among men.

²⁹Who hath woe? who hath sorrow? who hath contentions? who hath babbling? who hath wounds without cause? who hath redness of eyes? ³⁰They that tarry long at the wine; they that go to seek mixed wine. ³¹Look not thou upon the wine when it is red, when it giveth his colour in the cup, when it moveth itself aright. ³²At the last it biteth like a serpent, and stingeth like an adder. ³³Thine eyes shall behold strange women, and thine heart shall utter perverse things. ³⁴Yea, thou shalt be as he that lieth down in the midst of the sea, or as he that lieth upon the top of a mast. ³⁵They have stricken me, shalt thou say, and I was not sick; they have beaten me, and I felt it not: when shall I awake? I will seek it yet again.

¹Be not thou envious against evil men, neither desire to be with them. ²For their heart studieth destruction, and their lips talk of mischief.

³Through wisdom is an house builded; and by understanding it is established: ⁴And by knowledge shall the chambers be filled with all precious and pleasant riches. ⁵A wise man is strong; yea, a man of knowledge increaseth strength.