Sunday, 12 April 2026

Holy Pascha

Pascha · Tone 1 · Major feast Lord · No Fast (Fast Free)

Saints commemorated

Hieromartyr Zeno, Bishop of Verona

558

Saint Zeno of Verona, who flourished in the fourth century, is venerated as a saint by both the Eastern Orthodox and the Latin Church. According to his Greek synaxarion he was a Greek by descent, born in Syria, who in his youth embraced the monastic life and devoted himself to the study of Holy Scripture. After visiting several monasteries he came to the city of Verona in Italy and settled there, and the people, recognising his holiness, chose him as their bishop after the death of Bishop Gricinus, around the year 362. As shepherd of Verona he laboured for the salvation of his flock, baptising many new converts from paganism and reclaiming many who had been led away by the Arian heresy. The reigns of the emperors Constantius and Valens, who supported Arianism, brought renewed oppression upon the Orthodox, and Saint Zeno bore his share of suffering with apostolic patience. His ten years of episcopal ministry were marked by powerful preaching, of which a substantial collection of homilies survives. Saint Gregory the Dialogist records the great miracle that took place in the year 558, when on the feast day of Saint Zeno the river Adige overflowed and surrounded the church built in his honour at Verona. Although the doors stood open the water did not enter, but stopped at the threshold, and so the church was kept dry and unharmed. Saint Zeno reposed in peace around the year 371.

Holy Martyr Sabbas the Goth

372

Saint Sabbas was born around the year 334 in a village of the Buzau river valley, in what is now Romania. A Goth by race, he embraced the Faith of Christ in his youth and lived an exemplary Christian life among his pagan kinsmen, serving the church of his village as a reader and singer. He was known for his strict refusal to eat meat that had been offered to the gods of the Goths, and on more than one occasion he openly rebuked his fellow villagers who tried to disguise the source of such food in order to spare him. Twice he was driven from his home, and each time he returned and continued his witness. Under the persecution unleashed by Athanaric, king of the Goths, in the year 372, Saint Sabbas spent Easter with the priest Sansalas. Three days after the feast Atharid, son of the sub-king Rothesteus, came to the village and arrested both Sansalas and Sabbas. Sabbas was dragged naked through thorns, racked upon the wheel and beaten with rods, but his joy in suffering remained unshaken. Finally he was condemned to be drowned in the river Mousaios (the modern Buzau), a tributary of the Danube. As his executioners reached the river Sabbas exclaimed, "Why do you delay? I see what you cannot see, the saints standing there in glory who have come to receive me." A heavy beam was pressed against his neck and he was thrust beneath the water, receiving the crown of martyrdom on 12 April 372 at the age of thirty-eight. His relics were translated to Caesarea in Cappadocia at the request of Saint Basil the Great.

Saint Basil the Confessor, Bishop of Parium

Saint Basil the Confessor lived during the eighth century and was the holy bishop of Parium on the Hellespont. From his youth he embraced the monastic life, devoting himself to fasting, vigil and prayer, and he was elected by the people of Parium as their shepherd because of his manifest virtue and learning. He took up the pastoral office during the bitter persecution of the holy icons by the iconoclast emperors, and resolutely came forward as a champion of the veneration of the sacred images. When the Iconoclast Council convened in 754 under the Emperor Constantine V Copronymus drew up its decree against the holy icons, Saint Basil refused to set his hand to the so-called "Iniquitous Scroll", and would have no communion with the heretical bishops. He kept the iconoclasts out of his diocese, suffering for this much persecution, hunger and want, but never bending in his confession of the truth. By his teaching, his example and his unbroken endurance he kept his flock firm in the Orthodox Faith, and so reposed in peace, having earned the title of Confessor.

Saint Nicephorus the Confessor, Patriarch of Constantinople

Saint Nicephorus was born around the year 758 in Constantinople. His father Theodore had served as imperial secretary under the iconoclast Emperor Constantine V Copronymus, but had been scourged, tortured and exiled for defending the holy icons; from him the young Nicephorus inherited a deep devotion to Orthodoxy. After receiving an excellent education he served the empire as a civil official and represented the Empress Irene at the Seventh Ecumenical Council in 787. Withdrawing afterwards to a monastery he had founded on the Bosporus, he lived for years in monastic asceticism. On the death of Saint Tarasius in 806 he was chosen Patriarch of Constantinople. As patriarch he laboured for peace in the Church, defended the canons, and took up his pen and his pastoral staff against the new outbreak of iconoclasm under the Emperor Leo the Armenian. When Leo demanded the removal of the icons, Saint Nicephorus stood firm, and in 815 he was deposed by an iconoclast synod and exiled to a monastic retreat near Chalcedon. From his exile he composed a series of profound treatises against the iconoclasts and a chronicle of Byzantine history. Under Leo's successor Michael II the Stammerer the persecution continued, and Saint Nicephorus remained in banishment until his death in the Monastery of Saint Theodore on 2 June 828. He is commemorated by the Orthodox Church both on 13 March (the translation of his relics to Constantinople in 846) and on 2 June, but his memory is also kept in many Synaxaria on this day.

St Isaac the Syrian, abbot of Spoleto, Italy

c. 550

This is not the famed Isaac of Syria (commemorated Jan 28) who wrote the Ascetical Homilies, but a monk who settled in Spoleto and was famed for his holy, solitary life, his miracles, and his discernment. The people of Spoleto sought to honor him with money and other gifts, but he refused everything and withdrew to a cell in the forest. Soon a large monastery grew up there as others joined him in his life of prayer. Once, two nearly naked men came begging clothing from Isaac. He told a monk to go to a hollow tree some distance away, and to bring back what he found there. The monk returned with some clothing, and gave it to the beggars. They were shamed to find that it was their own clothing, which they had hidden in the tree. A man gave two beehives to the monastery. A monk hid one of them and brought the other to the abbot. Isaac said to him, ‘Be careful when you go back to the beehive that you hid: it has been taken over by poisonous snakes. Be careful that they do not bite you.’

Our Holy Mother Athanasia

860

“Born on the island of Aegina of rich and eminent parents, she gave her goods to the poor and went off to a monastery, where she heaped greater and greater asceticism on herself. She took food only once a day, and that only bread and water, and in the Great Fast only once every two days. Only at Christmas and Easter did she taste flesh and oil. Although she was abbess of the monastery, she was the servant of all the other sisters and was ashamed that any should wait on her. She was made worthy of the great gift of wonderworking, both during her lifetime and after her death.” (Prologue)

Also commemorated: Beginning of the Pentecostarion

Daily readings

Epistle

weekly cycle

Acts — Acts 1.1-8

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.

Gospel

weekly cycle

John — John 1.1-17

¹In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. ²The same was in the beginning with God. ³All things were made by him; and without him was not any thing made that was made. ⁴In him was life; and the life was the light of men. ⁵And the light shineth in darkness; and the darkness comprehended it not.

⁶There was a man sent from God, whose name was John. ⁷The same came for a witness, to bear witness of the Light, that all men through him might believe. ⁸He was not that Light, but was sent to bear witness of that Light. ⁹That was the true Light, which lighteth every man that cometh into the world. ¹⁰He was in the world, and the world was made by him, and the world knew him not. ¹¹He came unto his own, and his own received him not. ¹²But as many as received him, to them gave he power to become the sons of God, even to them that believe on his name: ¹³Which were born, not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God. ¹⁴And the Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us, (and we beheld his glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father,) full of grace and truth.

¹⁵John bare witness of him, and cried, saying, This was he of whom I spake, He that cometh after me is preferred before me: for he was before me. ¹⁶And of his fulness have all we received, and grace for grace. ¹⁷For the law was given by Moses, but grace and truth came by Jesus Christ.