Holy Martyr Lucillian and the four youths Claudius, Hypatius, Paul and Dionysius
Saint Lucillian was a pagan priest at Nicomedia who, in his old age, came to recognise the falsehood of the gods he had served and turned to Christ. After his baptism he laboured to bring others to the faith, and for this was denounced before the prefect Silvanus during the persecution of Aurelian (270 to 275). When he refused to return to idolatry his jaw was broken, he was scourged with rods, hung head downward and cast into prison. There he found four young Christian confessors, Claudius, Hypatius, Paul and Dionysius, and strengthened them with his teaching. The five were taken to Byzantium, where the youths were beheaded. Saint Lucillian was nailed to a cross by many nails and so completed his martyrdom. The holy virgin Paula, who had ministered to them in prison and gathered up their bodies for burial, was herself shortly afterwards arrested and beheaded for the faith.
Holy Martyr Lucillian and those with him
270
Lucilian spent most of his life as a pagan priest. In advanced old age, he learned the truth of the Christian faith and was baptized. The conversion of so public a figure quickly attracted attention, and Lucilian was brought to trial in Nicomedia. After enduring many tortures he was imprisoned with four young Christians, scarcely older than children: Claudius, Hypatius, Paul and Dionysius. When they were brouht before Silvanos the governor, all five confessed their faith and were sentenced to death and cast into a fiery furnace. When they miraculously emerged unharmed, they were taken to Byzantium, where the four young men were beheaded and Lucillian was crucified. A maiden named Paula openly carried away the martyrs’ bodies and buried them. For this she in turn was tortured and, refusing to renounce her faith in Christ, beheaded. This was in the reign of the Emperor Aurelian. A church was built in their honor in Constantinople.
Holy Virgin Martyr Paula
The holy virgin Paula was a Christian of Byzantium during the persecution of the emperor Aurelian, who dedicated herself to caring for those imprisoned for the faith. She visited Saint Lucillian and the four youthful confessors in their dungeon, bandaged their wounds and brought them food, and after their execution she retrieved their bodies and gave them honourable burial. Denounced for these acts of mercy, she was brought before the count, and refused to offer sacrifice to the idols. She was stripped, scourged without mercy, cast into a furnace from which she emerged unharmed, and finally beheaded for Christ at Byzantium about the year 273. She is venerated as a model of those women whose ministry to the confessors made them sharers in their crown.
Saint Athanasius the Wonderworker
Saint Athanasius the Wonderworker laboured in the eastern Christian world in the fifth century and is remembered for the great gifts of healing and prophecy bestowed on him by the Holy Spirit. Of his early life little has been preserved, but the sources record that he embraced the monastic discipline at a young age and through unceasing prayer, fasting and obedience attained to a high measure of spiritual perfection. Many were brought to him bound by sicknesses of body and soul, and many were delivered through his prayers, so that his name became known throughout the surrounding country. He fell asleep in peace, and the Church honours him on this day for the miracles which God wrought through his hand both in life and after his repose.
Saint Kevin of Glendalough
618
Saint Kevin (in Irish, Coemgen, "the fair-begotten") was born in Leinster early in the sixth century to a noble Irish family. From childhood he was marked out for sanctity, and was educated by Saint Petroc of Cornwall, then living in Ireland, before being tonsured as a monk. Seeking solitude, he was led by an angel to the lonely valley of Glendalough, "the vale of the two lakes," in the Wicklow mountains, where he lived for some years in the hollow of an old tree, eating wild herbs and drinking from the lake. Disciples gathered round him, and against his own preference he was prevailed upon to become their abbot, founding the monastic city that grew up around the upper lake. He is said to have lived to the great age of one hundred and twenty, and to have ruled his community with patience and gentleness, conversing freely with the wild creatures of the glen. He reposed in 618 and Glendalough remained one of the chief monastic centres of Ireland for many centuries.
Hieromartyr Lucian
2nd c.
He was a Roman nobleman, a disciple of the Apostle Peter. Pope Clement sent him, along with St Dionysius the Areopagite, to preach the Gospel in Gaul, ordaining them both as bishops before they left. The Emperor Domitian later sent soldiers to Rome to seize Christian evangelists. They killed St Dionysius in Rome, then, hearing of the work of St Lucian, tracked him until found him in what is now Belgium. There he was beheaded along with his two fellow-missionaries, Maxianus the priest and Julian the deacon. A church was built over his relics.
Holy Martyr Dimitri, Tsarevich of Russia
1591
He was murdered at the age of eight by the evil designs of Boris Godunov, in the town of Uglich. After his death he appeared to a monk and accurately foretold Boris Godunov’s death. Countless miracles were worked at the grave of the Tsarevich. When his tomb was opened fifteen years after his death, his relics were found whole and incorrupt, and were solemnly buried in the Church of the Archangel Michael in Moscow.
The circumstances of Boris Godunov’s death are worth telling. He first tried to kill the Tsarevich using the strongest poison, but it had no effect. He then had the child publicly beheaded. Not long afterwards a ‘false Dimitri’ arose, claiming to be the Tsarevich, and rallied a great army against Godunov. Godunov was driven to such a desperate position that he took his own life by poison, the ‘remedy’ he had intended for the true Dimitri.