Tuesday, 9 June 2026

St Cyril of Alexandria; Ven. Kirill of Belozersk

Tuesday of the 2nd week after Pentecost

58 days after Pascha · Tone 8 · Red squigg (doxology typikon symbol) · Apostles Fast (Wine and Oil are Allowed)

Saints commemorated

★ Saint Cyril, Archbishop of Alexandria

Cyril was born in Alexandria about 376 of an illustrious Christian family and was the nephew of Patriarch Theophilus, by whose care he was given a thorough education in scripture, classical literature and the Greek fathers. As a young man he spent some six years among the monks of the Nitrian desert, where he absorbed the spiritual discipline and the dogmatic formation of the Egyptian church. Ordained reader and then deacon by his uncle, he succeeded him on the patriarchal throne in 412 and guided the church of Alexandria for thirty-two years.

The struggle that gives Saint Cyril his place among the great teachers of the Church was provoked by Nestorius, who was raised to the see of Constantinople in 428 and began to teach that the Virgin Mary should be called only Christotokos, mother of Christ, but not Theotokos, mother of God. Cyril answered with letters and treatises whose precision shaped the Christology of the universal Church, insisting that the one Christ is one person, the eternal Word made flesh, and that Mary therefore truly bore in her womb God incarnate. The third Ecumenical Council, gathered at Ephesus in 431 under Cyril's presidency, condemned Nestorius and confirmed the title Theotokos. Cyril afterwards laboured to restore communion with the more cautious Antiochene bishops, and the Formula of Reunion of 433 brought a peace celebrated in his famous letter "Let the heavens rejoice." He fell asleep in the Lord on 9 June 444, leaving an immense body of biblical commentaries, dogmatic treatises and letters that have nourished the Church ever since.

Saint Columba of Iona, Enlightener of Scotland

Columba, called in Irish Colum Cille or "Dove of the Church," was born on 7 December 521 at Gartan in what is now County Donegal, of the royal house of the Ui Neill. After studying under Saint Finnian of Moville and Saint Finnian of Clonard, he was ordained priest and during fifteen years of ministry in Ireland founded a chain of monasteries, including Derry, Durrow and Kells. About 563, in penance after a controversy in which a battle was fought, he resolved to leave his homeland and never to look upon it again. He set sail with twelve companions in a wicker currach covered with hide and landed on the island of Iona, off the south-west of Mull, which his kinsman Conall, king of Dal Riata, granted him for a monastic settlement. From Iona, Columba carried the Gospel to the Picts of northern Britain, journeying repeatedly to the court of King Brude near Inverness, where after contests of prayer with the druids and miraculous signs he secured freedom for the preachers of Christ. He ordained Aidan, king of the Scots of Dal Riata, in what is recorded as the first Christian royal consecration in the islands. Iona became the mother house of a great network of monasteries reaching from Ireland to Northumbria and a school of saints, scholars and missionaries that bore Christianity throughout the British Isles. Columba combined the gentleness of a shepherd with the gift of prophecy and the power to still wild beasts and storms, as recorded in the Life by his successor Adamnan. He fell asleep before the altar of his church on Iona during the night of 9 June 597.

The Holy Five Virgin Martyrs Thecla, Mariamne, Martha, Mary and Ennatha

The Five Virgins were Persian Christian women of the village of Aza, near the Tigris, who in the great persecution of Shapur II (309 to 379) had given their virginity to Christ and lived an ascetic life under the spiritual direction of a priest named Paul. Paul was a wealthy man, and to escape the searches of the Persian magi the holy virgins entrusted to his keeping all that they possessed, asking that he distribute it to the poor. He kept the goods to himself. When the persecution reached their village, Paul and the five virgins were arrested together. Threatened with torture and the loss of his hoarded treasures, the unhappy priest renounced Christ and accepted the worship of fire. The Persians demanded that he prove the genuineness of his apostasy by putting his disciples to death, and Thecla, Mariamne, Martha, Mary and Ennatha were brought before him. They answered with one voice that they preferred any torment to the denial of Christ, and exhorted Paul to repent. He took up the sword and beheaded each of them, after which, despairing of his salvation, he hanged himself, and so by a just judgement gained neither the treasures of this world nor the kingdom of the next. The bodies of the martyrs were thrown to wild beasts but were preserved untouched, and were buried by the local Christians with great honour.

Venerable Cyril, Igumen of White Lake

Saint Cyril of White Lake was born at Moscow in 1337 and was given the name Kosmas in baptism. Orphaned in youth and raised in the household of the boyar Timothy Velyaminov, kinsman of the grand prince, he longed for the monastic life and at length received the tonsure at the Simonov monastery in Moscow under its abbot Theodore, the nephew and disciple of Saint Sergius of Radonezh. Saint Sergius himself, when visiting the monastery, would seek out the young Cyril in the bakery and the kitchen for spiritual conversation. When Theodore became Archbishop of Rostov in 1388, the brethren elected Cyril abbot in his place, but the press of visitors and his own desire for stillness drove him to lay down the office and shut himself in his cell. One night, while reading an akathist before the Hodigitria icon of the Mother of God, he heard a voice say: "Go to White Lake, where I have prepared a place for you." With his fellow monk Therapont he travelled to the wild forests around Lake Beloye and in 1397 dug himself a cave on the shore of Lake Siverskoye, where he was sixty years old. There he built a wooden chapel of the Dormition and gathered a community to which he gave a strict cenobitic rule of silence and absolute non-possession, with no private goods of any kind and complete attention required at every service. The Kirillo-Belozersky monastery grew under his guidance into one of the great spiritual lights of the Russian north. Saint Cyril fell asleep in the Lord on 9 June 1427 in his ninetieth year, and was glorified by the Council of 1547.

St Columba of Iona

597

He was born to a prominent noble family, the Ui-Niall clan of Ireland, but he forsook all worldly things and became a monk at a young age. He founded the monasteries of Derry and Durrow, and traveled as a missionary in Ireland for almost twenty years. In 565 he settled on the island of Iona, off the coast of Scotland; there he remained for 32 years, establishing the famous monastery of Iona and continuing in his missionary labors. He reposed in peace at Iona.

Saint Kyril of Belozersk

1427

He was born in Moscow in 1337, and took up the monastic life while young. Though he desired a life of strict silence and solitude, he was made abbot of the Simonov Monastery against his will. After a few years, obeying a revelation from the most holy Theotokos, he left his abbacy and went to the wilderness of Belozersk (White Lake) to live as a hermit. Others gathered there to live under his guidance, and in time the community became the Monastery of Belozersk. Saint Kyril was sought from far off as a staretz, or spiritual father, and was granted gifts of wonderworking. His humility was remarkable, as the following story shows. Once one of his monks conceived a terrible hatred for Kyril, which tormented him for a whole year. Finally the monk worked up the courage to reveal his hatred to Kyril himself. Though the monk was full of shame and remorse at his malicious passion, Kyril comforted him and said, ‘All the others are in error about me; only you have perceived my unworthiness.’ Saint Kyril then forgave the man and sent him away with his blessing. Saint Kyril reposed in peace in 1427, at the age of ninety.

Daily readings

Epistle

weekly cycle

Romans — Romans 4.4-12

⁴Now to him that worketh is the reward not reckoned of grace, but of debt. ⁵But to him that worketh not, but believeth on him that justifieth the ungodly, his faith is counted for righteousness. ⁶Even as David also describeth the blessedness of the man, unto whom God imputeth righteousness without works, ⁷Saying, Blessed are they whose iniquities are forgiven, and whose sins are covered. ⁸Blessed is the man to whom the Lord will not impute sin. ⁹Cometh this blessedness then upon the circumcision only, or upon the uncircumcision also? for we say that faith was reckoned to Abraham for righteousness. ¹⁰How was it then reckoned? when he was in circumcision, or in uncircumcision? Not in circumcision, but in uncircumcision. ¹¹And he received the sign of circumcision, a seal of the righteousness of the faith which he had yet being uncircumcised: that he might be the father of all them that believe, though they be not circumcised; that righteousness might be imputed unto them also: ¹²And the father of circumcision to them who are not of the circumcision only, but who also walk in the steps of that faith of our father Abraham, which he had being yet uncircumcised.

Gospel

weekly cycle

Matthew — Matthew 7.15-21

¹⁵Beware of false prophets, which come to you in sheep’s clothing, but inwardly they are ravening wolves. ¹⁶Ye shall know them by their fruits. Do men gather grapes of thorns, or figs of thistles? ¹⁷Even so every good tree bringeth forth good fruit; but a corrupt tree bringeth forth evil fruit. ¹⁸A good tree cannot bring forth evil fruit, neither can a corrupt tree bring forth good fruit. ¹⁹Every tree that bringeth not forth good fruit is hewn down, and cast into the fire. ²⁰Wherefore by their fruits ye shall know them.

²¹Not every one that saith unto me, Lord, Lord, shall enter into the kingdom of heaven; but he that doeth the will of my Father which is in heaven.