Saturday, 13 June 2026

Martyr Aquilina of Byblos

Saturday of the 2nd week after Pentecost

62 days after Pascha · Tone 8 · Liturgy · Apostles Fast (Fish, Wine and Oil are Allowed)

Saints commemorated

Holy Virgin Martyr Aquilina of Byblos

293

Saint Aquilina was a native of the Phoenician city of Byblos, in what is now the Lebanese coastland, born about the year 281 of pious Christian parents. Her mother taught her the faith from earliest childhood, and the holy virgin showed such love for Christ that already by the age of ten she was instructing other girls in his name. When she was twelve, the persecution under the emperor Diocletian came to Byblos, and a servant of the governor Volusianus denounced her for turning her companions away from the worship of the gods. Brought before Volusianus, the child fearlessly confessed Christ; first he tried to win her with flattery, then commanded her to be scourged, and at length had heated iron rods driven through her ears so that the brain came out, after which she fell as though dead.

The judge ordered her body to be cast outside the city to be devoured by dogs. By night an angel of the Lord came down, raised her up, healed her wounds, and bade her go and accuse Volusianus before his own throne. The holy virgin walked to the praetorium and stood before him, alive and unharmed, and the people who saw it cried out in wonder. Confounded and afraid, the governor ordered her beheaded; but as the executioner raised his sword the saint gave thanks to her Bridegroom and rendered her soul to God before the blow could fall, in the year 293. Christians took up her body and gave it honourable burial; and her relics were afterwards translated to Constantinople, where the emperors built a church in her name.

Saint Anthimus the Iberian, Metropolitan of Wallachia

Saint Anthimus was born about 1660 in Iberia, the historic name of Georgia, and was given in baptism the name Andrew. Captured as a young man during one of the Persian raids on his country and sold into slavery, he was at length redeemed by the Patriarch of Constantinople Dositheus II of Jerusalem, who, perceiving the young captive's devotion and rare gifts for languages, took him into his own household and educated him in theology, calligraphy and the arts of printing. About 1690 the Patriarch sent him to the Wallachian prince Constantine Brancoveanu, who needed a learned hieromonk to direct the new printing presses he had set up at Bucharest in defence of orthodox teaching. There Anthimus received monastic tonsure, founded the press at the Snagov monastery, and produced books in Greek, Slavonic, Romanian, Arabic and Georgian, including the Liturgy in Arabic for the church of Antioch and the Gospel in Iberian for his native Georgia. In 1705 he was consecrated bishop of Ramnic, and in 1708 metropolitan of all Wallachia. He laboured to make Romanian the liturgical language of the Romanian Church, translated and printed the Liturgical books in the language of the people, and preached his celebrated Didahii, the homilies for Sundays and feasts that mark the beginning of Romanian sacred eloquence. After the deposition and execution by the Turks of his patron Brancoveanu, Anthimus continued his work under Stephen Cantacuzino and Nicholas Mavrocordat, but his outspoken denunciation of Turkish exactions led at length to his ruin. In 1716 the Sultan ordered him deposed and banished to Saint Catherine's monastery on Mount Sinai. On the road, on 14 September 1716, a band of janissaries set upon him near Adrianople, killed him with their swords and cast his body into the river Tundzha. He was glorified by the Church of Romania in 1992; his memory is observed in the Romanian and several Greek calendars on 13 June.

Saint Antipater, Bishop of Bostra in Arabia

Saint Antipater was a Greek prelate of the fifth century who became metropolitan of Bostra, the principal city of the Roman province of Arabia, before the year 457, succeeding the bishop Constantine. The diocese of Bostra at that time was closely linked with the great monasteries of the Judean desert, and Antipater maintained a near friendship with Saint Euthymius the Great and the fathers of his lavra, drawing both ascetic counsel and dogmatic precision from that source. Antipater is remembered as one of the most learned defenders of the orthodox faith in the generation that followed the Council of Chalcedon. When certain monks renewed the doctrines of Origen on the pre-existence of souls and the eventual restoration of all spirits, including the demons, Antipater answered with a Refutation of the Apology for Origen written by Pamphilus of Caesarea, in which he set out the orthodox teaching with such clarity that, more than a century later, the Emperor Justinian ordered his work to be read publicly in the churches of the East as an antidote to the spreading errors. He also composed a treatise against the Apollinarists and a number of homilies in honour of the Theotokos, in which the dogmatic faith of Ephesus, that the Virgin is truly Mother of God, is given liturgical expression. The Fathers of the Seventh Ecumenical Council included him among the authoritative writers of the Church. Saint Antipater fell asleep in the Lord toward the end of the fifth century.

Saint Triphyllius, Bishop of Leucosia in Cyprus

Saint Triphyllius was born at Constantinople in the late third century to a noble Christian family and was sent to Berytus, modern Beirut, for the celebrated rhetorical and legal training of that city. He became one of the most learned and eloquent men of his generation. Drawn by report to Saint Spyridon, the wonderworking bishop of Trimythous in Cyprus, he sought him out and became his disciple. The Lives of the Cypriot fathers tell how the simple shepherd-bishop tempered the worldliness still clinging to his elegant pupil: when, accompanying his master to the imperial court, Triphyllius gazed in admiration at the splendour of the palace, Spyridon asked him gently, "Why do you marvel? Does all this make the emperor any more righteous?"

Trained by his elder in the discipline of humble prayer, Triphyllius received the gift of ascetic discernment and was raised to the see of Leucosia, the present Nicosia. There he proved a tireless pastor and an undaunted defender of the Nicene faith, supporting Saint Athanasius the Great against the Arians and accompanying Saint Spyridon to local councils. From the inheritance left by his mother he built a monastery at Leucosia. He governed his church for many years and fell asleep in old age about the year 370. The Russian pilgrim Igumen Daniel saw the relics of Saint Triphyllius on Cyprus at the beginning of the twelfth century, still venerated by the faithful.

St Anna and her son John

5h c.

“Taken as an orphan into the house of a nobleman and treated as an adopted child, she was cared for and educated in that house. The rich man considered her worthy to be married to his son. When the old man died, the family urged the son to put his wife away because of her low birth and to marry another more suited to his rank and wealth. The rich man’s son feared God and did not want to do this. Seeing her husband in difficulties with his family, Anna secretly left him and ran off to a distant island where there was not a living soul. She was pregnant, and soon gave birth to a son. They laboured on the island for thirty years in fasting and prayer. Then, by divine providence, a hieromonk landed on the island. He baptised her son and named him John. Anna lived her ascetic life in the fifth century, and died peacefully.” (Prologue)

Daily readings

Epistle

weekly cycle

Romans — Romans 3.19-26

¹⁹Now we know that what things soever the law saith, it saith to them who are under the law: that every mouth may be stopped, and all the world may become guilty before God. ²⁰Therefore by the deeds of the law there shall no flesh be justified in his sight: for by the law is the knowledge of sin.

²¹But now the righteousness of God without the law is manifested, being witnessed by the law and the prophets; ²²Even the righteousness of God which is by faith of Jesus Christ unto all and upon all them that believe: for there is no difference: ²³For all have sinned, and come short of the glory of God; ²⁴Being justified freely by his grace through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus: ²⁵Whom God hath set forth to be a propitiation through faith in his blood, to declare his righteousness for the remission of sins that are past, through the forbearance of God; ²⁶To declare, I say, at this time his righteousness: that he might be just, and the justifier of him which believeth in Jesus.

Gospel

weekly cycle

Matthew — Matthew 7.1-8

¹Judge not, that ye be not judged. ²For with what judgment ye judge, ye shall be judged: and with what measure ye mete, it shall be measured to you again. ³And why beholdest thou the mote that is in thy brother’s eye, but considerest not the beam that is in thine own eye? ⁴Or how wilt thou say to thy brother, Let me pull out the mote out of thine eye; and, behold, a beam is in thine own eye? ⁵Thou hypocrite, first cast out the beam out of thine own eye; and then shalt thou see clearly to cast out the mote out of thy brother’s eye.

⁶Give not that which is holy unto the dogs, neither cast ye your pearls before swine, lest they trample them under their feet, and turn again and rend you.

⁷Ask, and it shall be given you; seek, and ye shall find; knock, and it shall be opened unto you: ⁸For every one that asketh receiveth; and he that seeketh findeth; and to him that knocketh it shall be opened.