★
Commemoration of the Miracle of Great-martyr Euphemia the All-praised, of Chalcedon
304
St Euphemia is commemorated on September 16; today we commemorate the miracle wrought by her relics during the Fourth Ecumenical Council. After much debate and no progress among the defenders of Orthodoxy and the proponents of the Monophysite heresy, the two parties agreed each to write their different definitions of the Faith in two separate books, and to ask God to show them the truth. They placed the two books in the case containing St Euphemia’s relics, sealed the case, and departed. After three days of constant vigil and supplication, they opened the reliquary in the presence of the Emperor, and found the Monophysite book under the feet of the Saint, and the Orthodox book in her right hand.
★
Holy equal-of-the-apostles princess Olga of Russia
Saint Olga, equal of the apostles, in holy baptism Helen, was the wife of the Kievan great prince Igor and grandmother of Saint Vladimir, the enlightener of Rus. After the murder of her husband by the Drevlians around 945, she ruled the realm as regent for her young son Sviatoslav, governing with wisdom and resolve. She avenged her husband upon the Drevlians, but afterwards she gave herself to the consolidation and just ordering of the Russian land, instituting taxes, organising trade, and establishing princely centres throughout her territories.
In the depths of her heart, however, the wise Olga sensed the insufficiency of paganism and the search for a higher truth. About the year 957 she travelled to Constantinople, the great capital of Christendom, where she was received with much honour by the emperor Constantine Porphyrogenitus and the patriarch Polyeuctus. There she was baptised into the Christian faith, taking the name Helen in honour of the holy empress, mother of Constantine the Great. The patriarch blessed her with a cross, saying, "Blessed are you among the women of Rus, for you have loved the light and have rejected the darkness."
Returning to Kiev as a Christian, Olga laboured zealously in the work of evangelisation among her pagan people. She built churches at Kiev (of Saint Nicholas, and of Holy Wisdom), at Vytebsk (of the Annunciation), and at Pskov (of the Holy Life-creating Trinity), and she destroyed many pagan idols, replacing them with crosses. Though her son Sviatoslav refused to be baptised, fearing that his warriors would mock him, she succeeded in raising her grandchildren in the Christian faith, including the future Saint Vladimir.
Saint Olga reposed peacefully on 11 July 969, and her relics were later found incorrupt in the church of the Tithes built by her grandson. She is honoured as the first ruler of Rus to embrace Christianity, the dawn before the sunrise of Vladimir's baptism of the people.
★
Holy great martyr Euphemia the all-praised
304
The holy great martyr Euphemia suffered martyrdom in the city of Chalcedon in the year 304, during the persecution against Christians under the emperor Diocletian. She was the daughter of the senator Philophron and his pious wife Theodosia, and was brought up in the Christian faith from her earliest years. When the proconsul Priscus issued an order that all the inhabitants of the city should attend a great festival in honour of the god Ares, Euphemia and forty-eight fellow Christians refused to take part and assembled instead in a quiet place to worship the true God.
Discovered, they were brought before the proconsul and confessed Christ openly. Priscus, recognising Euphemia as of noble birth, sought to win her over by flattery and threats, and when these failed, he subjected her to terrible torments: the wheel, the fire, scrapings, the millstone, and at last the wild beasts. The Lord preserved her unharmed through every torture; even the savage beasts in the arena would not touch her. At last a she-bear inflicted a small wound upon her side, and through this Saint Euphemia surrendered her soul to God, while a great earthquake confirmed her glorious end.
In the year 451 the fourth ecumenical council was convened at Chalcedon in the very church where the relics of Saint Euphemia were enshrined, in order to determine the precise dogmatic formula of the Orthodox faith concerning the two natures of Christ. Patriarch Anatolius of Constantinople proposed that the dispute be submitted to the holy spirit through the great martyr herself. Both the Orthodox and the Monophysites wrote out their confessions, sealed them with their seals, and placed them upon the breast of the saint within her tomb. The tomb was sealed in the presence of the emperor Marcian and guarded for three days. When it was opened, Euphemia was seen to hold the Orthodox scroll in her right hand, while the heretical scroll lay at her feet. By this miracle many of those who had wavered embraced the Orthodox confession.
Hieromartyr Cindeus, presbyter of Pamphylia
The hieromartyr Cindeus (Kindeos) was a presbyter in the village of Talmenia, near Sida, in the province of Pamphylia in Asia Minor, during the reign of the emperor Diocletian (284-305). At that time the persecution against the Christians raged most fiercely throughout the Roman world. Yet the holy priest, undaunted by threats, laboured tirelessly to preach the Gospel of Christ and to confirm the faithful in their confession.
Seized by the soldiers of the governor Stratonicus and brought to trial, Cindeus boldly confessed Christ as the true God and refused to offer sacrifice to the idols. He was subjected to many cruel tortures, but the Lord preserved him from harm. Finally the governor ordered that he be cast alive into a great fire. The holy martyr stepped willingly into the flames, and the fire would not consume him; standing in the midst of it, he yielded up his soul to God in prayer, around the year 290.
A pagan priest who had witnessed his sufferings was so astonished by the courage and the wonders attending the saint's confession that he believed in Christ. Together with his wife he received holy baptism, and it was these new converts who arranged for the burial of the body of the holy martyr.
Holy woman Olympias the deaconess of Constantinople
Saint Olympias the deaconess was born in Constantinople around 361, into a noble Christian family of high rank. Her father was the senator Anicius Secundus, and through her mother Alexandra she was descended from the eparch Eulalios. Orphaned in childhood, she was raised by Theodosia, sister of Saint Amphilochius of Iconium, who imparted to her a deep love of the Scriptures and a desire for the spiritual life. Married briefly to a noble of the imperial court, she was widowed within a short time and resolved never to marry again, dedicating herself wholly to Christ.
The patriarch Saint Nectarius of Constantinople ordained her deaconess of the Great Church, although she was younger than the canonical age, on account of her exceptional piety and gifts. From that day she gave herself to the service of the Church, distributing her vast inheritance to the poor, the orphaned, the widowed, and the sick, and providing generous support to bishops, monasteries, and hospices. The hierarchs Amphilochius of Iconium, Optimus of Antioch, Gregory of Nazianzus, Peter of Sebaste, and Epiphanius of Cyprus all found in her a steadfast helper.
She became especially close to Saint John Chrysostom upon his elevation to the see of Constantinople, and she stood loyally by him during his unjust persecution and exile. After his banishment in 404 she was herself accused of arson when the cathedral was burned, and was driven from the capital. Saint John wrote to her a series of profoundly tender and consoling letters, which are among his most beautiful writings.
Olympias died in exile at Nicomedia on 25 July 408, less than a year after her spiritual father. Her relics were later returned to Constantinople. While her principal feast is kept on 25 July, she is also commemorated together with the great martyr Euphemia and Saint Olga on 11 July in some calendars.
Blessed Equal-to-the-Apostles Olga, princess of Russia, in holy baptism called Helen
969
“Saint Olga, renowned for her wisdom and sobriety, in her youth became the wife of Igor, Great Prince of Kiev, who ruled during the tenth century. After her husband’s death, she herself ruled capably, and was finally moved to accept the Faith of Christ. She travelled to Constantinople to receive Holy Baptism. The Emperor, seeing her outward beauty and inward greatness, asked her to marry him. She said she could not do this before she was baptized; she furthermore asked him to be her Godfather at the font, which he agreed to do. After she was baptized (receiving the name of Helen), the Emperor repeated his proposal of marriage. She answered that now he was her father, through Holy Baptism, and that not even among the heathen was it heard of a man marrying his daughter. Gracefully accepting to be outwitted by her, he sent her back to her land with priests and sacred texts and holy icons. Although her son Svyatoslav remained a pagan, she planted the seed of faith in her grandson Vladimir (see July 15). She reposed in peace in 969.” (Great Horologion)
New Martyrs Nikodemos and Nektarios
1820
These two martyrs were unrelated, but their stories are similar. Both were Christians who embraced Islam at an early age under the Turks. Both later repented and, after doing penance, resolved to return to the place of their apostasy and accept martyrdom. Both presented themselves to the Turks, proclaimed their Christian faith, and were beheaded according to Islamic law.
Saint Nikodemos not only embraced Islam, but forced his family to do the same. One of his sons fled to the Holy Mountain and became a monk. The father pursued him there, but was moved to repentance by the holiness of the place and became a monk himself. After three years of penance, he resolved to return home to Albania and embrace his martyrdom.
Saint Nektarios converted to Islam (the Prologue says under duress) at the age of seventeen. When his mother saw him dressed as a Turk, she cried “Get away from me! I do not know you. I bore you as a Christian, not a Turk!” Repenting of his deed he went to the Holy Mountain and became a monk. Like St Nikodemos, he determined after a few years to return home and accept martyrdom for Christ.
St Sophrony of Essex
1993
He was born in Russia in 1896. As a young man, he lived an artist’s life, trying to succeed as a painter while engaging in a wide-ranging spiritual search which included study of the Eastern religions. He fled to Paris during the Russian Revolution. There he rediscovered the Orthodoxy of his childhood and gave his life wholly to repentance and prayer, often spending hours at a time prostrated and weeping on the floor of his Paris apartment. In 1925 he moved to Mt Athos, where he lived as a monk for more than twenty years. On the Holy Mountain he became the spiritual child of the holy elder Silouan. After St Silouan’s repose, his own health badly damaged by living in a damp cave, he was granted permission by his monastery to leave the Holy Mountain and write a life of St Silouan. This is St Silouan of Mt Athos, a great spiritual treasure which includes the writings of the Saint as well as Fr Sophrony’s profound reflections on his life. (It was largely through Fr Sophrony’s work that St Silouan, who lived an almost completely hidden life, was glorified by the Church).
In 1959 Fr Sophrony founded the Monastery of St John the Baptist in Essex, England, where he lived until his repose. He was a spiritual father to Metropolitan Hierotheos of Nafpakthos, one of present-day Orthodoxy’s most profound spiritual writers, who has said this about him: “I ascertained from almost the first meeting… that Father Sophrony was a Theologian of our Church, a God-seer. I realized, that is, that the Elder had seen the Uncreated Light… I had discerned that he was truly a God-seer, because otherwise his whole life, his whole demeanor, the words he said, the counsels, and in any case his whole personality, could not be justified. He was literally altered by the uncreated Grace of God.” At Essex, he was known as spiritual father to many and (little publicized) as a wonderworker and intercessor. He reposed in peace in 1993. In 2019 He was formally glorified as a Saint of the Church by the Patriarchate of Constantinople.
Any who wish to drink from the deep well of his teaching can read (in addition to St Silouan) his books On Prayer and We Shall See Him As He Is.
“Any and every dogmatic error will inevitably reflect on one’s spiritual life.” — Elder Sophrony