Friday, 16 October 2026

Martyr Longinus the Centurion

Friday of the 20th week after Pentecost

187 days after Pascha · Tone 2 · Liturgy · Fast

Saints commemorated

Blessed Domna of Tomsk, Fool for Christ

The blessed Domna Karpovna was born in the early years of the nineteenth century into a noble family of central Ukraine and from her youth lived a life of piety. After the death of her parents she fled the marriage that her relatives had arranged for her and, taking upon herself the difficult yoke of folly for Christ's sake, set out as a wanderer through the towns and villages of Russia. She was seen at many monasteries and shrines, and at last came to the Siberian city of Tomsk, where she dwelt in the open under the eaves of houses and in cellars, accepting nothing but a piece of bread or a worn garment. Bearing always upon her shoulders a great bundle of rags and broken trinkets which she called "her sins", she walked barefoot in summer and winter alike, sleeping in the snow, enduring beatings from drunkards and the mockery of children with patience and silent prayer. By the gift of foreknowledge she warned of fires, healed the sick, comforted the dying, and turned many sinners to repentance, while concealing her gifts beneath outward eccentricities. She reposed in peace at the convent of Saint John the Forerunner in Tomsk on the sixteenth of October 1872, and was buried there. The Russian Church glorified her among the saints in 1984, numbering her with the holy fools who, by despising the wisdom of this world, drew nearer to the Wisdom of God.

Holy Martyr Eliphius of Toul

Saint Eliphius, called also Eloff, is said by tradition to have been the son of a Christian king of the Scots and to have come to Gaul in the days of the emperor Julian the Apostate, about the year 362, to preach the Gospel of Christ. With his brother Eucharius and his sisters Menna, Libaria and Susanna he laboured in the country round about Toul in Lorraine, where through his preaching some four hundred persons are said to have been turned from the worship of idols to the true faith. When Julian, passing through the region on his march against the Persians, learned of the multitude of conversions, he gave orders that Eliphius should be seized; and the saint, refusing either to deny Christ or to offer sacrifice, was beheaded outside the gates of Toul together with his sisters Libaria and Susanna. According to the chronicler, when his head was struck off the holy martyr took it up in his hands and carried it to the summit of a nearby hill, called thereafter Mount Eliph, where he laid himself down and gave up his soul. There a chapel was raised in his honour, and his relics were afterwards translated to the cathedral of Toul, where his memory has been kept upon the sixteenth of October.

Holy Martyr Longinus the Centurion

1st c.

This is the Centurion who stood at the Cross of Christ and, seeing Him breathe his last, cried out “Truly this was the Son of God” (Matthew 27:54). From that day forth he was a believer, and was soon baptized. According to some accounts, he was one of the guard at the Tomb of Christ, and was one of those whom the Judaean leaders sought to bribe not to tell the news of the Resurrection. But Longinus would not be bribed, so the leaders plotted to kill him. He left the army and went to his homeland of Cappadocia, where he boldly preached Christ. He was beheaded at the instigation of Pontius Pilate.

Holy Martyr Longinus the Centurion who stood at the Cross of the Lord

Saint Longinus was a Roman centurion of Cappadocian birth who served in Judaea under Pontius Pilate during the reign of Tiberius Caesar. He commanded the company of soldiers at the Crucifixion of our Lord upon Golgotha, and it was he who, beholding the wonders that accompanied the death of Christ, the darkness, the earthquake and the rending of the rocks, confessed aloud, "Truly this man was the Son of God." It was likewise he, according to tradition, who pierced the side of the Lord with the lance, and was healed of an affliction of his eyes by the blood and water that flowed forth. Set afterwards as chief of the watch over the sepulchre, he became with two of his soldiers a witness of the Resurrection, and refused the silver pieces offered by the chief priests for a false report. Resigning his commission, he returned to his homeland in Cappadocia and there preached Christ openly. When Pilate and the Jewish elders denounced him to the emperor, soldiers were sent who, at the saint's own bidding, beheaded him together with his two fellow soldiers. His head, cast outside the city, was afterwards revealed in a vision to a blind widow seeking healing at Jerusalem, who recovered her sight when she found the relics, and so brought them home in honour.

Saint Gall, Enlightener of Switzerland

He was born in Ireland to wealthy parents, who sent him to be educated at the Monastery of Bangor. There he embraced the ascetical life and became a monk. He was one of the twelve monks who traveled with his spiritual father St Columbanus (November 23) as missionaries to Gaul. In time some of the group traveled into pagan lands, up the Rhine river to Lake Zurich. The monks settled on Lake Constance around a chapel dedicated to St Aurelia, which had been taken by the pagans as a shrine; they cleansed and reconsecrated the chapel, which became the center of their new monastery. Saint Gall lived as a hermit, serving the brethren by making nets and catching fish. In 612 St Columbanus went on to Italy with most of his disciples, leaving St Gall and a few others to continue their life. When St Gall delivered Frideburga, the daughter of a local duke, from a demon, he offered the saint a tract of land on the shores of Lake Constance; here was founded the monastery that in later times bore St Gall’s name.

At various times, the holy Gall refused calls to become a bishop, or to take over the abbacy of the great monastery at Luxeuil. To all such requests he answered that he would rather serve than command. He continued living in his isolated monastic community until he reposed in peace in 640, at the age of ninety-nine. In later years, and continuing well into the middle ages, the Monastery of St Gall became famed for the holiness of its monks and for its library.

Daily readings

Epistle

weekly cycle

Philippians — Philippians 3.8-19

⁸Yea doubtless, and I count all things but loss for the excellency of the knowledge of Christ Jesus my Lord: for whom I have suffered the loss of all things, and do count them but dung, that I may win Christ, ⁹And be found in him, not having mine own righteousness, which is of the law, but that which is through the faith of Christ, the righteousness which is of God by faith: ¹⁰That I may know him, and the power of his resurrection, and the fellowship of his sufferings, being made conformable unto his death; ¹¹If by any means I might attain unto the resurrection of the dead. ¹²Not as though I had already attained, either were already perfect: but I follow after, if that I may apprehend that for which also I am apprehended of Christ Jesus. ¹³Brethren, I count not myself to have apprehended: but this one thing I do, forgetting those things which are behind, and reaching forth unto those things which are before, ¹⁴I press toward the mark for the prize of the high calling of God in Christ Jesus. ¹⁵Let us therefore, as many as be perfect, be thus minded: and if in any thing ye be otherwise minded, God shall reveal even this unto you. ¹⁶Nevertheless, whereto we have already attained, let us walk by the same rule, let us mind the same thing. ¹⁷Brethren, be followers together of me, and mark them which walk so as ye have us for an ensample. ¹⁸(For many walk, of whom I have told you often, and now tell you even weeping, that they are the enemies of the cross of Christ: ¹⁹Whose end is destruction, whose God is their belly, and whose glory is in their shame, who mind earthly things.)

Gospel

weekly cycle

Luke — Luke 9.12-18

¹²And when the day began to wear away, then came the twelve, and said unto him, Send the multitude away, that they may go into the towns and country round about, and lodge, and get victuals: for we are here in a desert place. ¹³But he said unto them, Give ye them to eat. And they said, We have no more but five loaves and two fishes; except we should go and buy meat for all this people. ¹⁴For they were about five thousand men. And he said to his disciples, Make them sit down by fifties in a company. ¹⁵And they did so, and made them all sit down. ¹⁶Then he took the five loaves and the two fishes, and looking up to heaven, he blessed them, and brake, and gave to the disciples to set before the multitude. ¹⁷And they did eat, and were all filled: and there was taken up of fragments that remained to them twelve baskets.

¹⁸And it came to pass, as he was alone praying, his disciples were with him: and he asked them, saying, Whom say the people that I am?