THE HOLY APOSTLES PROCHORUS, NICANOR, TIMON AND PARMENAS
All four were numbered among the Seven Deacons and the Seventy Apostles. The remaining deacons were Stephen, Philip and Nicholas. Stephen, the first martyr, is commemorated separately on December 27 and Philip on October 11. Because of his heresy, Nicholas did not enter into the ranks of the saints. The first four do not have a separate day of celebration but are commemorated on this one day, July 28. Saint Prochorus was ordained by the Apostle Peter to be the bishop of Nicomedia. For a time he was in the service of St. John the Evangelist and, on the Island of Patmos, copied the Book of Revelation which he heard from the mouth of St. John. After that he returned to Nicomedia where he exerted much effort and labor to convert the people to the Faith. He died a martyr’s death in Antioch where he was slain by unbelievers. Saint Nicanor suffered in Jerusalem the same day as St. Stephen the Arch-deacon and, soon after him, two thousand other Christians were slain by the wicked Jews. Saint Timon was a bishop in Arabia and suffered on the cross for Christ. Saint Parmenas died before the eyes of the apostles and was mourned and buried by them.
THE HOLY MARTYR JULIAN
During the reign of Emperor Antoninus, St. Julian crossed over from Dalmatia into Campania in Italy. He was a handsome young man and with his soul was completely devoted to the Lord. Enroute he met the soldiers of the emperor who were going out to arrest Christians. “Brethren, peace be to you!” Julian addressed them. By such a greeting and by the gentleness of the young man’s countenance, the soldiers concluded that he was a Christian. To their question, Julian answered them: “I am a Christian born in Dalmatia.” In addition, Julian openly admitted before them that he was traveling with the goal of converting idolaters to the One Living God. The soldiers beat him mercilessly and finally threw him into a pit where he remained for seven days without any human sustenance. An angel of God, who appeared to him, gave him heavenly food. Being brought to trial, Julian remained firm in the Faith as a diamond. Witnessing his courage and steadfastness in the Faith, thirty men converted to Christ the Lord. Sentenced to death, Saint Julian knelt and lifted up prayer to God, giving thanks to God for his martyr’s mortification and begged Him to have mercy on all those who would honor his memory. He was beheaded and gave up his soul to God.
VENERABLE PAUL OF THE MONASTERY OF XEROPOTAMOU
Paul was the son of Emperor Michael Cyropalates. With an excellent education, with rare wisdom and at the same time combined with meekness, Procopius (as he was earlier called) was in his youthful years a subject of astonishment to all of Constantinople. In one of his charters, Emperor Roman the Elder, calls him “the greatest of all the philosophers.” Being afraid that his soul would become proud, and that it not perish because of human glory, this handsome youth one day dressed in the rags of a beggar and came to Holy Mount Athos where he received the monastic tonsure from the illustrious Saint Cosmas. After enduring mortification of solitude, he restored the Monastery Xeropotamou and shortly after that build a new monastery of Saint Paul where he died in old age. When this monastery was consecrated, Emperor Roman sent a large portion of the Holy and Venerable Cross as a gift, which is preserved there even today. It is said of this saint, that he preached the Holy Gospel in Macedonia and in Serbia. He endured much torment from the wicked Emperor Leo the Armenian, the Iconoclast, and reposed in the year 820 A.D. Before his death, St. Paul said to the brethren: “Behold the hour comes which my soul has always desired and which my body has always feared.”
THE HOLY MARTYR EUSTATHIUS [EUSTACE]
This martyr for Christ was a soldier in Ancyra. Brought to trial, he was not afraid of any tortures, but freely praised the name of the Lord Christ. Commander Cornelius ordered his feet to be drilled through and threaded with a rope and they dragged this man of God to a river and threw him into the river. Being saved by the power of God and healed of his wounds, Eustace appeared before the commander completely whole. When the commander saw him alive, he was so frightened that he took out his sword and stabbed himself. Eustace still lived for a while longer and died in the Lord in the year 316 A.D.
SAINT IRENE OF CHRYSOVALANTOU
The features of the icons painted over the centuries are not necessarily exact likenesses, but if any iconographer since the ninth century were asked to produce a likeness of Saint Irene Chrysovalantou, he could let his imagination run at will and merely paint his rendition of the most beautiful girl his talent could conceive, taking care to make her eyes the heavenly blue hat could match the aura of divinity made evident throughout her entire life of piety. The nun’s habit would preclude a glimpse of the golden hair that featured her extreme good looks, and a life sized portrait would require a canvas that stretched nearly six feet in height to accommodate her statuesque figure. A model of femininity in any century, in the ninth century she was a model of devotion to the Savior to such a degree that she enjoyed as much reverence as a highly regarded saint during her lifetime as she did after death. Born of a noble and devout family of Cappadocia, Irene grew up to be the classical golden girl whose exquisite beauty opened doors to the highest in the land, including the palace gates of Emperor Theophilos and Empress Theodora, but she chose the even higher gates of Heaven to approach, a dedication to the Savior seldom seen in such an attractive girl. For all her glamorous beauty, she remained at heart a humble servant of Jesus Christ to whom she directed herself in spite of the distractions attendant upon one so strikingly beautiful. It appeared that her life’s ambition to serve the Messiah was not to be fulfilled when she, together with a sister of nearly equal beauty, was summoned to Constantinople by royal emissaries who had fanned out across the country in search of a bride suitable for Prince Michael. No one in Cappadocia doubted that she would have been the chosen bride, but on the journey to Constantinople a delay en route set Irene on her holy course. Passing by holy Mount Olympos, she could not be refused the opportunity to visit the renowned hermit Ioannikios. She remained long enough to enjoy the full wisdom of the aging recluse who prophesied that she would become the bride not of a future king but the handmaiden of the King of Kings as a nun. Thus heartened she rejoined her sister and the emissaries, arriving to find that the bride for Michael had just been selected. Furthermore, her sister caught the eye of Bardas, brother of Empress Theodora, who asked for the comely sister’s hand, and suddenly Irene found herself free to do as she wished. Irene had felt the presence of the Holy Spirit in her talks with the hermit of Olympos, and now there welled within her an even greater awareness of that spirit which was to express itself thereafter with what is called miracles of faith but which were for her the end product of an overwhelming obsession to serve Jesus Christ. In the earthbound concepts of the dutiful Christian, abstractions of philosophy and miracles of religion were manifestations of the mysticism beyond human comprehension, and they still are to this day, but to the gifted and devout Irene those aspects which most baffles the average mind were distillations of the will of God, accented by her with a grace and humility which suggested she was as much at home in Eden as in any corner on earth. Irene entered the nunnery of Chrysovalantou where her novitiate of three years was marked with a dignity of devotion and a familiarity with the mysticism of Christianity. In her omnivorous reading of religious books, she read an account of a sturdy monk who for a period of three years prayed from sunset to sunup, and she asked for permission to emulate the man in this prayerful tour de force to prove herself to God. When she was given leave, there had to be doubt in the minds of her sisters in Christ as to whether or not she could duplicate this prodigious male feat. No such doubt entered Irene’s mind, and she not only fulfilled this pledge to God but in doing so she subsisted on scarcely more than greens and water, returning as healthy in body as she had left but with a proximity to God evidenced in the miraculous powers she had acquired in her extended selflessness. She went on to greater glory as head on the nunnery.