Our Venerable Father Bassian of Tiksna (12th / 25th) was a tailor by trade, and came from the province of Vologda in Russia.  He was a devout man, who attended the church services, and loved to learn of spiritual truths.  Then he received a call to take up the monastic life, and so joined the Monastery of Totem.  After making some progress in the life of a monk, he obtained a blessing to withdraw and live as a recluse.  He found a lonely spot near the River Tiksna and there built a cell, living on whatever he could find in the forest and what kind people brought him.  He lived a very strict and harsh ascetic life, making many prostrations a day, and then increased his labours by wearing chains under his habit and an iron cap under his monastic skoufia.  Such was the degree of purification he achieved, that people came to him for spiritual counsel and instruction, but, loving his seclusion, except for his spiritual father, he spoke to them only through a tiny window in his cell, which was so arranged that they could hear his wise words, but not see him.  He foreknew the time of his departure and requested his spiritual father come and bring him the Holy Mysteries.  Having partaken thereof, he prayed, “Lord, into Thy hands I commend my spirit,” and gave up his righteous soul on 12th September, A.D. 1624.  

The Holy Martyr Porphyrius the Actor (15th / 28th)  was an actor who apparently did comic turns.  During the birthday celebrations of the infamous Emperor Julian the Apostate, he mocked the Christian Mystery of Holy Baptism, immersing himself in a vat of water and proclaiming that he was baptized “in the Name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.”  However, the Grace of God touched him, and what was intended to be a blasphemous joke turned into a reality.  He was illumined.  He proclaimed himself a Christian.  This was great fun for the Emperor and his cronies, but when the saint continued to proclaim the reality of his conversion, they tied of the “joke,” and he was taken out and on the Emperor’s orders immediately beheaded.  Theatre, media and literature today are so littered with puerile blasphemies, such as this martyr was involved in before his miraculous conversion, that his prayers should doubtless be asked for the enlightenment of those involved in these anti-Christian antics.

 

Saint Evstathios of Thessalonica (20th September / 3rd October):  This righteous one shares his feast day with his more renowned namesake the Great Martyr Evstathios.  He was born in Constantinople in the second decade of the twelfth century and in his youth he entered the Monastery of St Evphemia.  He graduated from the Patriarchal School and was ordained to the diaconate in the Great Church in the Imperial City, and on account of his great erudition was appointed Master of the Rhetors.   In A.D. 1174, he was consecrated as the Bishop of Myra in Lucia, a see made illustrious by the great St Nicolas the Wonderworker.  The following year St Evstathios was elevated to be Archbishop of Thessalonica.  As such, he strove to raise the moral standards of the monks, clergy and people of his time, which had fallen low.  Because of this he made enemies, and he was required to withdraw from his see for two years.  However, the accusations against him proved false and he was re-instated.  He worked to care for the poor and to put an end to every kind of social injustice.  With some justification, many Orthodox Christians in this country consider the Norman invasion of A.D. 1066 (rather than 1054) the severance point between the Orthodox Christian heritage of the Celtic and Anglo-Saxon Churches and the Roman Catholicism of the Middle Ages.  Thus the Normans are seen as the agents of the destruction of an Orthodox heritage.  Saint Evstathios also came face to face with these people.  In A.D. 1185 the Normans besieged and eventually took the city of Thessalonica.  The Saint refused to abandon his flock, but pleaded with the invading forces to put an end to the killing and looting, and to respect the Creed and the practices of the Orthodox inhabitants.  They responded by imprisoning him and treating him shamelessly.  Eventually he was released, but he died in A.D. 1194, weighed down by his sufferings and old age, and deeply mourned by his flock.