Память святого священномученика Ипатия чудотворца, епископа Гангрского

The holy great saint of God Hypatius, bishop of the city of Gangra, in Paphlagonia 2285, was one of the three hundred and eighteen holy fathers who participated in the First Ecumenical Council, assembled during the reign of Constantine the Great. Here he and the other holy fathers, filled with the Holy Spirit and inspired by zeal for Orthodoxy, exposed Arius as a heresy and anathematized him. Saint Hypatius had from God the great gift of working miracles; he healed various ailments and cast out demons. In one village he transformed a source of bitter water flowing from the mountains into sweet; and in another place, through his prayer, a source of warm water flowed from the ground, having healing properties. One day on a dark night he was walking near a river, and lights appeared from the water, showing him the way so that he would not stray from it and fall into the river. He also killed the terrible serpent. Under Constantius 2286, who reigned after the death of his brother Constantine 2287, a very large snake crawled to the royal palace from nowhere. Having surrounded the royal treasury, where there was a lot of gold and other wealth, he laid his head at the entrance to this room and did not allow anyone to enter it. King Constantius was horrified by this and sent to tell Saint Hypatius of God to come to Constantinople, for the name of the saint was glorious thanks to the miracles performed by him by the grace of Christ. The king met the saint with honor, bowed to him to the ground and asked him with his prayer to drive away the serpent from the royal treasury, which no human power could drive out, since even many clergy, armed with prayer, tried to drive him out, but without any success; some of them even suffered in the process. The saint said to the king: - King! Even if our prayer is powerless, then your faith will not be in vain before God. Then, falling to the ground, he prayed for quite a long time. Then, rising, Hypatius said to the king: - Among the horse lists 2288, where the statue of your father is located, ordered to set up a stove and heat it up as hot as possible, waiting for me to come there. They immediately prepared and lit the stove; Then Saint Hypatius, taking the holy staff, approached the royal palace, opened the gates of the treasury and beat the serpent with the rod for a long time. The people and the king, overwhelmed with fear and trembling, looked from afar, and, seeing that the serpent was not crawling away (and the day was already leaning towards evening), everyone thought that the serpent had killed the saint, as had happened earlier with some priests. Saint Hypatius, raising his eyes to heaven and calling on the Lord for help, put a rod into the snake’s mouth with the words: - In the name of my Lord Jesus Christ, follow me. The serpent, grasping the staff with his teeth, like a bound captive, followed the saint. And indeed, the great miracle worker bound him by the power of God. Then Saint Hypatius walked away from the royal treasury, walked around the entire horse lists and trading area, leading the snake. The people, seeing the serpent holding the edge of the staff and being drawn by the saint, were horrified and surprised. And the serpent was very terrible, its length was equal to sixty cubits 2289. Approaching the fiery furnace, burning with a great flame, the saint said to the snake: - In the Name of Christ, Whom I, unworthy, preach, I command you to enter into the middle of that fire! Then the terrible snake, bending over, rushed swiftly into the fiery furnace, in the middle of which it burned. Everyone who looked at this with horror glorified God for the fact that during their lifetime He had revealed to the world such a lamp and wonderworker, Saint Hypatius. Then the king gave great thanks to God and His saint, Saint Hypatius, whom he revered as his father. He ordered an image of his face to be made on a board and placed this image in his royal treasury to drive away demons; and, having rewarded the saint with gifts and kindly kissed him, he sent him away to his house. When the saint was returning to his hierarchal throne, evil people, followers of the teachings of Novatus 2290, being inflamed by great envy of the saint of God, ambushed him on his way in a narrow passage, on the edge of a mountain abyss and on the shore of a swamp, armed with swords and stakes. As soon as he approached that place, they suddenly attacked him, rushing like wild animals, and, having severely wounded him, threw him from a high bank into a swamp. The saint, remaining barely alive, stretched out his hands a little upward and, raising his eyes to heaven, like the once holy First Martyr Stephen, prayed for his murderers, saying: “Lord! Do not impute this sin to them” (Acts 7:60). And when he prayed like this, one evil woman, adhering to the Aryan heresy, took a heavy stone, hit the saint hard on the head with it and killed him. The holy soul Hypatia, immediately renouncing the body, departed to the Lord 2291. The murderers, taking the saint’s body, hid it in a cave located near that place and left. But God’s punishment was not long in coming for them for shedding innocent blood. So, first of all, an unclean spirit attacked that woman and tormented her in the same place. She continually beat herself in the chest with that same stone; then all those tormentors became possessed and suffered greatly. After that, a certain farmer who owned that cave (where he stored the straw), knowing nothing about the unjust murder that had been committed, came from there to take straw for his livestock and, hearing the voices of the singing Angels, was surprised and horrified. And when he, starting to take the straw, found a dead body covered with wounds, he was even more horrified; Having recognized his holy bishop Hypatius in the dead man, he ran to his fellow villagers, and they soon told about all this in the city. The inhabitants of the city of Gangr, immediately gathered, came with great weeping to that place and, taking the honorable body of the holy father and their shepherd, buried him with great honor. The woman murderer followed the body of the saint, carried to burial, and on the way she beat herself with the very stone with which she killed the bishop of God, and publicly confessed her sin. When the saint's body was buried, that woman was healed of demonic possession; All the others who were previously possessed by demons, accomplices in the murder of the saint, were also healed at the tomb of the saint, who even after death benefited his enemies, out of his kindness. Many other miracles and healings took place there over people who came with faith to the tomb of Saint Hypatius, through his prayers to God. Paphlagonia - Asia Minor region Emperor Constantius reigned from 337 to 361. Constantine II, eldest son of Constantine the Great, reigned from 337 to 340. Place of horse racing competition. Elbow is a measure of length; it was equal to 10–12 of our tops. Novatus was a presbyter of the Carthaginian church who lived in the 3rd century. and known as the founder of the church schism. The essence of this schism is as follows: when in 248 Saint Cyprian was elected bishop of Carthage, five presbyters, among whom Novatus especially stood out, dissatisfied with this election, separated from Cyprian, and Novatus, without the knowledge and will of the bishop, appointed Felicissimus, a rich and influential man, as a deacon. That schism in Church History is known as the “schism of Novatus and Felicissimo.” The schismatics who separated from the church were condemned at the Council of Carthage in 251. The death of the holy martyr followed around 326. You might be interested in: