July 16: Feast of the Holy Hieromartyr Athenagenestranslated

Today the Church celebrates the memory of the holy Hieromartyr Athenagenes and his ten disciples, the martyr Antiochus, brother of the martyr Plato, who was a physician and martyred at the end of the 3rd century AD. Athenagenes came from Sebasteia in Cappadocia and lived during the reign of Diocletian. The great exercise of the virtue of humility, which distinguished him, as well as the broad education and the other virtues in which he excelled over his compatriots, contributed to his joining the holy clergy, even taking the position of bishop Pidachthoi.

As a bishop he was distinguished for his love for God and man, for his great charitable work and the pious zeal with which he worked for the spread of the Gospel as well as the service of both the spiritual care and the welfare and social progress of his flock.

According to tradition, we owe him the well-known vesper hymn "Light of the Holy Glory...". During the persecution of Diocletian, along with ten of his disciples, Riginus, Maximinus, Patrophilus, Athenogenes, Antiochus, Ammon, Theophrastus, Cleonicus, Peter and Hesychius, he was arrested by the ruler Philimachus, and although they all submitted...