26 May / 8 June

The Holy Apostle Carpus

One of the Seventy, he was a follower and companion of the Apostle Paul, who installed him as Bishop of Varna in Thrace. But he also preached the Gospel in Crete, where he was host to St Dionysius the Areopagite. St Dionysius testifies that he was a man with an exceptionally pure mind, of great humility and guilelessness. He further relates how the Lord Jesus Himself appeared to Carpus in a vision with His angels, and how he never began the Liturgy without first receiving a heavenly vision. He endured many assaults for the name of Christ, and finally suffered at the hands of the faithless Jews and was murdered. His soul entered into the Kingdom of God, to delight forever in the vision of the Lord in glory; The Holy Apostle Alphaeus - the father of two of the Twelve Apostles: James the son of Alphaeus and Matthew the Evangelist. He entered peacefully into rest.

St. Augustine of Canterbury, evangeliser of England(c.605)

A native of Italy and a disciple of Felix, Bishop of Messana. He became prior of the Monastery of St Andrew on the Celian Hill in Rome, and was chosen by Saint Gregory the Great to lead a mission of forty monks to evangelise the Anglo-Saxon peoples of Britain. He arrived in 597A.D., landing at Ebbsfleet in Kent. He was given a guarded welcome by King Ethelbert, being allowed to centre his mission on the ancient church of St Martin in Canterbury Subsequently he brought the pagan king to the Christian Faith, baptising him and many thousands of his people. He was consecrated Bishop by St Virgilius of Arles, built the first cathedral in Canterbury and founded the Monastery of Sts Peter and Paul there, which, now in ruins, is more commonly called St Augustine's. He was instrumental in founding the English dioceses at Rochester and London, consecrating Sts Justus and Mellitus as their bishops. He also helped the king draft the earliest Anglo-Saxon written laws and founded a school in Canterbury He was known as a miracleworker in his lifetime, and he reposed in the Lord in the year 604 on 26th May. He was laid to rest near the as yet unfinished monastery Church of Sts Peter and Paul, and in 613 A.D., when it was dedicated, his sacred relics were placed within the church. Along with his Elder, the Pope St Gregory, he is rightly called the Apostle of the English. He was the founder of the English Church and hierarchy which remained Orthodox in faith and an integral part of the One Church founded by our Saviour for four and a half centuries. The many saints of that period are his spiritual children. Through his prayers may the Lord grant that those people of England who are now returning to the Apostolic and Orthodox faith receiving the one Baptism of the Church, might in this life and in the next be counted among that company of saints, the flock of St Augustine.

On the same day: Queen Bertha, apostle to the Anglo-Saxons at Kent; Our Holy Father John of Psychaita; The Holy New Martyr Alexander of Salonica