For more than one hundred years the Church of Christ was troubled by the persecution of the Iconoclasts of evil belief, beginning in the reign of Leo the Isaurian (717-741) and ending in the reign of Theophilus (829-842). After Theophilus's death, his widow the Empress Theodora (celebrated Feb. 11), together with the Patriarch Methodius (June 14), established Orthodoxy anew. This ever-memorable Queen venerated the icon of the Mother of God in the presence of the Patriarch Methodius and the other confessors and righteous men, and openly cried out these holy words: "If anyone does not offer relative worship to the holy icons, not adoring them as though they were gods, but venerating them out of love as images of the archetype, let him be anathema." Then with common prayer and fasting during the whole first week of the Forty-day Fast, she asked God's forgiveness for her husband. After this, on the first Sunday of the Fast, she and her son, Michael the Emperor, made a procession with all the clergy and people and restored the holy icons, and again adorned the Church of Christ with them. This is the holy deed that all we the Orthodox commemorate today, and we call this radiant and venerable day the Sunday of Orthodoxy, that is, the triumph of true doctrine over heresy.

This saint lived during the reign of emperor Decius in 251. He came from the town of Nazareth. He left his hometown and went to the city of Mandron, in the province of Pamphylia. There he stayed at a place called Karmela or Karmena cultivating a garden which he used to water and plant with various vegetables. From this garden he obtained what is necessary for life. He had such an upright and simple mind that, when he met those who wished to arrest him and saw that they greeted him, he also greeted in return from the bottom of his soul and heart. When they told him that governor Publius called the saint to go to him, the saint answered with simplicity: "What does the governor need me, since I am a Christian? Let him call those who think the way he does and have the same religion with him." So, the blessed man was tied and brought to the governor, who tried to move him to sacrifice to the idols. But the saint sighed from the bottom of his heart, cursed the tyrant and confirmed his faith in Christ with his confession, saying that it is not possible to be moved from it even though he might be tortured cruelly. So, for this reason they nailed his feet and made the saint run in front of the governor's coach. But the saint fainted in the street. Having fallen on his knees, he prayed and, thus, he commended his holy soul to the hands of God.

These Martyrs, men of high rank in the Roman (Byzantine) army, were taken captive when the city of Amorion in Phrygia fell to the Moslem Arabs in 838, during the reign of Theophilus the Iconoclast. Among them were Aetius and Melissenus, the generals; Theodore, the chief of the imperial ceremonial bodyguard; Craterus, the eunuch; Callistus, Constantine, Bassoes, and Theophilius, who were military officials; and certain others who held important positions. Because of their experience in war and their virtue, the Moslems did not slay them, but tried by all means to convert them to Islam and have them to fight in their own campaigns. They kept the holy Martyrs shut up in a dark dungeon in the city of Samarra in Syria, threatening and abusing them, making promises of glorious rank and magnificent riches, keeping them in hunger, oppression, and darkness, not for a few weeks, or a few months, but for seven full years. Finally, unable to break the courage and faith of their captives, they beheaded them in the year 845.

These holy Bishops were sent to Cherson on the Black Sea by Hermon, Bishop of Jerusalem, in the days of Diocletian, about the year 300, to preach the Gospel. Ephraim and Basileus were sent first. Basileus raised to life the dead son of a local ruler, because of which many were baptized. Those who remained in their unbelief, however, dragged him through the streets until he died. Ephraim, refusing to offer sacrifice to idols, was beheaded. After them, Euguene, Agathodorus, Capito, and Elpitius were sent by the Bishop of Jerusalem as heralds of the Faith, but they also were slain by the ungodly. Last of all, the Bishop of Jerusalem sent Aetherius; he was drowned during the reign of Saint Constantine the Great.

Our righteous father Lavrentios (Lawrence) was born in Megara of Attica during the first half of the 17th century to simple parents: Demetrios and Kyriake, who were pious in the Orthodox faith and dedicated to the Church.

His name in the world was Lampros Kanellos. When he came of age, he was married to Vasilo, with whom he bore two children: Demetrios and John. He lived a pious and simple life with his family, during those difficult days of the Turkish occupation.

He was a farmer by trade, and he also knew about construction work. His life was utterly virtuous, with traditional Orthodox piety and prayer in his heart, gifts which made him a friend of God and His Saints.

Because of this, when once he was with others tilling the fields, during the night, the Most-Holy Theotokos appeared to him in a vision, in which she called him to go to the place that she showed him, to build her Church. This place was on the north side of the island of Salamis (Salamina), across from the shore of Megara named Megalo Pevko (today Nea Pergamos). The elder did not agree to complete this command, so the Panagia appeared to him again the next night, appearing more serious. But as he still kept his doucts, the third time the Panagia appeared to him, saying: “Go quickly, O man, to the island which I told you, to complete that which is protected by me.”

Then the humble elder returned to the city of Megara, and related the vision to some of his close friends, of which some believed and some did not. Thus returned to his house without a decision.

One night, the Most-Holy Theotokos again appeared to him, ordering him to go to Salamina to complete her command.

Then he made the great decision to go to the opposite shore. However, there was a great storm in the sea, and there were no boats to take him across to Salamina. As he sat pondering and worried, he heart an other-worldly voice tell him: “Throw your cloak on the sea and sit upon it, and you will be taken without danger to the island”. With total faith in the divine command, and driving out all fear and hesitation, he threw his cloak on the sea, and was transported safe and unharmed to the island of Salamina. He immediately went to the place that the Theotokos had showed him, and having excavated the remains of an ancient holy Monastery, with much toil, he uncovered the wonderworking icon of the Mother of God, which had been darkened by the moisture, but is truly the treasure of the island of Salamina, and the whole Orthodox Church.

This icon of the Most-Holy Theotokos, was named “Phaneromenh”, because thus it was revealed to the Righteous Saint. The Holy Monastery took the same name, and the Righteous man continued with much toil to rebuild it. It was here that he became a Monk, taking the monastic name “Lavrentios”. In this Monastery he was made the Abbot, and he gathered Hieromonks and Monks, teaching them and giving to them an example of the righteous life in God, and a sacred example in their days.

At first he built the small Chapel, which today bears the name of St. Nicholas, and later the great Katholikon, which he also had decorated with amazing frescos, which exist to this day.

This simple man, the Righteous Lavrentios, God granted wondrous spiritual gifts, among which is the gift of wonderworking, as the Saint demonstrated during his life. One such wonder was the healing of the wife of an Ottoman general, whom the doctors could not heal. The fame of St. Lavrentios, that he could heal the sick through his prayer, reached her years, and against the protestations of her husband, she went from their home in Athens to the area, where with prayer and the sign of the cross on her body, she was saved from certain death. This miracle not only struck her husband with deep respect, but he proceeded to grant the Holy Monastery land with olive trees, which are in the area of Megara, which is today called Vlychada, which the Ottoman seized against the law.

The Saint lived many years in asceticism and prayer, and reposed in the Lord on the 9th of March, 1707, the day of the holy Forty Martyrs of Sebaste, as it appears in a manuscript preserved in the Holy Monastery from those days. He passed on the position of Abbot to his son John, who became a Monk with the Monastic name Joachim.

St. Lavrentios' memory, however, was transferred to March 7th by Monks in his Monastery, that it might not fall on the same day as the great feast of the Holy Forty Martyrs.

Theophylact was from the East; his native city is unknown. In Constantinople he became a close friend of Tarsius, who afterwards became Patriarch of Constantinople (see Feb. 25).Theophylact was made Bishop of Nicomedia. After the death of Saint Tarsius, his successor Nicephorus (see June 2) called together a number of Bishops to help him in fighting the iconoclasm of Emperor Leo the Armenian, who reigned from 813-820. Among them was Euthymius, Bishop of Sardis (celebrated Dec. 26), who had attended the holy Seventh Ecumenical Council in 787 - he was exiled three times for the sake of the holy icons, and for defying the Emperor Theophilus' command to renounce the veneration of the icons, was scourged from head to foot until his whole body was one great wound, from which he died eight days later, about the year 830; Joseph of Thessalonica (see July 14); Michael of Synnada (see May 23); Emilian, Bishop of Cyzicus (see Aug. 8); and Saint Theophylact, who boldly rebuked Leo to his face, telling him that because he despised the long-suffering of God, utter destruction was about to overtake him, and there would be none to deliver him. For this, Theophylact was exiled to the fortress of Strobilus in Karia of Asia Minor, where, after 30 years of imprisonment and hardship, he gave up his holy soul about the year 845. Leo the Armenian, according to the Saint's prophecy, was slain in church on the eve of our Lord's Nativity, in 820.

These holy Martyrs, who came from various lands, were all soldiers under the same general. Taken into custody for their faith in Christ, and at first interrogated by cruel means, they were then stripped of their clothing and cast onto the frozen lake which is at Sebastia of Pontus, at a time when the harsh and freezing weather was at its worst. They endured the whole night naked in such circumstances, encouraging one another to be patient until the end. He that guarded them, named Aglaius, who was commanded to receive any of them that might deny Christ, had a vision in which he saw heavenly powers distributing crowns to all of the Martyrs, except one, who soon after abandoned the contest. Seeing this, Aglaius professed himself a Christian and joined the Martyrs on the lake, and the number of forty remained complete. In the morning, when they were almost dead from the cold, they were cast into fire, after which their remains were thrown into the river. Thus they finished the good course of martyrdom in 320, during the reign of Licinius. These are their names: Acacius, Aetius, Aglaius, Alexander, Angus, Athanasius, Candidus, Chudion, Claudius, Cyril, Cyrion, Dometian, Domnus, Ecdicius, Elias, Eunoicus, Eutyches, Eutychius, Flavius, Gaius, Gorgonius, Helianus, Heraclius, Hesychius, John, Lysimachus, Meliton, Nicholas, Philoctemon, Priscus, Sacerdon, Severian, Sisinius, Smaragdus, Theodulus, Theophilus, Valens, Valerius, Vivianus, and Xanthias.

This Saint was born in Damascus. As a young man he became a monk at the Monastery of Saint Theodosius the Cenobiarch in Palestine, where he met John Moschus and became his close friend. Having a common desire to search out ascetics from whom they could receive further spiritual instruction, they journeyed together through Palestine, Syria, Asia Minor, and Egypt, where they met the Patriarch of Alexandria, Saint John the Almsgiver, with whom they remained until 614, when Persians captured Jerusalem (see also Saint Anastasius the Persian, Jan. 22). Saint Sophronius and John Moschus departed Alexandria for Rome, where they remained until 619, the year of John Moschus' death. Saint Sophronius returned to the Monastery of Saint Theodosius the Cenobiarch, and there buried the body of his friend. He laboured much in defence of the Holy Fourth Council of Chalcedon, and traveled to Constantinople to remonstrate with Patriarch Sergius and the Emperor Heraclius for changing the Orthodox Faith with their Monothelite teachings. After the death of Patriarch Modestus in December of 634, Sophronius was elected Patriarch of Jerusalem. Although no longer in the hands of the Persians, the Holy Land was now besieged by the armies of the newly-appeared religion of Mohammed, which had already taken Bethlehem; in the Saint's sermon for the Nativity of our Lord in 634, he laments that he could not celebrate the feast in Bethlehem. In 637, for the sins of the people, to the uttermost grief of Saint Sophronius, the Caliph Omar captured Jerusalem. Having tended the flock of his Master for three years and three months, Saint Sophronius departed in peace unto Him Whom he loved on March 11, 638.

Saint Sophronius has left to the Church many writings, including the life of Saint Mary of Egypt. The hymn "O Joyous Light," which is wrongly ascribed to him, is more ancient than Saint Basil the Great, as the Saint himself confirms in his work "On the Holy Spirit" (ch. 29). However, it seems that this hymn, which was chanted at the lighting of the lamps and was formerly called "The Triadic Hymn," was later supplemented somewhat by Saint Sophronius, bringing it into the form in which we now have it. Hence, some have ascribed it to him.