Venerable Martyr Dometius the Persian and His Two Disciples (+363)

The Venerable Martyr Dometius was a Persian and kept to the false faith of his forefathers until, in his youth, a Christian named Uar enlightened his mind with the light of the teaching of the Gospel. After this the blessed one did not wish to stay in his homeland; he went to the border city of Nisibis (in Mesopotamia), was baptised, and became a monk in one of the monasteries. The blessed one’s gifts of grace aroused the envy of the inhabitants of the monastery, and so Dometius withdrew from them and went to the monastery of Saints Sergius and Bacchus in Theodosiopolis. Here the saint laboured under the guidance of a strict ascetic, the archimandrite Nurvel. Seeing Dometius’s wonderful labours, Nurvel ordained him deacon, and later wished to make him a presbyter as well, but the saint considered himself unworthy and withdrew to a desolate mountain in Syria. Here the blessed father lived under the open sky, and later settled in a cave with two disciples. Dometius converted many pagans to the law of Christ. Once the Emperor Julian the Apostate (361–363), on his way to fight the Persians, passed through the region where the blessed father and his disciples were labouring. By his order the soldiers sought out the God-pleasers and then, according to one tradition, stoned them, or, according to another account, walled up the entrance of the cave and buried them in it alive (+363).