Holy Apostles of the Seventy Evodus (+66) and Onesiphorus (+after 67)

The holy Apostle Evodus, one of the Seventy, was the first Bishop of Antioch in Syria after the Apostle Peter. His successor, the Hieromartyr Ignatius the God-bearer (commemorated 20 December), mentions the holy father in his Epistle to the Antiochians: “Remember your blessed father Evodus, who was appointed by the apostles as your first shepherd.”

The holy apostle laboured for twenty-seven years in the rank of hierarch, and in the time of the Emperor Nero (54–68), at the age of sixty-six, commended his soul to the Lord as a martyr.

The Apostle Paul mentions the holy Apostle Onesiphorus in the Epistle to Timothy: “The Lord give mercy unto the house of Onesiphorus; for he oft refreshed me, and was not ashamed of my chain: but, when he was in Rome, he sought me out very diligently, and found me. The Lord grant unto him that he may find mercy of the Lord in that day: and in how many things he ministered unto me at Ephesus, thou knowest very well” (2 Tim. 1:16–18). Saint Onesiphorus was first appointed bishop in Colophon (Asia Minor), and afterwards governed the flock of Corinth. He died a martyr on the shore of the Hellespont, in the city of Parium (near Ephesus), where he had gone to preach the faith of Christ among the pagans. The lawless seized the Lord’s chosen one, brought him to an idol-temple and demanded that he burn incense to the pagan gods; when they received a firm refusal in reply, they tied him together with his servant Porphyrius to untamed horses and put them to death by dragging them along the ground. According to the Roman Martyrology, Saint Onesiphorus died on 16 September.