Saint Eutychius, Patriarch of Constantinople

Life

Born in Phrygia of pious parents. His father was a military officer. Once the boy Eutychius was playing with his companions, and their game consisted in each one writing his name upon a rock together with the rank he believed he would one day attain. When Eutychius's turn came, he wrote: "Eutychius — Patriarch!" In his thirtieth year he became Abbot of a monastery in Amasea. And when he was forty years of age, the Metropolitan of Amasea sent him in his stead to the Fifth Ecumenical Council. At the Council he shone like a radiant star among the fathers of the Church, as much by his learning as by his piety. When a dispute arose as to whether heretics could be subjected to anathema after their death, he upheld the view that they could, appealing to the Book of Kings 13:1-8 and to IV Kings 23:16. He greatly endeared himself to Emperor Justinian and to Patriarch Menas. The emperor frequently sought his counsel, and Menas (at that time greatly esteemed) designated him as his successor and besought the emperor to bring this to pass. And so it was. For twelve years Saint Eutychius governed the Church in peace. But then the devil raised a storm against him. That storm reached even to Emperor Justinian himself. For the emperor was beguiled and fell into the Monophysite heresy of the Aphthartodocetists, which falsely taught that the Lord Jesus even before His Resurrection possessed a divine and incorruptible body, without any sensation of hunger, thirst, or pain. Eutychius resolutely rose against this heresy, for which the emperor drove him into exile, to his original monastery. There Eutychius lived for twelve years and eight months, and showed himself a great wonderworker, healing people of various diseases by prayers and the anointing with oil. Justinian repented and died, and was succeeded by Justin, who restored Eutychius to the patriarchal throne, on which this holy man remained until his death, peacefully governing the Church of God. In his seventieth year he departed to the Kingdom of Christ the Lord, Whom he had faithfully and courageously served all his life, in the year 582.

From the Hymn of Praise

### SAINT EUTYCHIUSEutychius witnessed to Christ before the emperor:"Christ," he said, "possessed a body subject to infirmity,A body subject both to hunger and to pain,Like, yet not the same as, a body on the throne.