Venerable Joseph the Hymnographer

Life

He was born in Sicily to pious and virtuous parents, Plotinos and Agathia. After the death of his parents he moved to Thessalonica, where he was tonsured a monk. As a monk he was an example to all in fasting, extreme abstinence, unceasing prayer, psalmody, vigil, and labor. The Bishop of Thessalonica ordained him a hieromonk. The renowned Gregory the Decapolite, visiting Thessalonica, came to love Joseph with his whole soul and heart on account of his rare character, and took him with him to his monastery in Constantinople. When the flame of the iconoclast heresy flared up again under Leo the Armenian, this Joseph was dispatched to Rome, to summon the Pope and the Roman Church to struggle for the true Faith. But along the way pirates seized him and brought him to Crete, where the heretics kept him in prison for six years. Joseph rejoiced that he had been accounted worthy to suffer for Christ, and gave thanks to God for it unceasingly, regarding the iron chains upon himself as ornaments of gold. In the sixth year, on the Nativity of Christ, in the morning, the wicked Emperor Leo was slain at Matins in the church. At that very moment Saint Nicholas appeared to Joseph in prison and said to him: "Arise and follow me!" Joseph felt himself lifted into the air, and suddenly found himself before Constantinople. At his arrival all the Orthodox rejoiced. He composed canons and stichera for many saints. He possessed the gift of clairvoyance, on account of which Patriarch Photius appointed him as spiritual father and confessor to the clergy, commending him as "a man of God, an angel in the flesh, a father of fathers." In deep old age he gave up his spirit to the Lord, Whom he had faithfully served both in deed and in song. He reposed peacefully on the eve of Great Thursday in the year 883.

From the Hymn of Praise

### THE HANDMAID OF THE LORD, THE VIRGIN FERVUTA