Through the parable of today's Gospel, our Saviour has set forth three things for us: the condition of the sinner, the rule of repentance, and the greatness of God's compassion. The divine Fathers have put this reading the week after the parable of the Publican and Pharisee so that, seeing in the person of the Prodigal Son our own wretched condition -- inasmuch as we are sunken in sin, far from God and His Mysteries -- we might at last come to our senses and make haste to return to Him by repentance during these holy days of the Fast.

Furthermore, those who have wrought many great iniquities, and have persisted in them for a long time, oftentimes fall into despair, thinking that there can no longer be any forgiveness for them; and so being without hope, they fall every day into the same and even worse iniquities. Therefore, the divine Fathers, that they might root out the passion of despair from the hearts of such people, and rouse them to the deeds of virtue, have set the present parable at the forecourts of the Fast, to show them the surpassing goodness of God's compassion, and to teach them that there is no sin -- no matter how great it may be -- that can overcome at any time His love for man.

Note: If it is not a leap year the hymns of Saint John are transferred to the 28th.

This Saint was born about the year 350, and was, according to some, from Rome, according to others, from Dacia Pontica (Dobrogea in present-day Romania). He was a learned man who had first served in the military. Later, he forsook this life and became a monk in Bethlehem with his friend and fellow-ascetic, Germanus of Dacia Pontica, whose memory is also celebrated today. Hearing the fame of the great Fathers of Scete, they went to Egypt about the year 390; their meetings with the famous monks of Scete are recorded in Saint John's Conferences. In the year 403 they went to Constantinople, where Cassian was ordained deacon by Saint John Chrysostom; after the exile of Saint Chrysostom, Saints Cassian and Germanus went to Rome with letters to Pope Innocent I in defence of the exiled Archbishop of Constantinople. There Saint Cassian was ordained priest, after which he went to Marseilles, where he established the famous monastery of Saint Victor. He reposed in peace about the year 433.

The last of his writings was On the Incarnation of the Lord, Against Nestorius, written in 430 at the request of Leo, the Archdeacon of Pope Celestine. In this work he was the first to show the spiritual kinship between Pelagianism, which taught that Christ was a mere man who without the help of God had avoided sin, and that it was possible for man to overcome sin by his own efforts; and Nestorianism, which taught that Christ was a mere man used as an instrument by the Son of God, but was not God become man; and indeed, when Nestorius first became Patriarch of Constantinople in 428, he made much show of persecuting the heretics, with the exception only of the Pelagians, whom he received into communion and interceded for them to the Emperor and to Pope Celestine.

The error opposed to Pelagianism but equally ruinous was Augustine's teaching that after the fall, man was so corrupt that he could do nothing for his own salvation, and that God simply predestined some men to salvation and others to damnation. Saint John Cassian refuted this blasphemy in the thirteenth of his Conferences, with Abbot Chairemon, which eloquently sets forth, at length and with many citations from the Holy Scriptures, the Orthodox teaching of the balance between the grace of God on one hand, and man's efforts on the other, necessary for our salvation.

Saint Benedict of Nursia, in Chapter 73 of his Rule, ranks Saint Cassian's Institutes and Conferences first among the writings of the monastic fathers, and commands that they be read in his monasteries; indeed, the Rule of Saint Benedict is greatly indebted to the Institutes of Saint John Cassian. Saint John Climacus also praises him highly in section 105 of Step 4 of the Ladder of Divine Ascent, on Obedience.

The Five Righteous Martyrs from the Island of Leipso of the Dodekanesa
The island with the historic name “Leipso”, and more modernly “Leipsoi” is in the north part of the Dodekanesa in the east Aegean and belongs ecclesiastically to the island Patmos, which along with it was given in 1088 AD to the Righteous St. Christodoulos Latreno by the Byzantine emperor Alexis Komenos.

In the archives of the holy Monastery of the Saint on Patmos we learned that around 1550 AD the first ascetics reached Leipso. The coming of these monks is noteworthy, as a foreshadowing of their holiness, which is preserved in the tradition among the faithful, that those first monks who departed from Patmos, spread out their robes on the ocean, walked on top and with the blessing of the Lord they brought them to Leipso, to the cove today named Dormition (of the Theotokos).

This cove gives way to an utterly dry slope, “H Skaphe”. This was chosen by those first ascetics as the place to build their hesychasterion, because with this choice they favored the austere landscape of that place, which matched their austere ascetical manner.

However, they encountered thousands of difficulties on that inhospitable slope of Skaphe, preventing them from taking root in its soil.

These hermits equal-to-the-angels countered these difficulties with their faith founded in heaven and and were enflamed first of all by the church of God, placing as their Lady the holy icon of the Dormition of the Theotokos, from which they named their home and the whole surrounding area.

The church, and not their cells, became their primary concern. They fought with the wild rocks and divided them to create the foundation of the church. They struggled with water shortage, which they countered with their sweat and their tears of repentance.

And the gift-granting God visited their struggle and their agony and granted them a fountain in the cove, which they named “Wild Water”, which continues to spring today from the bowels of the earth.

And as they built the dwelling of the holy icon of the Theotokos, they found individual homes of small caves surrounding the church all ready, where they could rest their bodies for awhile, which were exhausted from their all day work and all night prayer.

And they considered the narrowness of their small caves their ascetical kingdom before the vast ocean. In these those righteous ascetics would be on their knees, and bend to the earth in prayer in case the oldest had broken knees. They had hands to raise towards heavenly dwelling place of their archetype Jesus, in case the youngest was callous and the oldest was shaky.

Their second task was to find Bread and Wine for Holy Communion. For this they carried soil on their shoulders from a fertile land far away and created a small area to grow wheat and grape vines and thus to ensure the material prerequisites for Holy Communion.

And as the years passed, the allure of the hesychasterion of the Dormition attracted other ascetics, and indeed, as tradition holds, some “kollyvades” fathers from the Holy Mountain. Thus they founded a second hesychasterion on the slope with the name “Annunciation of the Theotokos”, which was located only 800 meters from the first. The ascetics here grew olives, to ensure with their fruit the undying flame of the vigil lamps before the icons, and with their own undying flame of their faith and struggle, along with their sweat and tears of repentance, watered the small olive trees and they grew large, as witnessed by the ruins today.

Centuries passed since those godly ascetics abandoned their wordly pursits and sought the two hesychasteria on the desert on the Skaphe mountain, but how much they breathed the aroma of the presence of God and and joined? [έσμιγαν] their psalmodies with those winged chanters, the birds, towards the heavenly Father, as the holiness of the whole area and beyond imparted to the atmosphere.

There numerous ascetics lived, whose earthly ends was recorded in the [record book] of the holy Monastery of St. John the Theologian on Patmos. Among them is treasured the martyrical end of five monks, who were led away by the Turkish rulers of our area. They unfortunately violated the holiness of the place. They watered it with the sanctified blood of five righteous martyred ascetics of the Dormition [Monastery]...

[The following are translations from the actual accounts by the Monastery:]

“In 1635 of the month of April was captured by Peker-Pasha the Monk Jonah the Garmpen, from the island of Syros and he was beaten, until he died.

“The same year Monk Neophytos the Phazon was seized by young men who slaughtered him with an axe and we began the memorial service and his funeral on December 8th.”

“The same year (1696) the most-holy Monk Parthenios from Phylipoplin falls asleep, departing at the wild water, his death by having his throat slit with a harpoon, may God grant him rest.”

“1558 April 6th the Monk Neophytos the Aimorginos was killed by the Turks in Leipso.

“1561 February 28th the servant of God Monk Jonah the Lerios was killed by the Turks.”

This was the martyrical end of the blessed ascetics...Because of this we perceive and honor you as worthy righteous martyrs.

Saint Kyranna came from the village of Ossa near Thessaloniki. Because she was very beautiful, one a day a certain janissary who came to the New Martyr's village in order to collect taxes, upon seeing her, wanted to make her his wife. Even though he tried to persuade her to change her religion with flatterings and gifts in order for her to marry him, the modest girl stubbornly refused to resign to his flattering. Then he began to bully and to threaten her that if she did not give up her faith, he would torture and kill her.

But the saint did not change her mind, neither with the threats nor his bullying. He therefore captured her and brought her to the Muslim judge in Thessaloniki, where before the judge he lied by saying that Kyranna cheated him by promising him that she would become Muslim in order to marry him, but at the end she refused to do so. When the Saint was asked to defend herself, she confessed before all who were present her faith in Christ, and right after, the Turks imprisoned her.

Inside the prison, the Saint went through daily torture from the janissary and the prison guards. One would hit her with a stick, another with the flat of his sword, and another would kick or punch her. Then when they left, the jailer would come and hang her by her arms and beat her until he was tired out, despite the cries of outrage and rebukes of the common prisoners. Despite these torments, Kyranna would remain strong and courageous, and seemed unaffected by the pain as if someone else were suffering, and she refused the food offered her.

One night, after seven days of such torment, on the 28th of February 1751, Kyranna was severely beaten by the jailer with a piece of wood and he left her hanging dead. This was done because the jailer had illegally allowed others in to beat Kyranna, and one Christian prisoner threatened to reveal this to the pasha. In the morning the body of the Saint was covered by Holy Light and gave off a celestial fragrance, as her soul was delivered to God, and the Christian prisoners upon seeing that, started to glorify the Lord, but the Muslims and Jews were afraid because they thought it was fire. When the Christian prisoner went to bring down the body of the Saint and found out that she was dead, he took care of it, and the next day it was given to the Christians who buried it. This Christian reprimanded the jailer, who came to repent of his evil deed.

Today, in the village of Ossa, a great church exists dedicated to the New Martyr, Saint Kyranna, who is also the patron Saint of the community, and for this reason it is dedicated to her memory, since she was born and lived in Ossa. According to the historian Asterios Thilikos, the church was built in 1840, or according to its foundation date, it was built in 1868. The miraculous icon of Saint Kyranna is kept inside the church, which was painted around 1870, by Christodoulos Ioannou Zografos from the village of Siatista.

The church is a center of reverence for the villagers of Ossa, a place of worship throughout the region and her memory there is celebrated on January 8. In a Codex of Great Lavra her memory is listed for celebration on January 1. Generally her memory is celebrated on February 28th. The reason why her feast is celebrated in January is because it often happens that February 28th lands during the somber season of Great Lent when celebrations are discouraged.