Our Holy Father Hilarion the New.

Commemorated June 6 in the Orthodox Christian Menaion

From the Prologue

Abbot of the Dalmatian monastery in Constantinople, he was a disciple of Gregory of Decapolis and an imitator of the life of Hilarion the Great, whose name he took. Strong in prayer, enduring and courageous in suffering, he suffered much for the sake of the holy icons in the days of the iconoclast Emperors, Leo the Armenian and others. Then the Emperor Leo was killed by his personal bodyguard in the very church and at the very spot where he had first scoffed at the holy icons and from which he had removed the first icon, and holy Hilarion was let out of prison - but only for a while. He was again tortured and held in prison right up to the time of the Orthodox Empress Theodora. He was gifted with insight and discernment, and saw angels of God taking the soul of St Theodore the Studite to heaven. Being pleasing to God, he entered into rest in the Kingdom of heaven in 845, at the age of seventy.

From The Prologue From Ochrid by Bishop Nikolai Velimirovich
©1985 Lazarica Press, Birmingham UK