The Hieromartyr Hypatius, Bishop of Gangra.

Commemorated March 31 in the Orthodox Christian Menaion

From the Prologue

Born in Cilicia, he was bishop in the town of Gangra. At the First Ecumenical Council, he was lauded on all sides for his devout life and miracles. The Emperor Constantius ordered a bust of Hypatius to be made in the saint's lifetime, and he kept this bust in his palace as a weapon against every adverse power. Returning once from Constantinople, Hypatius was attacked in a gorge by a heretic, Novatianus, and was pushed off the road into the mud. On top of that, a woman of that company threw a rock at his head, and the saint thus finished his earthly course. But this woman suddenly went insane, and, taking the same rock, began to strike herself with it. When they brought her to the grave of St Hypatius and prayed for her, she was healed by Hypatius's compassionate spirit and spent the rest of her life in repentance and prayer. St Hypatius suffered and went to the eternal Kingdom of Christ our God in 326.

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