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Holy Twenty Thousand Martyrs of Nicomedia 1/10/2013
In the reign of the cruel Emperor Maximian Galerius, Christianity in Nicomedia blossomed and grew day by day. One day when the Emperor was at the city he found out about the large number of Christians and the growth of the Christian Church, which annoyed him greatly so that he devised a plan to murder them all. The feast of the Nativity of our Lord was approaching and the Emperor learned that all Christians would gather at the church on that day, so he ordered his army to surround the church and burn it down on the feast day. The Christians had assembled at midnight and began to celebrate gloriously their divine feast when the soldiers surrounded the church so that nobody could escape, and a messenger of the Emperor entered the church and declared the Emperor’s order: they were all to sacrifice to the idols or they would be burned. Then a divine zeal seized the archdeacon and he began reminding the Christian assembly of the Three Young Men thrown into the Babylonian furnace. “Look brothers to the altar of God and understand that there has now sacrificed for us our Lord Who is the only true God; should not we lay our souls for Him on this holy place? The assembly became eager to die for Christ, and all catechumens were baptized and anointed with the holy myron. Then the soldiers set the church on fire and the Christians, twenty thousands in number, gave up their souls in the fire singing in glory to God. The church was burning for five days and an indescribable heavenly scent filled the air and the place was surrounded by a brilliant light. Thus ended their lives in glory many men, women and children and received the wreath of eternal glory in the Heavenly Kingdom. They suffered and were glorified in the year 302.
