Feb. 15 – Apostle Onisim

The Apostle Onisim was one of the Seventy Apostles. At first he served as a slave to a wealthy and noble citizen in Phrygia, in Asia Minor—Filimon, who had been converted to Christ by the Apostle Paul. To escape punishment for a wrongdoing he had committed against his master, Onisim fled to Rome, where the Apostle Paul was then preaching the Gospel. The preaching of Paul brought about in him sincere repentance and ardent faith, and he was baptized. Then Onisim resolved to return to his master and asked the Apostle Paul to take part in reconciling him with his lord. The Apostle wrote a short epistle to Filimon, asking him to receive the runaway slave no longer as a slave, but as a brother, and as he would receive Paul himself. Filimon not only forgave Onisim but also granted him freedom. Then Onisim returned to Paul, and after his death he set out to preach the teaching of Christ. He preached in Spain, Greece, and Asia Minor; toward the end of his life he was bishop in Ephesus. There he converted many pagans to Christ. The holy Apostle reposed around the year 109.

The Venerable Evseviy, who struggled in the 4th–5th centuries, received the beginnings of monastic life in a cenobitic monastery. Then he labored in solitude on the ridge of a mountain that stood above the Syrian city of Asikhoi. Content with a simple enclosure of dry stones, Evseviy lived under the open sky, clothing himself in leather garments and feeding on chickpeas and soaked beans. His body became so emaciated from fasting that a belt no longer stayed on his hips, and it had to be sewn to his tunic. During the seven weeks of Great Lent he ate only fifteen figs in total, though he was exhausted, weak, and had lost almost all his teeth. St. Evseviy carried on this struggle for many years, enduring every kind of bad weather, for his longing for God made all trials light for him. Numerous visitors distracted him from unceasing prayer, so he walled up the entrance to his enclosure with a huge stone and communicated with those close to him through a small window. But the pilgrims did not cease to disturb him. Then, despite his frailty, he leapt over the wall of the enclosure and went to a nearby monastery. There Evseviy continued his ascetic labors, building himself a little shed in the corner of the fortress wall. Thus, “drenched in sweat,” as his biographer Feodorit says, yet with desire fixed on the crown that the Most High Judge was extending to him from Heaven, he reached the end of his course at the age of 100 years.