Today the Church keeps the memory of St Aristobulus of the Seventy, one of the Lord’s Apostles, and he who first brought the saving Faith in the Holy Trinity to the British Isles.  A man of rich faith, his brother also received Christ’s Apostolic calling: the holy Apostle Barnabas of the Seventy. The brothers’ travels with St Paul are recounted in the latter’s epistle to the Church in Rome (Rom. 16.10); and it was in fact St Paul who ordained the Apostle Aristobulus a Bishop and sent him to Britain. There the Apostle went, and preached, and taught the largely Pagan culture to love the True God, greater than all the false gods the world can fabricate, and the source of more love than the world has ever known.

St Aristobulus faced challenges and persecutions in his work, but he did not relent in his Apostolic calling or pastoral labours. He reposed in the Lord in Britain, the land of his devotion and service to God — and those who live in the Orthodox Faith in Great Britain and Ireland today have as their foundation the work of one whom Christ Himself called out to bring His Gospel to these ‘far-off lands’.

We cherish the memory of this saint especially, because he grounds the faith which we live and breathe in the very breath of Christ. His was an Apostolic witness: he bore testimony to what he saw and heard, and this testimony began a transformation that would be ongoing for centuries, changing the British Isles into lands alive with the Gospel of God Himself.

Grounded in this Apostolic Faith, let us seek to live the same life St Aristobulus preached, benefitting from his heavenly intercessions, and striving after the Kingdom in which he now awaits us!