Our Church commemorates today Hieromartyr Charalampus the Wonderworker and with him martyrs Porphyrius and Baptus, Saint Anastasius II, Patriarch of Jerusalem, and Saint Zeno the Righteous, the Postman of Emperor Valens, a hermit at Antioch.
Saint Charalampus was a priest in Magnesia (Asia Minor). When Severus launched a persecution against the Christians in 198 AD, the governor Lucian arrested the saint and asked him to renounce his faith. Everything has been tried, to no avail. Lucian was then enraged and grabbed the iron hooks himself, and tried to scrape all the skin from his body.
However, his hands were miraculously cut off and left hanging over the saint’s body, who, nevertheless, asked God to heal his torturer. Then two of the soldiers, Porphyrius and Baptus, after witnessing the miracle, confessed their faith in God.
Lucian, though healed, remained stubborn in his lack of faith and ordered the beheading of Saint Charalampus and the two soldiers, who thereby were deemed worthy to receive the everlasting crown of holiness and confession before the Holy Trinity.
Source: Church of Cyprus