The Church commemorates Holy Apostles Jason and Sosipater of the Seventy and their companions on Corfu.
Jason came from Tarsus or Thessaloniki, and Sosipater from Achaia.
Jason’s name appears in two of the books of the New Testament, the Acts of the Apostles and the Epistle to the Romans.
His action begins immediately after his conversion to Christianity. Jason hosts Paul and Silas in his home, as Saint Luke the Apostle mentions in Acts 6:17, offers his help to the teacher and to the early Christians, offers his own house for the synaxis and is persecuted for his faith in Christ.
With Sosipater he traveled to the island of Corfu, where they preached the Holy Gospel. Both of Saint Paul’s disciples, due to their missionary activity, were slandered, arrested and imprisoned. The daughter of the island’s governor, Kerkyra, was touched by their suffering, decided to embrace Christianity, and later was martyred for to devotion to the resurrected Jesus Christ. The two Apostles were cruelly tortured. They were thrown into an iron cauldron with tar and resin. Jason came out unscathed while Sosipater fell asleep in the Lord. Seeing the ordeal of the two Apostles, the governor repented, was baptized, and received the name Sebastian.
Apostle Jason died of old age, serving the Church of Corfu and building temples. The people of Corfu, for the offer of the two Apostles, venerate them in a beautiful temple dedicated to them, which is considered the oldest in the city of Corfu.
The sacred skulls of the Holy Apostles Jason and Sosipater are kept in the Holy Monastery of Venerable Loukas of Boeotia.
Source: Church of Cyprus
