Our Church today commemorates Venerable Procopius of Decapolis and Martyr Gelasius.
Venerable Procopius of Decapolis lived during the reign of Emperor Leo III the Isaurian (717 – 741 AD) and was distinguished for his spiritual bravery as an advocate of the Orthodox faith.
Even though he became a monk from an early age, he did not isolate himself in his kellion, but fought vigorously against the iconoclasts. That is why he was brutally tortured, such as beatings, imprisonment and exile.
He was also distinguished in the Church’s struggle against heretical Monophysites, who questioned the Christological doctrine of the Faith, that Jesus Christ is a perfect God and a perfect man.
Jesus Christ being both God and man is the Savior and Redeemer of human nature and the image of God imprinted on man, precisely because He is Human. The two natures of Jesus Christ, according to the Chalcedonian Definition adopted at the Council of Chalcedon in AD 451, were united in his person, whose hypostatic union is “unconfusedly, unchangeably, indivisibly, inseparably.”
