Luke of Mytilene

Venerable New Martyr Luke of Mytilene, born in Adrianople and hanged at Mytilene on the island of Lesbos in the year 1802, at nineteen, after he had once denied the faith and then confessed Christ.

His father died when he was six, and his mother, left in poverty, gave him to a merchant of Zagora, who took him to Russia and then to Constantinople. After a few years Luke quarrelled with a Muslim boy and beat him in front of his mother's house. Other Muslims ran to punish him, and to escape Luke cried: "Let me go, I am becoming a Muslim." He was then adopted by a rich Muslim, but his conscience began to torment him. His former master tried to help him through the Russian embassy, but the agha who had adopted him ordered him circumcised by force. After a few days Luke managed to flee to Galata, where his former master and an embassy official had him take off the Muslim clothes. A spiritual father told him to go to the Holy Mountain.

He reached the Great Lavra, then Iviron, where he told the abbot that he had not been received back into the Church, so he was sent to the Skete of Saint John the Forerunner, where he was received back. He returned to Iviron, then to Stavronikita, where he received a blessing to wear the cassock. Not finding his place, he went out into the world, but there too he found no peace and returned to Athos. At Saint Anne Skete he was received with love by Elder Bessarion, to whom he told of his fall and his wish to confess. Bessarion tried to discourage him, showing him the torments, then sent him to Father Ananias, the skete's confessor, who praised his courage but told him what he would have to endure, and had him prepare spiritually. With the confessor's blessing he went to the island of Mytilene, to the village of Pamphilia, where he received a piece of the bloodied shirt of the New Martyr Theodore of Mytilene, and from there to the capital of the island.

Before the kadi he said: "When I was thirteen I was deceived by you and came to your faith. But, coming to the age of understanding, I realized that your religion is not true. I renounce it before you and confess my former Christian faith, which is the true light." The kadi asked him to think, and he answered: "I have thought beforehand about all the torments, and yet I have come. I am an Orthodox Christian and an Orthodox Christian I will die." Despite flattery and threats he remained unmoved. The metropolitan of Mytilene ordered prayers in all the churches of the island for "the servant of God Luke" and sent him Holy Communion in prison. On Sunday, 23 March, he was taken from prison and, after a last temptation, hanged in the Greeks' square at Mytilene. His body remained three days on the gallows, seeming asleep, with a pleasant fragrance. Then it was thrown into the sea, but the sea cast it onto the shore, and the Christians buried it in secret. His grave became a source of miracles and healings.