Saints Sadoth and one hundred twenty-eight companions

In Persian, his name means “the king’s friend.” It’s the bitterest thing that can be said about him, because it was a king who had him killed. Shahdost — whom the Roman Martyrology calls Sadoth — was bishop of Seleucia-Ctesiphon, the great city on the Tigris that was the heart of the Church of the East. He came from Beth Garmai, or perhaps from Susa; the sources about him are few and don’t agree on everything. He was archdeacon to Simeon bar Sabbae, and when Simeon was martyred, he took his place on the bishop’s chair. Taking it, at that moment, could mean only one thing. The Persian king Shapur II had unleashed a brutal persecution against Christians, and the previous bishop had just been killed. Shahdost accepted anyway. He led his Church for two years and five months. Then they arrested him too, together with **one hundred twenty-eight** priests, religious and lay people of his Church. They were deported to Bēṯ Lapaṭ, where the king was living at the time, and there they were beheaded, probably in the summer of 342 or 343. The Martyrology remembers them all together: him and his one hundred twenty-eight. He is venerated as a saint by both Catholics and Orthodox, and his feast falls today. There’s no name day we can celebrate, and maybe that’s as it should be: today we remember a man who accepted a post knowing exactly how it would end, and one hundred twenty-eight people who followed him.