Eutyches, Disciple of John the Theologian

Eutyches was a hearer of the apostle John the Theologian in his old age at Ephesus, baptized by John and instructed in the faith by him, and afterwards a hearer of the apostle Paul during Paul's labors in Asia Minor. He is not the Eutyches who appears in Acts 20, falling from a window at Troas — that was a different Eutychus — but a separate Eutyches whom the Eastern tradition counts among the wider apostolic circle and ranks alongside the Seventy in honor.

After the death of the apostles he labored as a missionary in his own native regions of Asia Minor and Pisidia, planting churches in the smaller cities of the interior. He suffered many torments under the local governors in successive waves of persecution — starvation, exposure to lions in the amphitheater, and the rack — but the synaxarion records that he was preserved through all of them by the prayers of the Mother of God, to whom he had a particular devotion. He finally reposed in peace at an advanced age.

His feast falls on August 24.