Veneration and the Feast

The Orthodox Church venerates Barnabas as a holy apostle — one of the Seventy, “equal to the apostles” in honor, founder and patron of the Church of Cyprus — and keeps his memory on June 11. This file gathers the cult of the apostle: his rank and titles, the feast and its place in the calendar, the hymnography and synaxarion notices, the Monastery of St. Barnabas near Salamis, and his commemoration across the Greek, Cypriot, and Russian traditions.

Tradition: Pan-Orthodox (Apostle)

Rank and Titles

Barnabas holds a distinctive place among the saints. Though not one of the Twelve, he is venerated as an apostle in the full sense — Luke himself calls him so (Acts 14:14) — and the tradition numbers him among the Seventy whom the Lord sent ahead of Him (Luke 10:1; the lists attributed to Dorotheus of Tyre and Pseudo-Hippolytus, received as tradition). The liturgical books accord him the honor of one “equal to the apostles” and a “first-called” laborer of the gospel, and venerate him above all under three titles drawn from his life: the son of encouragement (Acts 4:36), the apostle of Cyprus (its founder and patron), and the holy apostle and martyr (by the Cypriot tradition of his death at Salamis; see The Martyrdom at Salamis). These titles structure his veneration: he is honored as encourager, as founder, and as martyr.

The Feast of June 11

The principal feast of the apostle Barnabas is celebrated on June 11, a date shared across the Orthodox East and the Christian West. In the Orthodox calendar June 11 commemorates the holy, glorious, and all-praised Apostle Barnabas, frequently together with the Apostle Bartholomew, with whom he shares the day in the synaxaria. By the Cypriot tradition, June 11 is also the day of the finding of his relics under Archbishop Anthemios — so that the feast unites the memory of the apostle and the celebration of the inventio that secured the island’s autocephaly (see The Finding of the Relics). For the Church of Cyprus the day is among the greatest of its calendar, the feast of its founder. The Roman Catholic and Anglican calendars likewise keep June 11 as the feast of St. Barnabas, Apostle, a rare instance of East and West agreeing on the date (the Synaxarion, June 11; the Roman Martyrology).

Hymnography

The service to the apostle in the Menaion for June sets out the Church’s praise. The dismissal hymn (apolytikion) honors him as an apostle and intercessor; the kontakion and the canon celebrate his labors, his role in the apostolic mission, his founding of the Cypriot Church, and his martyrdom. The hymns dwell characteristically on the meaning of his name — the “son of consolation” who consoles and encourages the faithful — and on his standing as a “river of the teachings of Christ” watering Cyprus and the nations (the Menaion, June 11; the Great Horologion). The hymnography thus carries into worship the themes the Scriptures and the tradition supply: encouragement, apostolic labor, the founding of Cyprus, and the crown of martyrdom. The synaxarion reading for the day rehearses his life from Acts and the tradition of his death and the finding of his relics, in the compressed form proper to the liturgical commemoration.

The Monastery of St. Barnabas

The geographical heart of the apostle’s veneration is the Monastery of St. Barnabas near Salamis, in the region of ancient Constantia, close to Famagusta in eastern Cyprus. The monastery was founded, by the tradition, over the site of the finding of the relics, where Barnabas had been buried beneath the carob tree; the rock-cut tomb is preserved nearby and has long been a place of pilgrimage (Hackett, History of the Orthodox Church of Cyprus, 1901; see The Finding of the Relics). For centuries the monastery was the spiritual center of the cult of Barnabas on the island and a sign in stone of the apostolic foundation on which Cyprus rests its identity. The Cypriot Church’s veneration of its founder has always been concrete and local in this way — bound to the tomb, the relics, the monastery, and the privileges of its archbishops, all traced to Barnabas.

Across the Traditions

Barnabas is venerated across the whole Orthodox world, not only in Cyprus. In the Greek and Cypriot Churches he is honored with particular solemnity as the apostle of Cyprus and one of the Seventy, his feast among the chief commemorations of June. In the Russian Orthodox tradition he is commemorated on the same day (June 11 / June 24 on the civil calendar by the Julian reckoning), included in the synaxaria and the lives of the saints under the name Varnava (Варнава), the apostle of the Seventy and founder of the Cypriot Church. The Slavic Prologue and the lives compiled by St. Dimitri of Rostov carry his commemoration into the Russian liturgical memory. Across all these traditions the figure venerated is the same: the Levite of Cyprus whom the apostles named the son of encouragement, the partner of Paul, the founder of an apostolic Church, and a martyr for the gospel in his homeland.

What Endures

The veneration of Barnabas gathers up the whole arc of his life into the Church’s worship. The community remembers him as the man who gave his field and was named for his gift of encouragement (Acts 4:36–37); who vouched for the feared Saul and fetched him into the work (Acts 9:27; 11:25–26); who led the first mission and was taken for a god at Lystra (Acts 13–14); who would not abandon the failed John Mark even at the cost of his great partnership (Acts 15:37–39); who founded the Church of his native Cyprus; and who, by the tradition, died for the gospel at Salamis and gave his island, through the finding of his relics, the charter of its freedom. On June 11 the Church sings of all of this — and asks the prayers of the apostle who spent his life standing alongside others, the son of encouragement, that he may stand alongside the faithful still.

References

The Synaxarion of the Orthodox Church, June 11. (The commemoration of the Apostle Barnabas and the finding of his relics.)
The Menaion for the month of June, and The Great Horologion, the service to the Holy Apostle Barnabas (June 11).
The Gospel according to Luke 10:1; The Acts of the Apostles 4:36–37; 14:14. (The Seventy; the apostolic title.)
Hackett, John. A History of the Orthodox Church of Cyprus. London: Methuen, 1901. (The Monastery of St. Barnabas and the local veneration.)
The Lives of the Saints of St. Dimitri of Rostov, and the Slavic Prologue, June 11. (The Russian commemoration of the Apostle Varnava.)