Righteous Righteous Lazarus of the Four Days

Righteous Lazarus of the Four Days, the Friend of God, lived in Bethany near Jerusalem with his sisters Martha and Mary, whom the Lord Jesus Christ often visited and loved as close friends. After a grave illness and death, four days after his burial Christ raised Lazarus from the dead by the power of His word at the tomb — the greatest of His recorded miracles (John 11), a foreshadowing of the general resurrection and one of the events that hastened the chief priests' resolve to kill Christ.

After being raised, Lazarus is said to have lived roughly another thirty years. Fleeing persecution by the Jews, he left Palestine and settled on Cyprus, where the Apostles Paul and Barnabas consecrated him the first bishop of the city of Kition (modern Larnaca). There he died peacefully a second time.

In the ninth century his relics were discovered in Kition in a marble tomb inscribed "Lazarus the Four-Days-Dead, Friend of Christ," and in 898 (or 901) Emperor Leo VI the Wise had them translated to Constantinople. His memory is kept on the movable Lazarus Saturday and on the fixed date of October 17/30.