Today, July 3, the Bulgarian Orthodox Church celebrates the day of St. Anatoly, Patriarch of Constantinople.
On this day every year, men named: Anatoli and Anatoly are celebrated.
Saint Anatoly, Patriarch of Constantinople, was born in Alexandria in the second half of the IV century - at a time when many members of noble families of Byzantium with all the fervor of living faith and armed with Greek philosophical wisdom rushed to the bosom of the Church of Christ . St. Antholius was a deacon of St. Cyril of Alexandria. Together with St. Cyril Anatoly, he attended the Third Ecumenical Council in Ephesus (431), at which the holy fathers condemned the false teaching of Nestorius.
Saint Anatoly remained a deacon in Alexandria, and after the death of Saint Cyril († 444), archbishop of Constantinople, when Dioscorus ascended the patriarchal throne, who held another heresy propagated by Eutychius, who maintained that the divine nature in Christ ate a man. This false teaching undermines the very foundation of the Church's teaching on the salvation and redemption of mankind. In the year 449 Dioscorus and his supporters gathered in Ephesus "predatory" heretically supported by the imperial court itself, the Patriarch of Constantinople, St. Flavian was deposed and crucified.
Elected to the Holy See in Constantinople, Anatoly zealously undertook to restore the purity of Orthodoxy. Already in the year 450 in Constantinople St. Anatoly condemns the heresy of Eutychius and Dioscorus. The exiled patriarch Flavian the Confessor died, his relics were brought to the capital.
In the following year 451, with the active participation of the patriarch in the IV Ecumenical Council in Chalcedon. The Holy Fathers of Chalcedon accept the dogma of the veneration of the Lord Jesus Christ, "perfect in divinity and perfect in humanity, true God and true man, in two natures without confusion, immutable, indivisible, inseparably knowable."
But the heresy disturbed the holy church for a long time. In the constant struggle with false teachings, zealous for the truth, St. Anatoly, Patriarch of Constantinople, died in 458.
St. Anatoly also made a substantial contribution to the treasury of the liturgical Orthodox Church. His inspiration and prayerful theological depth verses belong on Sundays, some Lord's feasts (Nativity, Epiphany) and the days of the martyrs (St. Panteleimon the Healer, St. George, St. Demetrius of Thessaloniki). In the liturgical books, they are briefly defined as "Anatolian."