Saints Philemon and Apphia

Philemon was a well-to-do Christian of Colossae, in present-day Turkey, who had come to faith through Saint Paul. Apphia, greeted with him in Paul's Letter to Philemon, is generally thought to have been his wife, and a community of believers met in their house. Paul wrote to Philemon asking him to welcome back his runaway slave Onesimus "no longer as a slave but as a beloved brother." According to tradition, Philemon and Apphia were later put to death for their faith at Colossae.

Paul's short letter to them is the only private letter of his in the New Testament, and it is read as a lesson in forgiveness and Christian brotherhood.