Friday, 17 July 2026

Royal Passionbearers

Friday of the 7th week after Pentecost

96 days after Pascha · Tone 5 · Red cross (polyeleos typikon symbol) · Fast

Saints commemorated

★ Holy Great Martyr Marina of Antioch in Pisidia

Saint Marina, called Margaret in the West, was born about the year 275 in the city of Antioch in Pisidia, the daughter of Aedesius, a pagan priest. Her mother died while she was still an infant, and her father gave her to a Christian wet-nurse who lived on the family's country estate. There, while still a child, she came to know Christ; the woman taught her of the Saviour and of the lives of the saints, and her own heart was so kindled with faith that, at the age of twelve, she ardently desired to follow Christ even unto martyrdom. When her father learned of her conversion he disowned her, and she remained with her nurse, tending her flocks and meditating on the things of God. About the year 290 the eparch Olybrius, passing through, was struck by her beauty and wished to take her to wife if she would offer sacrifice to the gods, but Marina openly confessed Christ. He had her stripped, scourged, hung up and her body torn with iron combs, then cast into a dungeon, where she was assailed in the form of a hideous dragon; signing herself with the cross, she crushed the head of the demon. The next day fresh tortures were applied, but each time her wounds were healed, and many among the people, beholding the wonders, believed and were themselves martyred. At last she was beheaded under Diocletian, and her relics, after many translations, were enshrined principally at Constantinople and later, after 1213, at Montefiascone. She is honoured by the East as Great Martyr Marina and by the West as Margaret, and is one of the most beloved virgin martyrs of the universal Church.

Holy Scillitan Martyrs of Carthage

The Scillitan Martyrs were twelve Christians of the small African town of Scillium (Scilli), in Numidia, who were brought before the proconsul Publius Vigellius Saturninus at Carthage on 17 July 180 in the reign of the emperor Commodus. Their names were Speratus, Nartzalus, Cittinus, Veturius, Felix, Aquilinus, Laetantius, Januaria, Generosa, Vestia, Donata and Secunda. The principal spokesman was Speratus, who, in answer to the proconsul's question what he carried in his case, replied, "Books and the Epistles of Paul, a just man." Pressed to swear by the genius of the emperor, the martyrs answered that they honoured Caesar as Caesar but offered worship to God alone. They calmly refused the customary thirty days' delay for reflection and were sentenced to be beheaded; on hearing the sentence they cried, "Thanks be to God!" The Acts of their trial, recorded almost in the form of a court protocol, are the earliest surviving Christian document in Latin and the oldest authentic record of the African Church. Tertullian, writing a generation later, calls Saturninus the first persecutor of Christians in Africa. Their feast is kept on 17 July, the day of their crowning at Carthage.

Saint Marcellina, sister of Saint Ambrose of Milan

Saint Marcellina was born in Trier (Treves) in Gaul about the year 327 to a noble Roman family of consular rank, the eldest of three remarkable children, the others being Saint Ambrose, the future Bishop of Milan, and Saint Satyrus. After the death of her father, the family returned to Rome, where Marcellina from her earliest years was drawn to the religious life. On the Nativity of the Lord in 353, in the basilica of Saint Peter, she received the veil of consecrated virginity from the hands of Pope Liberius, becoming one of the first virgins formally consecrated at Rome. She remained in the family home with her widowed mother, devoting herself to prayer, fasting and the reading of Scripture, and was the spiritual mother of her younger brothers. After Ambrose was made bishop of Milan in 374, he wrote for her his three books "On Virgins" and dedicated to her the treatise "On Virginity." Marcellina followed her brother to Milan, lived an ascetic life of great rigour, and reposed there about the year 398, four years after her brother. Her relics were translated by Saint Charles Borromeo to the church of Saint Ambrose, where they are still venerated.

Also commemorated: Greatmartyr Marina

Daily readings

Epistle

weekly cycle

1 Corinthians — 1 Corinthians 7.35-8.7

³⁵And this I speak for your own profit; not that I may cast a snare upon you, but for that which is comely, and that ye may attend upon the Lord without distraction. ³⁶But if any man think that he behaveth himself uncomely toward his virgin, if she pass the flower of her age, and need so require, let him do what he will, he sinneth not: let them marry. ³⁷Nevertheless he that standeth stedfast in his heart, having no necessity, but hath power over his own will, and hath so decreed in his heart that he will keep his virgin, doeth well. ³⁸So then he that giveth her in marriage doeth well; but he that giveth her not in marriage doeth better. ³⁹The wife is bound by the law as long as her husband liveth; but if her husband be dead, she is at liberty to be married to whom she will; only in the Lord. ⁴⁰But she is happier if she so abide, after my judgment: and I think also that I have the Spirit of God.

¹Now as touching things offered unto idols, we know that we all have knowledge. Knowledge puffeth up, but charity edifieth. ²And if any man think that he knoweth any thing, he knoweth nothing yet as he ought to know. ³But if any man love God, the same is known of him. ⁴As concerning therefore the eating of those things that are offered in sacrifice unto idols, we know that an idol is nothing in the world, and that there is none other God but one. ⁵For though there be that are called gods, whether in heaven or in earth, (as there be gods many, and lords many,) ⁶But to us there is but one God, the Father, of whom are all things, and we in him; and one Lord Jesus Christ, by whom are all things, and we by him. ⁷Howbeit there is not in every man that knowledge: for some with conscience of the idol unto this hour eat it as a thing offered unto an idol; and their conscience being weak is defiled.

Gospel

weekly cycle

Matthew — Matthew 15.29-31

²⁹And Jesus departed from thence, and came nigh unto the sea of Galilee; and went up into a mountain, and sat down there. ³⁰And great multitudes came unto him, having with them those that were lame, blind, dumb, maimed, and many others, and cast them down at Jesus’ feet; and he healed them: ³¹Insomuch that the multitude wondered, when they saw the dumb to speak, the maimed to be whole, the lame to walk, and the blind to see: and they glorified the God of Israel.