Eastern Rite - Pentecost and Saint Michael the Confessor & Venerable Euphrosyne,

Today is Pentecost Sunday and the Feasts of Our Venerable Father and Confessor Michael, Bishop of Synada and the Venerable Euphrosyne of Polotsk, Hegumena of the Monastery of the Holy Saviour.

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From his youth, he longed for the monastic life and was sent by Patriarch Tarasius (784-806) to a monastery on the coast of the Black Sea. Saint Theophylactus (March 8), the future Bishop of Nicomedia also entered the monastery together with him.

At the monastery, both monks engaged in spiritual struggles and were soon glorified by gifts from the Lord. Once, during a harvest, when the people were weakened by thirst, an empty metal vessel was filled with water by the prayer of the monks.

Patriarch Tarasius consecrated Saint Michael as bishop of the city of Synnada. Through his holy life and wisdom, Saint Michael won the love of believers, and the notice of the emperors Nicephorus I (802-811) and Michael I Rangabe (811-813). Saint Michael was present at the Seventh Ecumenical Council at Nicea in 787.

When the Iconoclast heretic Leo the Armenian (813-820) assumed the throne, he began to expel Catholic hierarchs from their Sees, appointing heretics in their place.

Saint Michael defended Catholicism, bravely opposing the heretics and denouncing their error. Leo the Armenian brought Saint Michael to trial, but not fearing torture he answered resolutely, “I venerate the holy icons of my Savior Jesus Christ and the All-Pure Virgin, His Mother, and all the saints, and it is to them I bow down. I shall not obey your decrees to remove icons from churches.”

Leo then banished Saint Michael to the city of Eudokiada, where the confessor died about the year 821. The head of Saint Michael is preserved in the Great Lavra of Saint Athanasius on Mount Athos, and part of the relics are at the Ivḗron monastery.

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Saint Euphrosynē, Abbess of Polotsk, was named Predslava in the world and was the daughter of Prince George Vseslavich. From her childhood, she was noted for her love of prayer and book learning. After turning down a proposal of marriage, Predslava received monastic tonsure with the name Euphrosynē. With the blessing of Bishop Elias of Polotsk, she began to live near the Sophia cathedral, where she occupied herself by the copying of books.

Around the year 1128 Bishop Elias entrusted the nun with the task of organizing a women’s monastery. Setting out for Seltso, the site of the future monastery, the ascetic took only her holy books. At the newly constructed Savior-Transfiguration monastery, the saint taught the girls to copy books, singing, sewing and other handicrafts.

Through her efforts, a cathedral was built in 1161, which survives to the present day. Saint Euphrosynē also founded a men’s monastery dedicated to the Mother of God. Patriarch Luke of Constantinople sent a copy of the wonderworking Ephesus Icon of the Mother of God at her request. Shortly before her death, Saint Euphrosynē journeyed on pilgrimage to the Holy Places with her nephew David and sister Eupraxia.

After venerating the holy things at Constantinople, she arrived in Jerusalem, where at the Russian monastery of the Most Holy Theotokos the Lord granted her a peaceful end on May 24, 1173.

In 1187 the body of the saint was transferred to the Kiev Caves monastery, and the relics were transferred to Polotsk in 1910 to the monastery she founded.

Saint Euphrosynē of Polotsk was glorified in the Russian Church as a patroness of women’s monasticism.