By Bishop Grigorios of Mesaoria
The Church commemorates today Great Martyr Mercurius as well as the Holy and Glorified Great Martyr Catherine, who is celebrated Saint Catherine’s Monastery at Mount Sinai, the metochia of the monastery, the temples dedicated to her memory in Cyprus, Greece and all over the world.
Saint Catherine lived in the 4th century AD in Alexandria and was distinguished for her beauty, intelligence and education. Her pious parents and her Christian teachers taught her the truth of the Gospel. The saint publicly confessed her faith in Christ, even before Maximian and Maxentius, who persecuted the Christians.
From a very young age, by the grace of the Lord, she refuted all the arguments of the best pagan philosophers and orators with whom she disputed. Saint Catherine won the debate. That is why she was arrested and brutally tortured like the horrific torture with the spiked breaking wheel used as her iconographic attribute.
She was finally beheaded, and her sacred relic was miraculously found on Mount Sinai, where Emperor Justinian later built the monastery dedicated to her memory, which is the beacon of Orthodoxy for centuries.
Great Martyr Catherine was proclaimed as “long-suffering and wise.”
Source: Church of Cyprus
