On Sunday, December 21, 2025, Bishop Maximos of Melitene presided over the Eucharistic celebration at the Church of St Juliana of Nicomedia, in the city of Shrewsbury.
The Divine Liturgy was celebrated in the historic Church, which came under the jurisdiction of the Holy Archdiocese of Thyateira and Great Britain about six months ago and already constitutes the permanent house of prayer of the local Orthodox community. The building preserves a long-standing memory, as the presence of a church at the site is attested to as early as the 10th century, while references to it can be traced back to the Domesday Book. Its modern architectural appearance, in a classicist style, dates back to the fundamental renovation carried out by the architect Thomas Farnolls Pritchard in 1750.
During his sermon, Bishop Maximos praised the spirit of Saint Juliana, who at a young age refused to submit to the dictates of pagan authority and rejected marriage to the Prefect of Nicomedia, setting faith in Christ as a non-negotiable condition. He referred to the dialogue of the Martyr with her persecutor, where the Saint contrasted the perishable beauty of the body with the eternal splendour of the soul, emphasizing that her martyrdom functioned as a seed of faith, as it led to the confession and perfection of hundreds of other men and women.
Bishop Maximos conveyed to the congregation the paternal wishes and the blessing of Archbishop Nikitas of Thyateira and Great Britain.
After the end of the worship service, a festive meal was served. Subsequently, the Bishop visited the premises of the community school, where he attended the students’ Christmas celebration.
Read the full sermon of Bishop Maximos of Melitene:
The Martyrdom of Saint Juliana
Dear Christians,
The ecclesiastical community, experiencing the pre-festal atmosphere of Christmas, projects before us the figure of a young woman, Saint Juliana. Usually, when we refer to martyrs, our thoughts turn to heroic figures, to robust men or to bishops who shouldered the weight of pastoral responsibility. If, however, we become trapped in this static and standardised perception of the martyr, we risk ignoring to a great extent the reality. The youthful resistance of the Saint against a mighty power did not leave the idolatrous establishment indifferent, which discerned that this faith could not be suppressed by the usual means. This has huge significance for the understanding of the Christian faith as a power of liberation and not as a system of oppression.
The martyr was experiencing her everyday life within a world diametrically opposite to the Christian ethos, a fact which made it impossible for her to accept the worldly mentality concerning life. In consequence, her choices, which sprang from her faith at a critical moment, were connected not only with the firm denial of worldly glory, but also with the affirmation of the eternal truth against earthly realities. Her life-course, as it is handed down to us by the Synaxarion, constitutes a continuous succession of critical existential choices. These decisions, as remote as they may seem to us today, touch our own everyday life in a shocking way, as we are called constantly to choose between the pleasures of this world and Christ, between social recognition and the truth of conscience.
Her parents, following blind social conventionality and the tendency of imposition, were regulating her life authoritatively, without inhibitions. Caring for her “restoration”, they betrothed her to Eleusios, a senator and man of power. The logic of the world was dictating the “yes”, seeing an opportunity for riches, social ascent and a comfortable life. The need, however, to set with boldness the condition of the marriage, overturning the given flow of things, becomes a matter of honour and dignity. While everyone was expecting the acceptance of this fate as a blessing, she set conditions which were not of a financial nature. Initially, she sends word to him that the marriage will be performed only when he assumes the office of the Eparch. Seemingly, this resembles ambition. But when Eleusios, moved by love or his egoism, succeeded in becoming Eparch, Juliana reveals her real self, refusing to accept the union “unconditionally”, since this was opposed to Christ.
In the perspective of true life, faith for Juliana does not constitute a private feeling, but a criterion of life and a condition of communion. She is unable to be united with a person who worships idols, even if he offers her the whole world. These thoughts concerning the vanity of idols, which emerged towards the end of the first period after the betrothal, reveal her internal process. The secret flame of faith, when the hour of judgment came, was transformed into a conflagration that burnt down every bridge of compromise. Disobedience to paternal authority was punished harshly at that time. They handed her over to Eleusios himself, the suitor who was transformed into judge and executioner. Unfortunately, often the people who love us “worldily” become our harshest persecutors when we do not satisfy their expectations. This harsh stance, without meaning the disappearance of natural feelings, was connected with the formation of the blind egoism of the wounded suitor, leading to terrible revenge.
The synaxarists, describing the tortures, respect the realistic meaning of pain. Images that cause horror. In the shocking dialogue of the martyrdom, Juliana developed her theological views about the value of the soul. Eleusios, seeing her face deformed, says to her ironically to look at herself in the mirror, recognising only the value of bodily beauty. The saint, however, with a slight smile, answered him that in the resurrection of the righteous there will not be bodily wounds, except only the marks will be revealed which sin left on the souls. The body decays, is burnt and dies, but the soul bears eternally the traumas of sin if it be not cleansed. She prefers, therefore, the temporary wounds of the body to the eternal ones of the soul, weighing the transient beauty against the radiant, “splendid” soul.
The teaching of the Lord is not theoretical knowledge, but action and the denial of one becoming a shell empty of content. Beyond the bodily tortures, there existed also the spiritual war. In the dark cell of the prison, the devil tried to mislead her, urging her to sacrifice to the idols so that she might be saved, claiming that God does not want her pain. How logical and “human” this sounds. But every believer possesses discernment and prayer. Juliana was not fooled; she perceived the delusion and forced the temptation to confess its identity, confirming that of the Apostle Paul: For Satan himself transforms into an angel of light (2 Cor. 11:14). Despite her youth, she displayed elder-like wisdom, rejecting the easy solution and the compromise which was offered with a religious mantle. Often also to us temptation appears as “economy”, as a supposed necessity. The stance, however, of Saint Juliana ranked her in a higher grade than that of the compromised person.
Her end did not exist as a solitary event. The throwing of her into a lit furnace and her wondrous rescue did not aim at impression-making, but functioned as a possibility of sanctification for those present. The fact that five hundred men and one hundred and thirty women confessed Christ and were beheaded proves that the sacrifice of one person becomes seed for the Church. The saint did not journey to Paradise alone, but with an entire army, confirming that the genuine Christian saves also those around him by his example.
The Church, honouring the memory of the martyrs, denies oblivion. “The ever-memorable one received the crown of martyrdom”, being only eighteen years old. She managed to live more substantially than Eleusios, who, according to the tradition, found a tragic end, shipwrecked and devoured by wild beasts. It is the conclusion of two different roads: the testimony of love against the death of violence.
The testimony of Saint Juliana does not remain closed in the past. We live in an era where, although they do not throw us into furnaces, the tortures are perhaps more refined. The “idol” of wealth and the worship of the self constitute the modern pressure for us to be “pleasing” and not “true”. The life of the Saint teaches that faith conquers the world. Everyday life constitutes our own arena of martyrdom, where the hierarchically prioritised dilemmas constitute the “bloodless martyrdoms” of conscience. Let us keep in our heart the image of that young maiden who, facing power with an untroubled smile, spoke of a beauty that does not wither, the beauty of the soul, that which we are called to regain, by the intercessions of Saint Juliana. Amen.
