Congratulations on your Saint’s Day Katherine, and Catherine! Memory Eternal Ekaterina.
Greetings on Great-Martyr Katherine’s feast day!
St. Katherine was the daughter of Constas, the governor of Alexandria in Egypt. She was a brilliant and avid scholar in philosophy, rhetoric, poetry, music, mathematics, astronomy, and medicine.
During a visit by the Roman emperor, a huge pagan festival was held in his honour. However, Katherine protested the Christian persecutions and refused to offer sacrifice to the gods, declaring herself a bride of Christ, the One True God. The emperor decided that due to young Katherine’s societal status, intelligence and strong spirit, she should be ridiculed, being made an entertaining, public example, and proven wrong. His plans backfired.
Fifty of the region’s top orators and philosophers were summoned to mockingly debate the superiority of paganism versus Christianity. With her face glowing Divine Grace, and moved through the Power and Wisdom of the Holy Spirit, young Katherine eloquently defended the Christian faith. She victoriously converted hundreds in the audience… including all 50 orators, the emperor’s own wife, the emperor’s imperial advisor, and 200 soldiers. She and the group of new Christians were imprisoned and martyred around the year 305 AD.
St. Katherine’s body was taken by Angels to the highest peak of Mount Sinai, near where God appeared to Moses in the Burning Bush. Her holy relics are enshrined in the world’s oldest and continuously inhabited Christian monastery, which is over seventeen hundred years old.
Pilgrims to St. Katherine’s Monastery on Mt. Sinai are given remembrance rings that have been reverently placed on her holy relics, as a blessing. They are copied from the ring she still has on her hand, from Christ.
St. Katherine is a patron saint of students, scholars, philosophers, teachers, public speakers and librarians.
By the prayers of the most wise martyr Katherine, O Christ, enlighten the darkened eye of my soul, granting me a ray of thy splendour… ~ Excerpt from Canon to Great-Martyr Katherine
