Today is the feast day of Agia Aikaterini from Alexandria, one of the most well-known saints of Greek Orthodoxy who became a martyr in 305 AD.
Saint Catherine was a beautiful, chaste and intelligent maiden of royal lineage. When the time came to be married, she only agreed to marry if a suitor could be found to surpass her own knowledge and wisdom.
Her mother took her to a holy man outside the city. He gave her an icon of the Virgin Mary and Jesus and prayed that she find a man who could be worthy. When the Mother of God appeared to her in a dream, she renounced her life and turned to Christianity choosing a more difficult life over an easy one.
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She was baptised and decided to devote herself to Jesus Christ and to preserve her body in virginity.
She proclaimed Jesus Christ to be the one true God, going against the King’s own scholars. Thrown into prison, the wheel where she was to be tortured for her faith broke.
The Queen and soldiers visited her in prison and left with an acceptance of Christianity.
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When she was finally beheaded, her body flowed with milk rather than blood and she was escorted by angels to the mountain of Prophet Moses in the Sinai desert where here relics were found many years later. An Orthodox monastery lies there today in her honour.
