Julian: Name Day and Patron Saint

St Julian was born in Cilicia in Asia Minor, the son of a pagan senator and a Christian mother. After his father died, his mother took him to Tarsus, where he was baptized and raised in Christian piety. When he was eighteen, the emperor Diocletian ordered everyone to sacrifice to the idols, and Julian was arrested and brought before the governor Marcian. Neither threats nor tortures nor promises of gifts and honors could move him. For a whole year he was led from city to city through Cilicia, questioned and tortured in each, then imprisoned. His mother followed him all the way, praying for his strength. In the city of Aegea she asked leave to visit him, as if to persuade him to sacrifice; instead she spent three days with him, encouraging him to stand firm to the end. Before the governor she too confessed Christ, and her feet were cut off for following her son. Julian was sewn into a sack with sand and poisonous snakes and cast into the sea, about the year 305. The waves carried his body to the shore near Alexandria, where a pious Christian buried it; later his relics were taken to Antioch, and St John Chrysostom preached in his honor. The Church keeps his memory on 21 June (4 July on the Old Calendar). The faithful ask his prayers for courage in the faith, and the tradition also calls on him to protect gardens and fields from snakes and harmful insects.

What the faithful pray for

• courage to confess Christ when young
• mothers who pray for their children
• gardens and fields: protection from snakes and harmful insects
• those who suffer for their faith