Margaret: Name Day and Patron Saint

St Marina, whom the West knows as St Margaret, was born in Antioch of Pisidia in Asia Minor, the daughter of a pagan priest. Her mother died when she was an infant, and she was raised by a nurse, from whom she learned of Christ; at twelve she resolved never to marry and to belong to Him alone. When her father learned she was a Christian, he disowned her. In the persecution of Diocletian, at fifteen, she was arrested. The governor Olymbrius, taken with her beauty, offered to make her his wife if she would deny Christ. She refused, and was beaten, torn with iron and burned. In prison that night the devil came to her, first as a dragon and then in his own form. She overcame him by the sign of the Cross, and, as the tradition tells, seized a hammer lying in the cell, struck him, and set her foot on his neck. Her wounds were healed. At her last trial she was plunged into water, and she asked that it become her baptism; a light shone and a white dove came down with a crown. Many who saw this believed, and Marina was beheaded with them, about the year 304. The Church keeps her feast on 17 July (30 July on the Old Calendar). She is honored as a deliverer from misfortune and unjust judgment, and the faithful ask her prayers for those troubled by evil spirits, for the mentally ill, and for the dying.

What the faithful pray for

• deliverance from misfortune and unjust judgment
• protection against slander and false accusation
• those troubled by evil spirits
• those who suffer mental illness
• the dying
• young people keeping their faith under pressure