Methodius: Name Day and Patron Saint

Sts Cyril and Methodius, Equals of the Apostles and Teachers of the Slavs, were brothers from a pious and noble family of Thessalonica. Methodius, the eldest of seven brothers, served for some ten years as governor of a Slavic region before becoming a monk on Mount Olympus. Constantine, the youngest, studied under the finest teachers of Constantinople, among them the future Patriarch Photius; for his learning he was called the Philosopher, and he was ordained priest and made keeper of the patriarchal library at Hagia Sophia. The emperor sent the brothers to preach to the Khazars, and on the way, at Chersonesus, they found the relics of St Clement of Rome. When Prince Rostislav of Moravia asked for teachers who could preach in the Slavic tongue, Constantine, with Methodius and their disciples, devised a Slavic alphabet in 863 and translated the Gospel, the Epistles, the Psalter and the service books. In Moravia they served in Slavonic, against the objections of German bishops, and Pope Adrian in Rome approved the Slavonic services. In Rome Constantine fell ill, was tonsured with the name Cyril, and reposed on 14 February 869, aged forty-two. Methodius, made Archbishop of Moravia and Pannonia, endured imprisonment for his work, translated nearly all of the Old Testament, and reposed on 6 April 885; his funeral was sung in Slavonic, Greek and Latin. The Church keeps their memory together on 11 May (24 May on the Old Calendar).

What the faithful pray for

• the Slavic peoples and their steadfastness in Orthodoxy
• unity of faith and the healing of divisions
• missionaries, translators and teachers
• protection from false teaching
• the return of those who have strayed
• peace and the salvation of souls