Priscilla: Name Day and Patron Saint

Sts Aquila and Priscilla were a married couple, Jews by birth, who lived in Rome and earned their living as tentmakers. Aquila was a native of Pontus on the Black Sea. When the emperor Claudius banished the Jews from Rome, the two settled in Corinth, and there the Apostle Paul, who followed the same trade, came to them from Athens. He lodged in their house and worked beside them making tents. Having received Baptism from Paul, they became his devoted disciples. They went with him to Ephesus, where he left them to carry on the preaching, and there they took the eloquent Apollos aside and explained the way of God to him more perfectly. After the death of Claudius they returned to Rome. St Paul greets them in his Epistles as his fellow workers in Christ Jesus, who risked their own necks for his life, and he speaks of the church that met in their house. Aquila is counted among the Seventy Apostles, and Priscilla constantly helped him in his apostolic work. In the end both were seized by unbelievers and put to death for Christ; the tradition of the Church holds that they died together. The Church keeps their feast on 13 February (26 February on the Old Calendar), and Aquila is also remembered alone on 14 July. In the Greek Church they are honoured as protectors of married couples, and husbands and wives look to them as an image of a home opened to Christ and shared work in His service.

What the faithful pray for

• husbands and wives, and the love and faith of married couples
• a home that is open to Christ and to guests
• those who labour with their hands
• all who help in the work of the Church