Susanna: Name Day and Patron Saint

St Sosanna and her husband St Zabulon were Christians of Cappadocia and the parents of St Nino, the Enlightener of Georgia. Holy Tradition holds that St Nino and the Great-martyr George were blood relatives, and Zabulon came from the same Cappadocian land as St George. Zabulon served as a soldier of the Roman emperor, and when a captured Frankish king and his men asked to be baptized before their execution, he stood as their godfather and pleaded for their lives, and many of that people turned to Christ. Later he went on pilgrimage to Jerusalem, gave away his goods to the poor, and served Juvenal, who led the Church there. In Jerusalem he met Juvenal’s sister Sosanna, who had come from Cappadocia with her brother and served the church. The two were married and returned to Cappadocia, where their daughter Nino was born. Sosanna raised her while caring day and night for the poor and needy. When Nino was about twelve, the family sold what they had and went back to Jerusalem. Zabulon withdrew into the wilderness to live as an ascetic, and only God knows where he labored; Sosanna stayed in the holy city and ministered to poor and sick women. Little more is recorded of her life. The Georgian Church glorified the couple as confessors of the faith in 1996. The Church keeps their memory on 20 May (2 June on the Old Calendar), and the faithful honor Sosanna as a mother who gave her child to God and spent herself on the poor.

What the faithful pray for

• mothers raising children in the faith
• parents who must let a child go to serve God
• care for the poor and the sick
• married couples seeking a Christian home
• those who serve in the church