25 July 2024 (MIA)

Macedonian Orthodox Church Calendar

Sts. Proclus and Hilarion

Died 115. Martyrs of Ancrya in Galatia (Turkey) during the reign of Trajan (Benedictines). These Martyrs contested in Ancyra in 106, during the reign of the Emperor Trajan. Saint Proclus was seized as a Christian and, confessing his faith, was burned on his sides and belly, was hung upon a beam with heavy stones tied to his feet, and finally was taken away to be shot with arrows. As he was being led forth, his nephew Hilary encountered him and greeted him, and was himself seized. After his uncle had been slain with arrows, Hilary, because he would not deny Christ, was tormented then beheaded.

Catholic Calendar

James The Greater

Son of Zebedee and Salome, brother of Saint John the Apostle, and may have been Jesus’ cousin. He is called “the Greater” simply because he became an Apostle before Saint James the Lesser. Like all men of renown, many stories grew up around James. In one, he brought back to life a boy who had been unjustly hanged, and had been dead for five weeks. The boy’s father was notified of the miracle while he sat at supper. The father pronounced the story nonsense, and said his son was no more alive than the roasted fowl on the table; the cooked bird promptly sat up, sprouted feathers, and flew away. He died at 44 in Jerusalem; stabbed with the sword by King Herod Agrippa; legend says his body was taken by angels, and sailed in a rudderless, unattended boat to Spain where a massive rock closed around it; relics at Compostella, Spain.