13 January 2025 (MIA)

Macedonian Orthodox Church Calendar

Venerable Melania of Rome

Melania the Elder, the granddaughter of Markellin the Consular and spouse of Valerius Maximus, the Prefect of Rome under Julian the Apostate, was born in Spain. A widow at twenty-two years of age, she conceived the lively desire to consecrate herself to God. She entrusted her son Publicola to a tutor, sold the greater part of her immense properties and she embarked for Alexandria, where she distributed her riches to the poor and to the monasteries. She went to visit the Desert Fathers in Nitria, conversed with them at great length for six months, visited all the holy anchorites of the desert and educated herself from them. She built a monastery in Jerusalem around 375, where she withdrew for twenty-seven years in the company of about fifty consecrated virgins. She went to Rome to visit her friends and relatives, but returned to Jerusalem, where she has died in 410.

Catholic Calendar

St. Hilary of Poitiers

St Hilary of Poitiers was one of the greatest champions of the Catholic faith against Arianism in the west. Not much is known about his life. He was an adult convert from paganism, and became bishop of Poitiers about 350. Because of his vigorous opposition to the attempts of the Emperor Constantius II to impose Arianism on the western church he was exiled to Phrygia in 356. But he showed himself so effective a defender and propagator of Catholic belief in the east that the emperor decided he would be less trouble if he was allowed to return to his diocese, and sent him back to Gaul in 360. He continued to fight Arianism in the west till his death about 368. St Hilary learnt much from his contacts with the Catholic theologians of the east: he introduced into the west a great deal of their thought (notably in his great theological work On the Trinity), and the rich and profound tradition of Scriptural interpretation which they inherited from Origen. He seems to have been a man of most kindly and charitable disposition, though an extremely vigorous controversialist in defence of Catholic truth. His relics are still venerated in the great Romanesque church, which bears his name in the city of Poitiers.