17 July 2024 (MIA)

Macedonian Orthodox Church Calendar

St. Andrew of Crete

St. Andrew of Crete (c. 660-740), whose “great eucharistic prayer” the Orthodox pray during Lent, was born in Damascus. He became a monk at Mar Saba and served later at the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem. Around 685, he was ordained a deacon at Hagia Sophia in Constantinople. He also ran a refuge that took in orphans and cared for the elderly. He ended his days as Archbishop of Gortyna on the island of Crete, a position to which he was elevated in 692. He wrote homilies that display great oratorical skill, as well as panegyrics to the saints.

Catholic Calendar

The Sixteen Blessed Teresian Martyrs of Compiègne

Guillotined at the Place du Trône Renversé (now called Place de la Nation), Paris, 17 July 1794. They are the first sufferers under the French Revolution on whom the Holy See has passed judgment, and were solemnly beatified 27 May, 1906. Before their execution they knelt and chanted the “Veni Creator,” as at a profession, after which they all renewed aloud their baptismal and religious vows. The novice was executed first and the prioress last. Absolute silence prevailed the whole time that the executions were proceeding. The heads and bodies of the martyrs were interred in a deep sandpit about thirty feet square in a cemetery at Picpus. As this sandpit was the receptacle of the bodies of 1298 victims of the Revolution, there seems to be no hope of their relics being recovered.