6 March 2025 (MIA)

Macedonian Orthodox Church Calendar

Our Holy Father Timothy and St. Eustathius (Eustace), Archbishop of Antioch

A hermit in a place called Symbola on Asiatic Olympus, Timothy entered a monastery very young and spent his earthly life in fasting, prayer, vigils and unceasing toil right up to a great age. He remained pure and chaste throughout his life. God gives power over evil spirits to the pure and chaste, and this gift He gave to Timothy. Through careful watching over his soul, Timothy built within him-self a glorious abode for the Holy Spirit. This holy man entered into rest in 795. St. Eustathius (Eustace), Archbishop of Antioch was a great zealot for, and protector of, Orthodoxy, he was especially prominent at the First Ecumenical Council, where he disproved by erudite reasoning the teaching of the Arians. With the other holy fathers, Eustathius confessed the truth that Jesus Christ, as the Son of God, is equal with the Father and the Holy Spirit by divine essence. After the death of the Emperor Constantine, the Arians somehow again gained the ascendancy and began hotly to persecute Orthodoxy. St Eustathius was deposed from his throne and exiled first to Thrace and then to Macedonia. He suffered much and long, until at last he gave his holy soul to God in about 345.

Catholic Calendar

St. Colette

Colette was the daughter of a carpenter named DeBoilet at Corby Abbey in Picardy, France. She was born on January 13, christened Nicolette, and called Colette. Orphaned at seventeen, she distributed her inheritance to the poor. She became a Franciscan tertiary, and lived at Corby as a solitary. She soon became well known for her holiness and spiritual wisdom, but left her cell in 1406 in response to a dream directing her to reform the Poor Clares. She received the Poor Clares habit from Peter de Luna, whom the French recognised as Pope under the name of Benedict XIII, with orders to reform the Order and appointing her Superior of all convents she reformed. Despite great opposition, she persisted in her efforts. She founded seventeen convents with the reformed rule and reformed several older convents. She was reckoned for her sanctity, ecstasies, and visions of the Passion, and prophesied her own death in her convent at Ghent, Belgium. A branch of the Poor Clares is still known as the Collettines. She was canonised in 1807.