Orthodox saints and name days on June 4

Name days on June 4

Mitrofanis, Martha, Marta

Saints and feasts of June 4

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  Metrophanes of Constantinople

  Hierarch, Μητροφάνης

  St. Metrophanes was the first hierarch of Constantinople, shepherding the Church of Byzantium in the days when St. Constantine the Great made the city his capital. A man of peace and holiness, he guided his flock through the end of the persecutions into the freedom of the Church; by reason of his great age he could not travel to the First Ecumenical Council at Nicaea, but he upheld its faith.

  Name days: Mitrofanis

• Martha and Mary, Sisters of Lazarus

  Holy Woman, Μάρθα και Μαρία

  Martha and Mary of Bethany received Christ in their home, and the Gospel records Martha's service and Mary's sitting at the Lord's feet, as well as their faith at the raising of their brother Lazarus. Tradition relates that after Pentecost they left Judea with Lazarus and ended their lives in Cyprus.

  Name days: Martha, Marta

• Sophia of Ainos

  Holy Woman, Σοφία η εξ Αίνου

  Saint Sophia lived in Ainos in Thrace and was the mother of six children. After she was widowed and her children died, she devoted herself to prayer and to the care of orphans and the poor, becoming a mother to many. Tradition relates that she lived in great simplicity and reposed in peace in the tenth century.

• John of Monagria, Monk-Martyr

  Martyr, Ιωάννης ο Οσιομάρτυρας

  Saint John was abbot of the monastery of Monagria near Kyzikos in the eighth century. During the iconoclast persecution he refused to renounce the veneration of the holy icons, and tradition relates that he was sewn into a sack and cast into the sea.

• Alonius the Venerable

  Venerable, Αλώνιος

  Abba Alonius was one of the Egyptian desert fathers of the fourth and fifth centuries. Several of his sayings survive in the Sayings of the Desert Fathers, including his teaching that a man cannot be at peace until he says in his heart that only he and God are in the world.

• Zoticus, Attalus, Kamasis and Philip of Niculitel

  Martyr, Ζωτικός, Άτταλος, Κάμασις και Φίλιππος

  These four martyrs suffered in the early fourth century at Noviodunum, near present-day Niculitel in Romania. Their tomb, inscribed with their names, was discovered in 1971 beneath an ancient church, one of the oldest martyr shrines found in the region.

• Methodius of Peshnosha

  Venerable, Μεθόδιος ο εκ Ρωσίας

  Saint Methodius was one of the first disciples of Saint Sergius of Radonezh. With his teacher's blessing he founded a monastery on the river Peshnosha, near Dmitrov, and led it in the tradition of Saint Sergius until his repose in 1392.