Saint Leo the Great, Pope of Rome

Saint Leo I the Great, Pope of Rome (440-461), received a fine and diverse education, which opened for him the possibility of an excellent worldly career. He yearned for the spiritual life, however, and so he chose the path of becoming an archdeacon under holy Pope Sixtus III (432-440), after whose death Saint Leo was chosen as Bishop of Rome in September 440.

These were difficult times for the Church, when heretics assaulted Orthodoxy with their false teachings. Saint Leo combined pastoral solicitude and goodness with an unshakable firmness in the confession of the Faith. He was in particular one of the basic defenders of Orthodoxy against the heresies of Eutyches and Dioscorus, who taught that there was only one nature in the Lord Jesus Christ. He was also a defender against the heresy of Nestorius.

Saint Philothea of Athens

This bright star of compassion arose in the dark days of the Turkish occupation to shed God’s mercy upon the oppressed people of Athens and to guide many endangered souls onto the path of righteousness.
 
Her birth in 1528 into the aristocratic Venizelou family was seen as a miraculous answer to her mother’s prayers of many years.  Even as a child, she showed a remarkable inclination for the life of ascesis and contemplation.  However, as a sought-after heiress, she was married against her inclination at the age of twelve to a harsh, violent man whose moods and ill-treatment of her she bored with patience, while praying for his change of heart.  After three years, the death of her tyrannical husband freed her from the bonds of matrimony and, despite the urging of her kinsfolk, she would not consider a second marriage, but entirely devoted herself to pleasing the Lord by prayer and fasting, while remaining under her parents’ roof.  On their death ten years later, she used the whole of her great fortune to found a convent according to directions given to her in a vision by the holy Apostle Andrew, to whom the house was dedicated. [This monastery was situated on the site of the present cathedral (Metropolis) of Athens.] Not only did she see to the construction of cells and of all the other buildings that a monastery needs, but she also founded a whole range of charitable institutions alongside it: a hospital, hospices for the poor and the aged, various workshops and, above all, schools where the girls and boys of Athens could receive a Christian education.  To support the monastery and its associated institutions, she provided an endowment of landed estates and dependencies (metochia), which also enabled alms to be distributed on a generous scale.  St. Philothea’s monastery thus soon became for Athens a source of heavenly blessings, a haven for the afflicted and a focus for the revival of the tradition of the Greek people.