Agenda: Who celebrates today 19 January 2025

Today, Sunday (19.1.2025), the memory of Mark Eugenikos, Saint Euphrasia and Saint Makarios of Egypt is honoured. The names celebrated today, according to the celebration calendar, are as follows: AD 1392 to pious and faithful parents, the chief judge, sacks and minister of the Great Church George and Mary who was the daughter of the pious physician Luke. He still had a younger brother named John. Because of his many spiritual gifts he made brilliant theological and philosophical studies and studied among the most famous teachers of his time, John Chortamomenos (after Ignatios Metropolitan of Sylymbria) and mathematician and philosopher George Full of Plethon. Among his classmates was the then infernal enemy of Bessarian the cardinal who was an advocate of the union. He taught at his father’s tutorial, and later, after his death, succeeded him in the teaching profession. He distinguished himself as a teacher of rhetoric and among his students, who excelled later, was George Gennadios Schoolarius (the first after the fall of the City Patriarch), Theodore Agallianus, Theophanes Metropolitan Medeia and his brother John the Eugenikos. In the 25th year of his age he decided to become a monk and therefore left to a monastery in the Principalities. There he was brought under the spiritual supervision of a righteous monk, Simeon, who took him as a monk and renamed him from Emmanuel, who was his first name, to Mark. CORVERSE After these islands he left and went to the Mangan Monastery, where he was ordained Priest. After becoming a clergyman, in 1436 AD he is elected Archbishop of Ephesus. He followed Emperor John Palaiologos to Ferrara and Florence, where a Council was held to unite the Eastern and Western Church. There Mark emerged the warmest and most solid advocate of Orthodoxy, refusing to sign the term of false union, so that when Pope Eugene IV (1431 – 1447 AD) he was informed of his decision he said: “Mercus the och wrote, so we made no one.” After the traitorous union of Ferrara – Florence the Byzantines left Italy. The emperor took Saint Marco to the imperial ship. After a trip of three and a half months they finally arrived in Istanbul. There the inhabitants received hostile sentiments and disapproved of those who signed the union, but approved and honored St. Mark as quoted by his abusive grikolatian bishop Methoni Joseph: “Ephesus saw the crowd glorifying him as unsigned, and the crowds of passover Moses and Aaron bow down to him, and I blessed him, and they call him holy.” On May 4, 1440 AD, St. Mark was forced to escape from the Queen, because his life was in danger, and to go to Ephesus which was under the Turks. There after shepherding for a while his flock was again forced, now by the Turks and unionists, to leave Ephesus and enter the ship going to Mount Athos, where he had decided to spend the rest of his life. But when the ship made a station in Limnos the Saint was recognized and immediately arrested, by imperial command and imprisoned there for two years. During his imprisonment he suffered a great deal, but as he wrote to the holy One Theophanes in Euboea “the word of God and the truth of power that he accepts, and he runs rather and prospers, and most of the brothers in my exile, trusting in the controls of the fishermen and offenders of the right faith…” From Lemnos the Saint unleashed his famous circular letter to all the earth and the islands found Orthodox Christians. With it he strictly controls those Orthodox who accepted the union and with compelling evidence proves that the Latins are innovative and therefore says: “As heretics we turn away from them, and therefore we are separated.” And the saint calls on believers to avoid unionists, because they are “false apostles and deceitful workers.” After the release of Saint Mark because of his illness he was unable to retire to Mount Athos, but returned to Constantinople, where he was accepted with honor as a saint and confessor. From the monastery of Agios Georgios Maghanes the new confessor ran the fight against unionists, writing letters to monks and clergy encouraging them to keep the right faith and not cooperate with unionists. Persecutions, exhaustions and pressures exacerbated the state of the health of St. Mark and on 23 June 1444 AD, after having called to him his spiritual children and entrusted George Schoolarius with the leadership of the anthetic struggle, he fled to the Lord. He was only 52 years old. In the eulogy delivered by George Schoolarius, he said, among other things, that the loyal “in a priest’s presence he excelled, in a high priest’s office, he died for the Church, every well – diamonded firmer felt toward the transfer…now, naked, the soul of happiness is moved, or good knowledge, and he has received from there he has studied the life that is hidden in Christ, and is contemplating the sacred teachers of faith, all of them being made righteous.” Immediately after his death Mark was honored as a saint and confessor. This bears witness in pain and Joseph’s modern and infernal enemy, the Commonwealth Bishop of Methoni, saying, “as many and others, and the one called Palaman, and Ephesus Mark, men who are not otherwise frenzied, but also of glorious wisdom filled, of no virtue or holiness in themselves having, only because of the word and writing according to Latin, glorify and praise, and praise, and glorify them and celebrate, cast them as saints and worship.” The first sequence in honor of St. Mark was composed by his brother, John the philosopher. First his memory was celebrated on 23 June, but Patriarch Gennadian Schoolari, in 1456 AD, appointed by means of an accompanying act, to celebrate his memory on 19 January, a day apparently of the recollection of the relic of the saint and his burial in the monastery of Lazarus in Galatas. The struggles of Mark and his disciple Gennadian were recognized by the great synod of Constantinople that ended in 1484 AD and recorded their names, as fathers of saints, in the Synod of Orthodoxy. *There are other dates that celebrate this name.