Feast day of Saint Syncletica
ΕΛΛΗΝΙΚΑ Our holy mother Syncletica was born at Alexandria in the course of the fourth century to rich and devout parents, who came originally from Macedonia. From her youth, she had been seen as an excellent match on account of her great beauty, intelligence and virtues, and she had many suitors; but she remained deaf and blind to every worldly attraction, for she aspired only to spiritual marriage to Christ, the heavenly Bridegroom. Bringing her flesh into subjection by fasting and austerities of every kind, she constantly gathered her spirit in the depths of her heart and cried out night and day: My Beloved is mine, and I am His (Song of Songs 2:16). On the death of her parents, she distributed her great fortune to the poor and then, accompanied by her blind sister, she fled far from the city. She had her hair shorn by a priest and thus consecrated herself to God for ever, becoming the foundress of the monastic life for women as Saint Antony the Great was its institutor for men. Bei...