Pray
The Synaxarium
The saints the Church commemorates today, the Katameros readings appointed for the day, and the season it is kept in.
Commemorated today
The Feast of Presenting the Lord Christ in the Temple.
On this day we celebrate the feast of presenting the Lord Christ to the temple after 40 days of His blessed birth. St. Joseph the righteous and His mother, the Virgin Mary, presented Him in the temple, to fulfill the Mosaic Law. says that when His parents brought Him according to the custom of the law, the just and devout Simeon the elder took Him in his arms and blessed God and said, "Lord, now You are letting Your servant depart in peace, according to Your Word; for my eyes have seen Your salvation which You have prepared before the face of all people, a light to bring revelation to the Gentiles, and the Glory of Your people Israel." (Luke 2:29-32) Simeon was one of the 70 elders who translated the Old Testament from Hebrew to Greek. This was in the time of Ptolemy Soter in the year 296 B.C., who was sent by the will of God to Jerusalem. He brought 70 men from among the learned Jewish teachers and scholars and commanded them to translate the Old Testament from Hebrew to Greek(1). He put every two of them in an isolated place so they would not agree on one translation, and to ensure a correct text after comparing all of the translations. Simeon the elder was one of them. When Simeon was translating the verse from 7:14, "Behold, the virgin shall conceive and bear a Son, and shall call His name Immanuel," he was afraid to translate that a virgin would conceive, because the King would mock him. He wanted to translate the virgin as a "young lady." He was disturbed because of this inaccurate translation, and God revealed to him in a vision that he would not die before he would see Christ the Lord born of a virgin. This was fulfilled and he lived about three hundred years. When Christ was born; he was very well advanced in age and his sight dimmed. When he carried the child Jesus in his hands, his sight came back to him, and the Holy Spirit told him, "This is the child that you have been waiting for." He blessed God and said, "You are letting Your servant depart in peace according to Your Word, for my eyes have seen Your salvation which You have prepared before the face of all peoples, a light to bring revelation to the Gentiles and the Glory of Your people Israel." (Luke 2:28-32) The prayers of this righteous man be with us, and Glory be to our God forever. Amen.
Read it at copticchurch.net →The Commemoration of the Contemporary Martyrs of the Coptic Churchlocal
Today, the Church commemorates the contemporary martyrs of the Coptic Church, foremost among them the 21 Coptic martyrs in Libya. On this day in 2015 AD, a terrorist group in Libya released a video depicting their execution by beheading in the city of Sirte, on the shores of the Mediterranean Sea. In recent years, many children of the Coptic Church have been martyred in various regions of Egypt, joining the chorus of the martyrs in Heaven. In recognition of their sacrifice, the Holy Synod, under the leadership of His Holiness Pope Tawadros II, has designated the 8th of Meshir as a feast and commemoration day for all the martyrs of the Coptic Church in its modern era. We celebrate them to honor and to keep their memory and to draw blessings from their lives, as living examples of divine love and steadfast faith. This aligns with the wisdom that says, "You may move a mountain from its place, but you cannot move Copts from their faith." We are called to consider the outcome of their way of life and imitate their faith, as our teacher St. Paul advises in his epistle to the Hebrews (Hebrews 13:7). The blessing of their prayers be with us, and glory be to God forever, Amen.
The feasts and fasts ahead
- Tout 14, 1743 AMCoptic New Year (Nayrouz)
- Tout 17, 1743 AMFeast of the Cross
- Tout 29, 1743 AMAnnunciation, Nativity, and Resurrection
- Hatour 16, 1743 AMAdvent Fast
- Kiahk 1, 1743 AMKiahk
- Kiahk 26, 1743 AMNativity Paramoun
- Kiahk 29, 1743 AMNativity Feast
- Touba 6, 1743 AMCircumcision Feast
- Touba 8, 1743 AMTheophany Paramoun
- Touba 11, 1743 AMTheophany Feast
- Touba 13, 1743 AMWedding of Cana of Galilee Feast
- Amshir 8, 1743 AMEntrance into the Temple Feast
Synaxarium accounts are credited to copticchurch.net. The calendar is computed from the Coptic Paschalion; readings are cited, not reproduced. Supplemented entries are marked local where the Church keeps a commemoration the published Synaxarium predates.