Saints of the Day & More

Aurelius was the son of a Muslim father and a Christian mother. He was also secretly a follower of Christianity, as was his wife Natalia, who was also the child of a Muslim father. One of Aurelius's cousins, Felix, accepted Islam for a short time, but later converted back to Christianity and married a Christian woman, Liliosa. Under Sharia Law, all four of them were required to profess Islam. In time all four began to openly profess their Christianity, with the two women going about in public with their faces unveiled. They were all swiftly arrested as apostates from Islam. They were given four days to recant, but they refused, and were beheaded. They were martyred with a local monk, George, who had openly spoken out against the prophet Mohammed. He had been offered a pardon as a foreigner, but chose instead to denounce Islam again and die with the others.

Saint Gregory Nazianzen Gregory was born in 329-330 near Nazianzus, in Cappadocia (Asia Minor). During his youth attended school in Caesarea of Cappadocia, and later the Christian school of Caesarea in Palestine, where he learned rhetoric, and that of Alexandria. Finally went to Athens and became a philosophy, a teacher Christians and pagans. There he began his friendship with St. Basil the Great, which was to last a lifetime. When Basil went to Cappadocia to devote himself to God, Gregory remained in Athens. However, almost secretly, one day left town and returned to Nazianzus. He received baptism and became a monastic life with Basil. On Christmas Day 361 he was ordained priest and in 372 was consecrated bishop by St. Basil Sasima, then Metropolitan of Cappadocia, while never taking his seat, having been put in charge of the Church in his hometown . On the death of the Arian emperor Valens, the Catholics of Constantinople was asked to take charge of the ecclesiastical reorganization ...