Leap Day: Stations, the Samaritana, and Stylites

Phwoar, it was hot in the Pro. this afternoon! I was so running with sweat I was mopping my face with a handkerchief all the way through Stations (which began at 5.30pm) and the Mass following (6.10-6.40pm). I have been so very slothful and indevout this Lent - today was the first day I've bothered to follow the Stations of the Cross! The Gospel at Mass was of course the incomparable account of the Samaritan woman, concerning which and whom I've earlier blogged at length.

Amusingly, when I at last walked outside after saying my prayers it turned out to be pleasantly breezy, and I suggested to Fr and others that really he should have stayed inside at God's board, while we the faithful could have knelt devoutly outside the open doors, the better to bear witness and humbly withdraw from such awefilled mysteries, until we would have processed in for communion!

Joking with one of my housemates after tea, I encouraged him or at least his brother to revive the ancient order of stylites - those holy athletes of the Lord who immured themselves atop pillars, the better to test their mettle and make themselves available to edify such of the faithful as from time to time gathered below. Steve seemed unwilling to stand on the kitchen stool (cognate, after all, with στυλος) as preparation for his new vocation, but I trust his hard heart will yield to suasion once he allows me to discern God's will for him in this... ;-)

Jokes aside, here is a link to a Canon in honour of St Simeon Stylites, first of the pillar-saints. (He is painted at the right; under obedience he was commanded to come down off his pillar, and hastened to do so, but his rightful superiors, satisfied by this, retracted their testing order.)

I salute today, the quadrennial leap day; I seem to have escaped the tradition-minded maidens who by custom may ask for the hand of their chosen man this day! With St Paul's advice in mind, I cheer on those happily married, while for the moment content as a young bachelor. And, please, no jokes about this being in technical terms a bissextile year!

St Photina, Woman of Samaria

Although it isn't heard till Friday in the old rite, those given the Novus Ordo benefitted this 3rd Lenten Sunday just past from the Gospel passage de Samaritana concerning Our Lord's encounter with the Samaritan Woman (St John iv, 5-42); in select parts of Spain those following the Mozarabic Rite heard these salvific words on the 2nd Sunday, as do the people of the Church of Milan in their own Ambrosian Rite; the Copts must wait till the 4th Sunday of their Lent.

While it seems that at the time of the saving appearance of Christ this woman was no lady (consider her five husbands plus a de facto), according to the Greeks she was later baptized and given the new name of Φωτεινη ("enlightened" - cf. Hebrews vi, 4), for Baptism is after all the great sacrament of illumination (hence its Patristic name of Φωτισμος), drawing one from the darkness of hopeless sin and error into the Christ-light of grace and truth. Furthermore, according to various accounts, she preached the Good News until she was martyred at Carthage or Rome (her head being kept as a relic, 'tis said, at St Paul's Outside the Walls). Thus the Byzantine Menaion and Traditional Roman Martyrology revere her as St Photini (in Russian, Svetlana) or Photina respectively.

While for reasons of some paucity of evidence her mention is not found in the present ordinary form Martyrology, she is still feasted throughout Christianity, and it seems to me intrinsically plausible that one so privileged as to converse pertly and yet fruitfully with Christ would in due season be baptized and saved.

Her commemoration in the Byzantine Rite occurs on the 26th of February (when first I read of her) and on the 20th of March (in common with the West), and again on the 5th Sunday of Easter in the Byzantine Rite.

Here is her icon, and here her Apolytikion (Dismissal Hymn):


Illuminated by the Holy Spirit,
All-Glorious One,
from Christ the Saviour
you drank the water of salvation.
With open hand you give it
to those who thirst.
Great-Martyr Photini,
Equal-to-the-Apostles,
pray to Christ
for the salvation of our souls.

Our Lord indeed was tired and thirsty when He sat down at Jacob's well, as He toiled for our salvation; thirstiest of all was He when He cried out in death upon the Cross, thirsting more for our souls than for succour; may such labours not prove for me in vain:

Quærens me sedisti lassus,
Redemisti crucem passus;
Tantus labor non sit cassus.