Day of the angel and name-day of Sophia

Sofia is a very beautiful ancient name of Greek origin. In the church tradition, it is associated with Sophia - the Wisdom of God (the meaning of the name Sofia is wisdom), as well as with a number of saints, which will be discussed below in connection with the issue of determining name-day.

About Name Day

Name days are a personal holiday of a person, superimposed on a church celebration in honor of this or that saint and projected by this celebration. In fact, the name-day of a person is celebrated on the day when the memory of a saint is honored in the church, in honor of which he was given a name at baptism. Thus, the name-day (Sofia, among others) is a purely church holiday, and the right to celebrate it is only those who are baptized in the Christian church.

About the day of the birthday party

A person who goes to be baptized at a conscious age chooses a new name for himself. It may coincide with the name of the passport, and may differ from it. The only requirement is that the name should be in the saints, that is, belong to one of the holy churches. The chosen holy namesake becomes the patron of man. Of course, when a child is baptized, parents make this choice for him. Therefore, often when a baby grows up, he loses information about his patron and chooses it again. In this case, the church is allowed to choose a holy namesake, guided simply by its preferences. If a person has difficulties with this, then they carry out a formal procedure for calendar calculation, according to which the patron saint will be the one whose memory day by the calendar is closest to the person's birthday. All this is a cost of the traditional church, in which sacraments, including baptism, are taught almost to all in a row by tradition. Often people are not believers at all, and, of course, they do not think about choosing a patron saint. Believers are people who are churched, they are more serious and more conscious.

Below we will talk about some saints, in memory of which celebrate the name-day of Sophia. In addition to the dates of the celebration of the calendar, we will briefly touch on their lives. Immediately it is worth saying that many women glorified by the church here will not be mentioned, since there is no complete detailed list of saints.

28th of February. The Monk Martyr Sofia (Selistovrova)

Born prpmchts. Sofia in 1871 in the Saratov Gubernia. Her mother died early, and until the age of 20 the girl was brought up in a shelter at a convent. Then she moved to St. Petersburg, where she took drawing lessons, earning a living as a servant. In 1989, she decided to go to the monastery, which she did, entering the sisters of the Passion Monastery in Moscow. When the monastery was disbanded in 1926, she, along with three nuns, settled in one of the basements on Tikhvinskaya Street. However, in 1938, on charges of counter-revolutionary activity, she was arrested and sentenced to be shot. In the same year, the verdict was carried out. Glorified in 2001. The names of Sophia in the church calendar are also celebrated on 26 January. This date, however, is not its resident memory, but belongs to all new martyrs and confessors of Russia.

1 April. Princess Sofia Slutskaya

April 1, celebrate the name-day of Sophia, named in honor of the princess of the same name, who was born in 1585 in the family of the Slutsk prince Yuri Yurievich. A year after her birth she remained an orphan and formally became Princess Slutskaya. In life, I had a reputation as an opponent of the Uniate and actively opposed the sermons of the supporters of Rome. She died at the age of 26 during labor. The daughter of Sophia was also born dead. The names of Sophia on the church calendar are also celebrated on June 15 on the Day of Remembrance of the Belarusian Saints.

4 June. The Martyr Sofia

A martyr, who was a doctor during her lifetime. Sophia's name day is celebrated by women, named in her honor. However, there is nothing to say about her life, there is no data, except that she accepted death for her faith.

June 17. The Monk Sofia

The little-known Reverend Sophia. Name-day Orthodox girls in her honor are rarely noted, because about who was this woman, almost nothing is known. We only know that she was distinguished by strict asceticism and the restraint of her monastic life.

September 30th. The Roman Martyr Sofia

This, perhaps, is the most famous of the Saints Sophia. Sofia, the name day, the day of the angel and the memory of which the entire Orthodox world reveres, was the mother of the holy martyrs of Faith, Hope and Love. For the confession of Christ, her daughters were executed in front of her. She herself was saved, but three days later she died at the grave of her daughters.

1 October. Egyptian martyr Sofia

This woman was beheaded under Emperor Aurelian. The cause of the tragedy was all the same confession of Christianity.