MARTYR MICHAEL THE SABAITE

June 5 (May 23) The Church celebrates the memory of the martyr Michael the Sabaite. According to the place of his birth, the saint is also called Michael of Edessa. The saint was a monk, and therefore our liturgical calendar calls him “the Black-Robed”. The saint is commemorated twice a year, on June 5 and August 11, but the indications of the circumstances of his suffering and the dating in the actual liturgical calendar, unfortunately, are not clear. Apparently, the reason for this was that there was no mention of the saint in the Byzantine Menologions. According to the Georgian version of the life of St. Michael, he suffered for Christ during the reign of Caliph Abd al-Malik (685–705) for refusing to renounce Christianity. Such a dating in the context of the surviving circumstances of the saint’s suffering seems convincing.

According to life, Michael was a native of Edessa. While making a pilgrimage to Jerusalem, he became a monk in the monastery of St. Sava the Sanctified. His obedience was to sell monastic products in Jerusalem. At the market, he attracted the attention of a rich noble woman, who, seeing his thinness, ordered her servants to force Michael into her house. Seized by passion, she tried to seduce the monk, but having been refused, she handed him over to the ruler. The latter encouraged him to convert to Islam. “If they drink anything deadly, it will not harm them” (Mark 16:18). Like many Middle Eastern rulers of his time, he apparently knew the Bible and was mindful of the gospel promises for Christians. Apparently, wanting to experience the words of the Gospel in practice, in some strange state of “metaphysical excitement,” he gave the monk a cup of poison, but the monk remained unharmed. Then the saint’s head was cut off.

The monks of St. Sava transferred the body of the saint to the monastery. Together with Michael, his uncle Theodore suffered for Christ, who, judging by the circumstances of his life, was his spiritual father. The Russian pilgrim of the early 12th century, Abbot Daniel, testified to the veneration of the relics of the holy martyrs in the St Sava’s monastery. “I ask you, either let me go to the monastery of my spiritual father, or you yourself become a Christian in baptism, or cut off my head, and then I will go to Christ my God.” This answer of St Michael can be considered a true example of a “meek profession of faith” for monks for all subsequent times. They have nothing and no one in this world, therefore they are called to boldly preach the gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ.