The church celebrates the feast of St. Dimiana on 13th of Toubah (21st of January)

St. Dimiana was a chaste virgin, the daughter of Mark, the governor of El-Borollus and El-Zaafran. She was the only daughter born to her parents. When she was one year old, her father took her to the church that was in the monastery of El-Maima. He offered alms and lit candles and oblations so that God might bless her and keep her in his care.

When she was fifteen years old her father wanted her to marry. She refused, and told him that she had consecrated herself to Christ. When she felt that her father was pleased with her intentions, she asked him to build her a place where she and forty other virgins could worship god. He built her the house she wanted and she lived in it with the forty other virgins. They spent there time reading the Holy Scripture and in worship.

After a certain time, Emperor Diocletian sent for Mark, her father, to appear before him in order to worship the idols. He refused at first, but later accepted and worshiped the idols. When Mark returned to the governate, St. Dimiana knew what he had transpired, she rushed to meet him. She did not greet him, but said, “What is it that I heard? I would rather hear about your death than to hear that you have denounced your faith and left the God that created you, to worship gods made by hands. Take note that if you don’t return to your fist faith, and renounce the worship of stones, you are not my father and I’m not your daughter,” and she left him.

Her father was greatly moved by the words of his daughter, and he wept bitterly. In haste, he went to Diocletian and confessed the Lord Christ. When the Emperor couldn’t convince him by threats and promises, he ordered him to be beheaded. When Diocletian knew that St. Dimiana was the cause of her father renouncing the idols, he sent her a prince who tried gently to convince her to worship the idols, and threatened that if she did not heed his orders, she would be beheaded. The price went to with two hundred soldiers and some instruments of torture.

When he arrived at her palace, he said to her, “I am a messenger sent from Diocletian. I came to call you according to the Emperor’s orders, to worship his gods, so that he can grant you all that you want.” The Saint shouted in his face saying, “May God denounce the messenger and the one whom he was sent. Don’t you have any shame calling stones and wood gods that are inhabited by devils? There is no god in heaven or on earth except one God, the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit, the eternal Creator, the Everlasting, who is everywhere, who knows all secrets, and who can throw you into hell where there is everlasting pain.

As for me, I am a maidservant of my Master and my Saviour Jesus Christ, and his good Father and the Holy Spirit, to Him I confess and upon Him I depend, and with His name I die, and by Him I live forever. The Prince became exceedingly angry and ordered her to be placed in the human torturing press, until her blood poured out of her body. The virgins were standing and weeping. When they put her in prison, the angel of the Lord appeared to her, he touched her body with her illuminated wings, and she was healed of all her wounds. The prince used all his evil imaginations to torture he, once by scratching her body another time by putting her in boiling oil. Through it all the Lord raised her up safely. When the prince saw that his torture was in vain, he ordered her to be beheaded and all of the other virgins with her. They all were granted the crowns of martyrdom.

May the prayers of St.Dimiana and forty virgins be with us

 Glory be to God forever

Amen.