Great Martyr Barbara

Great Martyr Barbara lived in the late 3rd to early 4th century in the city of Heliopolis in Phoenicia (according to another version, in Nicomedia) and was the only daughter of the noble and wealthy pagan Dioscorus. Fearing the corrupting influence of the outside world on his daughter and wishing to shield her beauty from prying eyes, her father confined Barbara to a high tower. Gazing from the tower's window at the beauty of creation — the sky, the sun, the stars, the rivers — Barbara came to the conviction that all this could not have been made by man-made idols, but bore witness to a single true Creator. Through Christian women who secretly visited her, she heard of Christ and, having ordered the workmen building a bathhouse to cut a third window (a symbol of the Holy Trinity) instead of two, was baptized by a visiting presbyter disguised as a merchant. Learning of his daughter's faith, the enraged Dioscorus tried to force her to recant, and then himself handed her over for torture to the regional governor Martianus. Barbara endured cruel torments — she was beaten with ox sinews, her body torn with iron claws, burned with torches — yet remained unshaken in her faith, miraculously healed of her wounds overnight. Christ appeared to her in prison and strengthened her. She was condemned to death and beheaded by her own father, who was immediately struck by lightning afterward. Before her execution, St. Barbara prayed to God that whoever honors the memory of her sufferings and calls upon her in the hour of death would not be deprived of Holy Communion or die suddenly without repentance — for this she is especially venerated as patroness against sudden, unrepented death, as well as patroness of miners and artillerymen. Her memory is kept on December 4/17.