For the third time this series finds itself at the letter “P.” This time our saint for today is Saint Philip of Agira:
Saint Philip of Agira (also Aggira, Agirone, Agirya or Argira) was an early Christian confessor. There are two parallel stories of this saint which give to possible dates in which this saint lived. Traditionally, through the writings of St. Athanasius, it is maintained that Philip of Agira is a saint of the 1st century, born in the year AD 40 in Cappadocia (modern Turkey) and died on 12 May, AD 103.
Another recent study says to have been born of a Syrian father in Thrace on an unknown date in the 5th century whose elder brothers drowned whilst fishing. Philip was known as the “Apostle of the Sicilians”, as he was the first Christian missionary to visit that island. Nothing else can be certainly stated about him.
The source of this is his wiki, found here.
Donal Graeme 
Very nice entry.
Our Menaion for yesterday had:
Isaaacius, Abbot
Macrinna, grandmother of St. Basil the Great
Barlaam the monk of Caesarea
Natalios the Martyr
@ Novaseeker
I’m not familiar with Menaion- I assume it is a liturgical component of the Byzantine rite? Would that have been for Pentecost (which I believe was last Sunday for the Orthodox)?
The Menaion is indeed the book which contains monthly “propers” for the saints of the given day of the month. Those entries were for May 30, so the day before Pentecost.
Thank you for explaining that Novaseeker. This coming Sunday is All Saints, is it not?
For the Orthodox, yes, it’s All Saints. It follows on our calendar as a kind of tie-in to Pentecost to draw the connection between the foundation of the Church and the communion of saints in the Church.
Ok, thought so. Byzantine Catholic Churches use the same general liturgical calendar, only a week forward due to using the Gregorian calendar.
Yep.
The differences come up with respect to things that are related to the Gregorian Paschal calendar (there are some Orthodox churches that follow it, I think Finland does?), but pretty much most of everyone else in the Orthodox churches follows the Julian paschal calendar. In North America, most Orthodox churches follow the “new” calendar for fixed feasts (e.g., celebrate Christmas on 12/25 per our calendars), but some of the churches that are closer to “old country Orthodox” observe the “old” calendar for fixed feasts as well (e.g. Jan 7 following our calendar).
I think there may be a tiny number of Eastern Catholics who are on the “old calendar” (perhaps the very small Russian Catholic community), but for the most part they are on the new calendar for both fixed feasts and movable ones.
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