ST THEODORA, EMPRESS - 11 FEBRUARY

ALL SAINTS CELEBRATED IN FEBRUARY

 Saints celebrated on the 11th of February

Prayer to the Angels and the Saints

Heavenly Father, in praising Your Angels and Saints we praise Your glory, for by honouring them we honour You, their Creator. Their splendour shows us Your greatness, which infinitely surpasses that of all creation.

In Your loving providence, You saw fit to send Your Angels to watch over us. Grant that we may always be under their protection and one day enjoy their company in heaven.

Heavenly Father, You are glorified in Your Saints, for their glory is the crowning of Your gifts. You provide an example for us by their lives on earth, You give us their friendship by our communion with them, You grant us strength and protection through their prayer for the Church, and You spur us on to victory over evil and the prize of eternal glory by this great company of witnesses.

Grant that we who aspire to take part in their joy may be filled with the Spirit that blessed their lives, so that, after sharing their faith on earth, we may also experience their peace in heaven. Amen.

ST THEODORA, EMPRESS 

[Wife of Theophilus.] Saint Theodora, by her mildness and patience, often softened the cruel temper of her brutish husband, Theophilus, and protected the defenders of holy images from the fury of his persecution. 

SHE PUT AN END TO THE ICONOCLAST HERESY

Being left by his death regent of the empire during the minority of her son, Michael III, she put an end to the Iconoclast heresy, one hundred and twenty years after the first establishment of it by Leo the Isaurian: and the patriarch Methodius with great solemnity restored holy images in the great church in Constantinople, on the first Sunday of Lent, which we call the second, of which event the Greeks make an annual commemoration, calling it the feast of Orthodoxy.

SHE SPENT HER LAST YEARS IN A MONASTERY

After she had governed the empire with great glory twelve years, she was banished by her unnatural son and his impious uncle Bardas. She prepared herself for death by spending the last eight years of her life in a monastery, where she gave up her soul to God in 867. 

She is ranked among the saints in the Menology of the emperor Basil, in the Menaea, and other calendars of the Greeks. 

(From Fr Butler's Lives of the Saints)