Venerable Martyr Michael

Life

After the death of his parents, this Michael distributed all his property to the poor and went on pilgrimage to the holy places in Jerusalem. He then entered the monastery of Saint Sabbas the Sanctified, where he was tonsured as a monk. Michael was quite young and beautiful of face, but from much fasting he was thin and pale. At that time the Arabs ruled Jerusalem. One day his spiritual father sent Michael to the city to sell handiwork. On the street a eunuch of the Arabian queen met him and brought him to the queen to show his wares. When the queen saw the beautiful monk, she was inflamed with impure lust and proposed carnal sin to the monk, as once Potiphar's wife did to the chaste Joseph. When Michael rejected the vile proposal and began to flee, the enraged queen ordered him beaten with rods and then taken to the king with the false accusation that he had blasphemed the faith of Muhammad. The king proposed that he accept the faith of Muhammad, but he refused. Then they gave him a strong poison to kill him; he drank the poison and it did him no harm. Then the king ordered that he be beheaded with a sword in the midst of Jerusalem. The monks found his body and transferred it to the monastery of Saint Sabbas, where they honorably buried him. Saint Michael suffered for Christ and was glorified in the ninth century.