Name-day calendar: Who celebrates today, September 6

September 6’s name-day calendar highlights Vivi and Eudoxios, alongside saints and religious figures commemorated by the Orthodox Church.

Among the day’s traditions is the miracle of the Archangel Michael at Chonae, one of the best-known miracles in church tradition. The event is said to have taken place in Colossae, in Phrygia in Asia Minor, a city later renamed Chonae, now Honaz in Turkey.

According to the account, the archangel caused a healing spring to emerge there. A grateful Christian whose deaf-mute daughter was healed after drinking its water built a church beside the spring in Michael’s honor. The ascetic Archippus served there for 60 years, praying and preaching, and many pagans converted to Christianity.

Local pagans, angered by the reported healings and conversions, planned to destroy the church and kill Archippus. They diverted two nearby rivers, the Lycocastrus and the Kouphos, toward the church. As the flood approached, Archippus stayed inside and prayed. The Archangel Michael then appeared, struck the ground with his spear, and split a huge rock in two, creating an underground chasm that swallowed the waters and saved the church. The event became known as the miracle at Chonae because the waters were said to have been swallowed by the earth.

The article also presents Maximus Sandovitch, an Orthodox priest recognized as the first martyr of the Lemkos, a Slavic ethnic group in the Carpathians. It says he was martyred at the beginning of World War I after refusing to abandon Orthodoxy and join the Uniate Church. The supplied text begins his life story but ends before completing it.