Our Holy Father Malchus
Commemorated March 26
Malchus was an agricultural worker in the neighbourhood of Antioch, and from his youth his whole spirit was directed towards God. The Arabs took him for a slave, and while he was in slavery they forced him to take a negress to wife. However, he brought her to the Christian faith and lived with her as a brother with his sister. They conspired together and escaped from slavery, but the Arabs nearly recaptured them. They hid in a cave in which they saw a lioness with her cubs, and were very greatly afraid. But God preserved them; the lioness did not harm them but killed an Arab who tried to enter the cave and seize the runaways. Reaching his home country, Malchus gave his wife to a women's monastery and went himself to a men's monastery. He lived for many years, exercising himself in asceticism, and took his place among the inhabitants of heaven in the fourth century.
Troparion
In thee, O father, was manifestly preserved what is in the image of God, for having taken up thy cross, thou didst follow Christ, and by thine own example hast taught that the flesh is to be despised as transient, but that particular care should be bestowed on the soul, as a thing immortal; wherefore, together with the angels, rejoiceth also thine, O holy Malchus, spirit.
Kontakion
Having divinely armed thyself with the purity of thy soul and unceasing prayers firmly grasping as a spear, thou, our father Malchus, hast pierced the armies of the demon; supplicate unceasingly for us all.
Source: Crkveni Kalendar
