Happy Namesday

This evening my dear wife opened her namesday gift before prayers: a booklet which contained the lives of Saint Adrian and his wife, Natalia (click on the image in the sidebar to read from the OCA website).

I can remember standing in St. Antony's with her on August 25, 2001 at Vespers. I had been Orthodox for a few months and she, perhaps just barely a catechumen, was listening to the entry from the Prologue of Ochrid for the evening, which was read after the service. She read of Natalia's uncompromising attitude towards her Savior, even if it meant losing her beloved husband to apostasy, as well as her steadfast support of her husband while he, confessing Christ as a Roman guard, was stripped of his station, imprisoned, and martyred. Her care for him and for the other martyrs -- from anointing their maggot-infested wounds to gathering up their precious relics -- prompted Audra to think, "I want to be that kind of wife."

While life has not dealt us circumstances as dramatic as these, she has certainly been a rock of support, a source of prayer, and an example of fidelity and work. She accepted a martyrdom of sorts when she married a man whom she knew had not only entered a Faith she found strange and difficult, but who had also seriously considered pursuing a call to ministry therein. While it is not my decision in the slightest whether or not I will, in fact, be ordained anything at all in the Church, my wife has been an image of love for our God and for man, a gentle direction against my periodic tendency towards listlessness, and an ever-willing woman of faith; if I am ordained, she will make a fantastic matushka.

May God grant my dear Audra, though the prayers of her holy matron Natalia of Nicomedia, many, many blessed years.