President Michel Suleiman headed on Tuesday to Africa on an 8-day tour at the head of a delegation, the state-run …

by Benjamin Mann

Denver, Colo., Mar 10, 2013 / 06:07 am (CNA/EWTN News).- A courageous leader of the Jerusalem Church during the Islamic conquests of the seventh century, Patriarch Saint Sophronius I has his liturgical memorial on March 11. Though he is acknowledged and celebrated as a saint in the Roman Catholic Church, St. Sophronius is more commonly venerated among Eastern Catholics and within the Eastern Orthodox churches. All of these traditions commemorate him on the same date, the purported date of his death in 638.

Born in Damascus, Syria, around the year 560, Sophronius came from an esteemed family and received a deep philosophical education. His early devotion to God grew into an inclination toward monastic life, and while still young he entered a monastery in Palestine. He became a friend and student of John Moschus, his fellow monk who would become an important spiritual writer in the Eastern Christian tradition. The Zoroastrian Persians – long-standing military rivals of the Byzantine Empire, hailing from present-day Iran – invaded Palestine in 605. As a result the two monks fled first to Antioch and then Egypt. But their flight became a spiritual quest, taking John and Sophronius to many monasteries throughout the Middle East. Moschus’ memoir of their travels, entitled “The Spiritual Meadow,” survives and is still read in the Church to this day.