For All the Saints: St. Photine

from: http://chantblog.blogspot.com/2014/03/
st-photine-of-samaria.html

My Lenten Bible study book, which I've been promoting lately, has a lesson on the Samaritan woman in John 4. The Old Testament tie-in is the power of water, the promised Holy Spirit, and the teaching of Jesus about living water.

The Samaritan woman, unnamed in the Bible, is honored today on the Orthodox Saints calendar. I hadn't realized that the Orthodox tradition names her, Photine, which means enlightened one. That site has this:

"[Photine] was the Samaritan Woman who met Christ at Jacob's Well (John ch. 4). She repented, and told her townsmen that she had met the Christ, for which she is sometimes called the first to proclaim the Gospel of Christ. She converted her four sisters (Phota, Photis, Parasceva, and Cyriaca), and her sons (Victor and Joses), and all of them became tireless evangelists for Christ. After the martyrdom of the holy Apostles Peter and Paul, she traveled to Carthage to proclaim the Gospel there. She, with her Christian sisters and sons, all met martyrdom under the persecutions of Nero. She is also commemorated on the Sunday of the Samaritan Woman during the Paschal season."