By Demetrios Panagopoulos (+ 1982), Preacher
If you open your Synaxarion to August 1st you will find a mother with seven children. It is Saint Solomone. She is the mother of these children, the so-called "Maccabees". She had entrusted her children to a teacher named Eleazar.
And do you know why these children were all sacrificed? Because they refused to eat pork. It was a law then in the Old Testament that pork was forbidden.
Are you listening? Who told them about this? This is not a simple task, but it came from someone who by deed and word instilled it in them.
In fact, the last one, the youngest, went alone to his martyrdom, as the lambs go. And when they burned all seven in the furnace, Saint Solomone also fell in and was burned.
Which mother has her children fast today? If, however, the doctor tells her to, she will have her children fast for a month with rice water. But now when Christ tells her to fast, she says: "Leave Christ out it, Christ doesn't know."
That is why Saint Solomone will be a witness of accusation on that day for all the mothers who did not teach fasting to their children.
Source: Translated by John Sanidopoulos.