St. Barbara the Great Martyr

By the account the Church reads, the daughter of a rich pagan who shut her in a tower to keep her from suitors and from the Christians. She became a Christian in secret, and had a third window cut into the bath house he was building for her, for the Trinity. When he found out he handed her over to the governor, and after torture he beheaded her himself, and was killed by lightning on the way home. Because of that death she has long been prayed to by those who fear a sudden end without repentance, and she is loved across the Orthodox world, from the Levant to Russia, where the dish of boiled wheat made on her day in some places carries her name. Feast: December 4.