St. Philoumenos of Jacob's Well

He was born in 1913 on the island of Cyprus and named Sophoklis, one of twin brothers who were drawn together to the monastic life, raised in piety and stirred by the lives of the saints. As young men the two went to the Holy Land and entered the Brotherhood of the Holy Sepulchre, and Sophoklis was tonsured with the name Philoumenos and in time ordained priest.

After many years of service in the holy places, he was appointed guardian of the shrine of Jacob's Well near Nablus, the ancient Shechem in Samaria, the very well where, as the Gospel recounts, the Lord sat and spoke with the woman of Samaria and revealed Himself as the giver of living water. There Father Philoumenos kept the church and served the divine offices in a place of tension and danger.

He was troubled by men who demanded that the crosses and the icons be taken away from the well, claiming the place for themselves, and who threatened him when he answered that it was a Christian shrine and had been so for centuries. He did not yield, and he did not flee.

On the twenty-ninth of November, 1979, as he was serving the evening prayer in the church over the well, armed men fell upon him and murdered him with savage cruelty, and did violence to the holy things. So the guardian of the place of the living water was himself poured out as a martyr upon it.

When his body was later taken up, it was found incorrupt. The Patriarchate of Jerusalem numbered him among the saints in 2009, and the Church keeps his memory on the twenty-ninth of November, honoring Philoumenos, the new hieromartyr of Jacob's Well.