The paschal season of the Church is preceded by the season of Great Lent, which is also preceded by its own liturgical preparation. The first sign of the approach of Great Lent comes five Sundays before its beginning. On this Sunday the Gospel reading is about Zacchaeus the tax-collector. It tells…
The third day of the Afterfeast of the Meeting of the Lord falls on February 5.
The Holy Virgin Martyr Agatha was the fifteen-year-old daughter of rich and respected Christian parents from the city of Palermo (formerly Panormos) in Sicily. During the persecution under the emperor Decius (249-251), the city prefect of Catania, Quintianus, having heard about Agatha’s…
Saint Theodosius, Archbishop of Chernigov, was born in the seventeenth century at the beginning of the decade of the thirties in Podolsk governance. He was descended from a noble family, the Polonitsky-Uglitskys. His parents were the priest Nikḗtas and Maria. The saint was taught Christian piety…
The Holy martyr Theodula lived in the city of Anazarbus (Asia Minor) during the reign of the Roman emperors Diocletian (284-305) and Maximian (305-311). The prefect of the city, Pelagius, was a very cruel man. His servants sought out Christians throughout the entire region and brought them to…
From time immemorial the Russian people, with faith in the all-powerful help of the Most Holy Theotokos, considered the title “Seeker of the Perishing” to refer not only to those who are dying, but to those whose souls are in danger of spiritual death. There are no reliable accounts of the…
The Elets-Chernigov (Chernigov Spruce Tree) Icon of the Mother of God appeared on a spruce or fir tree near Chernigov in the year 1060, in the time of Prince Svyatoslav Yaroslavich, as was recorded in the Synodikon of Bishop Zosimus Prokopovich of Chernigov (1655-1657). The icon was placed in a…
The Divnogorsk-Sicilian Icon of the Mother of God received the first part of its title from where it was enshrined when it was glorified: the Dormition monastery of Divnogorsk, in the former Ostrogozhsk district in Voronezh governance. Its title of “Sicilian” comes from its place of…