On the day after every Great Feast, the Orthodox Church honors the one through whom the Feast is made possible. On the day following the Nativity of the Lord, for example, we celebrate the Synaxis of the Most Holy Theotokos (December 26). On the day after Theophany, we commemorate Saint John the…
Saint Paphnutius, who led an ascetical life in the Thebaid desert in Egypt, has left us an account of Saint Onuphrius the Great and the Lives of other fourth century hermits: Timothy the Desert Dweller, the abbas Andrew, Charalampus, Theophilus, and others. It occurred to Saint Paphnutius to go to…
Saint Peter of Athos, a Greek by birth, served as a soldier in the imperial armies and he lived at Constantinople. In the year 667, during a war with the Syrians, Saint Peter was taken captive and locked up in a fortress in the city of Samara on the Euphrates River. For a long time he languished…
In 1677 Patriarch Joachim proposed to the Moscow Council that the veneration of Saint Anna of Kashin (October 2) throughout Russia should be discontinued because of the Old Believers Schism, which made use of the name of Saint Anna of Kashin for its own purposes. When she was buried her hand had…
Saint Arsenius of Konevits was a native of Novgorod, a coppersmith by trade. The saint accepted tonsure at the Lisich monastery near Novgorod, where he spent eleven years. He went to Mount Athos in 1373, and there he spent three years, dwelling in prayer and making copper vessels for the brethren.…
Saint Onuphrius of Mala and Pskov [Izborsk] founded a monastery in honor of the Nativity of the Mother of God at Mala, four versts from Izborsk and 56 versts from Pskov. The saint died on June 12, 1592 and was buried in the Nativity church, in a chapel named for him. The memory of Saint Onuphrius…
No information on the life of this saint is available at this time.
In 1499 these venerable Fathers came to a completely deserted place in Gryazovets, located 35 versts from Vologda. They founded a hermitage with a church in honor of the Holy Trinity, which was called Pertsov, or, according to other sources, Pertsev. Until their most blessed repose, the monks…
No information available at this time.
Saints Andrew, John, Heraclemon, and Theophilus lived in Egypt in the fourth century, and is mentioned in the Life of Saint Onuphrius. After he had buried Saint Onuphrius, Saint Paphnutius came upon an oasis which impressed him with its beauty and abundance of fruit-bearing trees. Four youths…
Tornike Eristavi1 (later John of Mt. Athos) was a Georgian army commander famed for his victories in war and a favorite of King David Kuropalates. Eventually he abandoned his worldly glory and set off in search of his spiritual father, Saint John, on Mt. Olympus. There he learned that Saint John…
No information on the life of this saint is available at this time.
The Holy Right-Believing Princess Anna of Kashin died on October 2, 1338. A Church council decided to glorify the holy Princess Anna as a saint, and her holy relics were uncovered on July 21, 1649. The solemn transfer of her relics from the wooden Dormition cathedral into the stone Resurrection…