The first Sunday of Great Lent is called the Sunday of Orthodoxy because it commemorates the restoration of the Holy Icons and the triumph of the Orthodox Faith against the terrible heresy of the Iconoclasts, i.e. those heretics who refused to honor the Holy Icons. For more than a hundred years the…
The Feast of the Annunciation to the Most Holy Theotokos is celebrated on one day March 25, exactly nine months before the Nativity of Christ. There is one day of Prefeast (March 24), followed by the Feast itself. On March 26, we celebrate the Synaxis of the Archangel Gabriel. Because the Feast of…
Saint Zachariah the Recluse of Egypt because of his concern for the poor and homeless was called “to the outcast.” In the printed Menaion he is known as “our Monastic Father Zachariah,” and so he has been identified erroneously with Saint Zachariah the Monk.
Saint Artemon, Bishop of Seleucia, was born and lived in Seleucia of Pisidia (Asia Minor). He was pious and virtuous, therefore when the holy Apostle Paul (June 29) came to Seleucia, he established Saint Artemon as the first bishop of this city, since he was the most worthy. Saint Artemon wisely…
Saint Zachariah the Faster of the Caves was an ascetic in the Far Caves in the thirteenth-fourteenth centuries. He fasted so strictly that he ate nothing baked nor boiled, and he consumed only greens once a day at the setting of the sun. Demons trembled at the mere mention of his name. Often the…
The Holy Martyr Stephen of Kazan was a Tatar. For more than twenty years, he suffered from a weakness of the legs. After the capture of Kazan by Ivan the Terrible (1552), he believed in Christ and received healing. The saint was baptized by Archpriest Menignus of the Moscow cathedral, who had…
The Holy Martyr Peter of Kazan was a newly-baptized Tatar who suffered because he converted to Christianity from Islam. After the Russian army left Kazan, the inhabitants dragged Peter from his home by force, and addressed him by his former Moslem name, hoping that he would deny Christ. But to all…
About 250-300 years ago1 this icon was in one of the men’s monasteries of Tver and the Superior gave it to Cosmas Volchaninov in gratitude for his fine work in the Monastery church. The Icon was passed down from generation to generation, but an irreverent grandson of Cosmas took the darkened Icon…