Synaxis of the Honourable Forerunner
Archimandrite Ananias Koustenis On 7 January, the Church celebrates the Synaxis of the Honourable Forerunner and Baptist, John. It is the oldest feast of our Church for John the Baptist and it came from God. God enlightened the Fathers of the Church and they appointed the day after Epiphany...
Saint Eugenia the Abbot
Archimandrite Ananias Koustenis Today we celebrate the memory of a great saint, the holy blessed virgin martyr Evyenia. She lived at the time of Decius, in the mid-third century, in Old Rome, the great world power of the time. Old Rome, because later came New Rome, Constantinople, which is...
Saint Anastasia, the Deliverer from Potions
Georgios Papademetropoulos The holy and most brave martyr Anastasia lived in Rome at the time of the Emperor Diocletian (284-305). She was the daughter of a pagan, by the name of Praetextatus. Her mother, however, whose name was Fausta, was a Christian and so Anastasia was taught the faith...
The Holy Martyr Ignatios the God-Bearer
Saint John Chrysostom At one time, a terrible war broke out against the Churches and spread all over the world like a most dreadful tyranny, with people being seized from the market place on no other accusation but that they had become free of delusion and had hastened towards...
The Saints Stand By Us
Dr. Petros Panayiotopoulos When we refer to the life of a saint, we tend to extol their actions and promote them mostly on the basis of the wonderful things they performed. From very ancient times, it was thought that this elevation and emphasis, sometimes even exaggeration, in the narrative...
Saint Spyridon the Wonder-Working Bishop of Trimythous
Saint Nikolaï Velimirović, ‘The Ochrid Prologue’, December The island of Cyprus was where this outstanding saint was born and also where he served the Church. He was born into a family of ordinary country folk and remained a simple and humble man throughout his life, until his demise. He...
Saint Daniel the Stylite
Stylites (the Greek word style means pillar) In the early days of the Byzantine Empire, the love for God made many monks to choose strict and strange types of asceticism. So, some ascetics-saints were standing on a small platform on top of a pillaron for years in an amazing display...
Let’s Wear Our Masks All the Time
These days, what do we all have to wear on our faces? When we are around other people, we have to cover our faces with masks, don’t we? The masks are supposed to keep our germs in, just in case we’re sick. In the epistle reading, we hear about how...
Saint Anthimos, the Fool for Christ (+1867)
Saint Anthimos was from Sofia, Bulgaria, where he was a married, parish-priest. In 1841, after his wife reposed, he went to Mount Athos and was tonsured as a monk at Simonopetra Monastery. He began to act like a fool for Christ in order to hide his spirituality and closeness to...
Saint Patapios of Thebes, the Wonderworker
† Dionysios, Metropolitan of Servia and Kozani Today the Church celebrates and honours the memory of the blessed Patapios the Desert-Dweller. This is the title accorded to the saint who lived in isolation in the desert, leaving behind the turmoil and joys of the secular life. He was born...
