The feast today in honour of the holy Apostle John commemorates the miracle taking place each year in Ephesus, in which a certain dust or powder, called manna, suddenly poured forth from his tomb and was used by the faithful for deliverance from maladies of both soul and body. For an account of his life, […]
Continue ReadingAbout the beginning of His thirty-second year, when the Lord Jesus was going throughout Galilee, preaching and working miracles, many women who had received of His beneficence left their own homeland and from then on followed after Him. They ministered unto Him out of their own possessions, even until His crucifixion and entombment; and afterwards, […]
Continue ReadingOn this day in the year 351, not long after Cyril had succeeded Maximus as Archbishop of Jerusalem, during the reign of Constantius, the son of Saint Constantine the Great, on the day of Pentecost, the sign of the Cross appeared over Jerusalem. Saint Cyril, in his letter to the Emperor Constantius, says, “At about […]
Continue ReadingSaint Irene was the daughter of a princelet called Licinius; named Penelope by her parents, through a divine revelation she was brought to faith in Christ and at Baptism was renamed Irene. In her zeal for piety she broke in pieces all the idols of her father, who commanded that she be trampled underfoot by […]
Continue ReadingThis Saint was from Tarsus of Cilicia and contested in martyrdom under Diocletian, in 284: she was cast into a bull fashioned of bronze, which had been heated with fire. Reading copyright Holy Transfiguration Monastery, Brookline, MA, used by permission. All rights reserved.
Continue ReadingThe holy Martyrs Timothy and Mavra were husband and wife. Timothy was from Penapeis in the Thebaid, a reader in the Church, and had been married to Mavra only twenty days when he was betrayed to Arian, the Governor of the Thebaid, as a teacher of the Christians. Arian commanded Timothy to surrender his sacred […]
Continue ReadingIn the half-century after the First Ecumenical Council held in Nicaea in 325, if there was one man whom the Arians feared and hated more intensely than any other, as being able to lay bare the whole error of their teaching, and to marshal, even from exile or hiding, the beleaguered forces of the Orthodox, […]
Continue ReadingThis great Prophet of God, Jeremiah, who loved his brethren and lamented for them greatly, who prayed much for the people and the Holy City, was the son of Helkias of the tribe of Levi, from the city of Anathoth in the land of Benjamin. He was sanctified from his mother’s womb, as the Lord […]
Continue ReadingThough the doors were shut at the dwelling where the disciples were gathered for fear of the Jews on the evening of the Sunday after the Passover, our Saviour wondrously entered and stood in their midst, and greeted them with His customary words, “Peace be unto you.” Then He showed unto them His hands and […]
Continue ReadingBoth of these Saints were disciples of the Apostle Paul, who mentions them in his Epistle to the Romans, saying: “Jason and Sosipater my kinsmen greet you” (16:21). Jason was from Tarsus of Cilicia, and became bishop there. Sosipater was from Patras of Achaia, and became Bishop of Iconium. When they had shepherded their churches […]
Continue Reading