St. Patrick of Ireland and other Western saints officially added to Russian Orthodox Church calendar

St. Patrick, the great enlightener of Ireland, will be officially celebrated in the Russian Orthodox Church for the first time this year on March 17/30. At its March 9 session, the Holy Synod of the Russian Orthodox, under the chairmanship of His Holiness Patriarch Kirill, officially adopted St. Patrick and more than fifteen other pre-schism Western saints into its calendar, according to the report published on the patriarchate’s official site.
The decision was taken after hearing a report from His Eminence Metropolitan Clement of Kaluga and Borovsk, chairman of the commission for the compilation of the Russian Orthodox Church’s Menaion, or calendar of saints, with the proposal to include several ancient saints who labored in western lands before the Great Schism of 1054.

The commission, created on September 18, 2014 by the blessing of His Holiness, had been working on compiling a list of western saints guided by the following criteria: their unblemished confession of the Orthodox faith; the circumstances in which their glorification took place; the absence of their names from polemical works against the Eastern Church and rite; and their present veneration in foreign dioceses of the Russian Orthodox Church and other Local Churches.

Also considered were the “Complete Menaion of the East” by Archbishop Sergius (Spassky), the report of St. John Maximovitch to the Holy Synod of the Russian Church Abroad in 1952, the articles of the Orthodox Encyclopedia and the Snaxarion compiled by Hiermonk Macarius of the Athonite monastery of Simenopetra.
The Western saints added into the calendar of the Russian Orthodox Church are:

Hieromartyr Pothinus, bishop of Lyons, and those with him (June 2/15; c. 177)
Martyrs Blandina and Ponticus of Lyons (June 2/15; c. 177)
Martyr Epipodius of Lyons (April 22/May 5; c. 177)
Martyr Alexander of Lyons (April 24/May 7; c. 177)
Hieromartyr Saturninus, first bishop of Toulouse (November 29/December 12; c. 257)
Martyr Victor of Marseilles (July 21/August 3; c. 290)
St. Alban, protomartyr of Britain (June 22/July 5; c. 304)
St. Honoratus, archbishop of Arles and founder of Lerins Monastery (January 16/29; 429)
St. Germanus, bishop of Auxerre (July 31/August 13; 448)
St. Vincent of Lerins (May 24/June 6; c. 450)
St. Patrick, bishop of Armagh, and enlightener of Ireland (March 17/30; 451)
St. Lupus the Confessor, bishop of Troyes (Gaul) (July 29/August 11; 479)
St. Genevieve of Paris (January 3/16; 512)
St. Germanus, bishop of Paris (May 28/June 10; 576)
St. Procopius, abbot of Sazava in Bohemia (September 16/29; 1053)

Also approved and recommended for Church-wide liturgical use was the texts of the service to the Synaxis of Saints of Diveevo, the service to St. Hilarion of Optina, and the troparion and kontakion to St. Adrian of Ondrusov.

Source.

Happy New Year!

For those who hew to really really traditional church calendars, today is the first day of the year 7525 since the creation of the world.

The Reform of the Orthodox Calendar

An interesting video on the topic can be found here.

For the record the adoption of the Roman Catholic calendar was not heretical. It was however done in a manner (as the video points out) that was grossly uncanonical and deeply injurious to the unity of the Church.

Who says 13 is an unlucky number? 2013 is looking good

I just glanced at the long term calendar and realized that next year Easter/Pascha falls on the 5th of May which is the latest date I am familiar with.  What does this mean?  It means that 2013 will also be a record year for the number, or more accurately lack thereof, of fasting days.  There will be an enormous gap between Theophany and the Triodion (Feb 24th).  Meatfare Sunday doesn't arrive until March 10th with the Great Fast only beginning on March 18th.  So when does the Apostle's Fast begin?  Three days AFTER the Feast for those on the New Calendar and July 1st (NS) for those on the Old Calendar.  That means that there is NO Apostle's Fast for those on the New Calendar (except presumably the eve of).  Even those on the Old Calendar will only have an eleven day fast, which for Old Calendar types is a walk in the park.

On a side note Roman Catholic Easter in 2013 is on March 31, five weeks earlier than ours.