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.

Feast of St. Kyril Equal to the Apostles and Enlightener of the Slavs

Saint Cyril Equal of the Apostles, Teacher of the Slavs (Constantine in the schema), and his older brother Methodius (April 6), were Slavs, born in Macedonia in the city of Thessalonica.

St Cyril received the finest of educations, and from the age of fourteen he was raised with the son of the emperor. Later, he was ordained as a priest. Upon his return to Constantinople, he worked as a librarian of the cathedral church, and as a professor of philosophy. St Cyril successfully held debates with iconoclast heretics and with Moslems.

Yearning for solitude, he went to Mount Olympos to his older brother Methodius, but his solitude lasted only a short while. Both brothers were sent by the emperor Michael on a missionary journey to preach Christianity to the Khazars in the year 857. Along the way they stopped at Cherson and discovered the relics of the Hieromartyr Clement of Rome (November 25).

Arriving at the territory of the Khazars, the holy brothers spoke with them about the Christian Faith. Persuaded by the preaching of St Cyril, the Khazar prince together with all his people accepted Christianity. The grateful prince wanted to reward the preachers with rich presents, but they refused this and instead asked the prince to free and send home with them all the Greek captives. St Cyril returned to Constantinople together with 200 such captives set free.

In the year 862 began the chief exploit of the holy brothers. At the request of Prince Rostislav, the emperor sent them to Moravia to preach Christianity in the Slavic language. Sts Cyril and Methodius by a revelation from God compiled a Slavonic alphabet and translated the Gospel, Epistles, the Psalter and many Service books into the Slavonic language. They introduced divine services in Slavonic.

The holy brothers were then summoned to Rome at the invitation of the Roman Pope. Pope Adrian received them with great honor, since they brought with them the relics of the Hieromartyr Clement. Sickly by nature and in poor health, St Cyril soon fell ill from his many labors, and after taking the schema, he died in the year 869 at the age of forty-two. Before his death, he expressed his wish for his brother to continue the Christian enlightenment of the Slavs. St Cyril was buried in the Roman church of St Clement, whose own relics also rest there, brought to Italy from Cherson by the Enlighteners of the Slavs.

Source

Feast of St. Valentine the Presbyter & Great Martyr of Rome

Today is St. Valentine's Day on the Western Church calendar (we commemorate him on July 6th).  Below is an address by Bishop Demetri on the story of St. Valentine the "patron of love."

Each year, the NAC Midwinter Meeting is scheduled to fall on the weekend nearest the 14th of February, and as we all know, Sunday is "Valentine’s Day", as it is called in our secular culture, or as the church would call it "the Feast of St. Valentine."

I would like to spend a few minutes to familiarize ourselves with the life Saint Valentine?

Who was Saint Valentine?

St. Valentine was a priest near Rome in about the year 270 A.D, a time when the church was enduring great persecution. His ministry was to help the Christians to escape this persecution, and to provide them the sacraments, such as marriage, which was outlawed by the Roman Empire at that time. For his belief and practice, St. Valentine was arrested, and imprisoned for his refusal to deny Our Lord and embrace the Roman gods.

While in prison, St. Valentine continued to minister, even witnessing to those who guarded him. One of the guards was a good man who had adopted a blind girl. He asked St. Valentine if his God could help his daughter. Valentine prayed and the girl was miraculously given her sight, demonstrating the power of the One True God. The guard and his whole family, 46 people in all, believed in Christ and were baptized. The emperor was furious about this, so he had St. Valentine beheaded.

St. Valentine’s knew that he could be arrested for his belief and Christian ministry. He knew that refusal to recognize the Roman gods would result in imprisonment. And he knew that if he continued to witness to Christ in the prison he would make his captors angry, and would probably result in his death. But he continued, because he loved the Lord and his fellow humans. He was willing to risk his life in being an instrument in the healing of the blind girl’s infirmity, and in doing so spread the Good News of Jesus Christ to those who needed to hear it.

This is briefly who St. Valentine was.

"Be My Valentine." This is a phrase that conjures up a lot of different images associated with the celebration of Valentine's Day. Cards with hearts and little poems on them. Candy and flowers given to someone one we love. Young and old alike expressing their affection for their sweethearts. February 14th, for our culture, means cards, candy and flowers.

Somehow, this feast of the church has been skewed to include snapshots from pagan mythology, such as cupid, with the focus of the day only on romantic love. For most, it is a shock to hear that this is a day to remember and celebrate the life and martyrdom of a Christian Saint.

Read the rest here.

Patriarch Kyril's sermon on the beheading of St. John the Baptist

A sermon by His Holiness Kyrill, Patriarch of Moscow and All the Russia, on the Beheading of the Prophet, Forerunner and Baptist John in the Cathedral church of the Savior in the Old Market in Nizhny Novgorod.

Your Eminences, dear Right Reverend hierarchs, fathers, brothers and sisters!

It is a great joy for me to celebrate the Divine liturgy together with my brethren, the bishops who have come from the dioceses of the Volga region, in this magnificent Cathedral of Nizhny Novgorod, to see the local Church united around its bishop, to see young faces, to hear the youth choir, to see many people, who perhaps have only recently entered Church life, but are conscious that they are members of the Holy, Catholic, Apostolic Orthodox Church, and to live the Mystery of the Holy Eucharist together with them.

Today we recall a tragic event form the Gospel – the martyr’s end of the Prophet and Forerunner John. This is a day of mourning in the Orthodox Church calendar: we are not supposed to eat any food; bishops and priests wear the vestments which they wear on feast days in Lent. Together with the outward appearance of the clergy and the Gospel and Epistle readings, all this is as it were destined to remind us of the tragedy which took place. The Prophet, Forerunner and Baptist John was slain at the suggestion of Herod’s wife who could not forgive the Prophet for his denunciations that she was living illegitimately with her new husband, Herod, because she had previously been his brother’s wife. Of course, the Queen was conscious of her sin. If she had not been conscious of it, she would not have been in such a rage and her rage was such that she was prepared to murder the Prophet, who had enormous authority among the people and with her own husband. She achieved her goal and the prophetic voice of John the Baptist fell silent.

John the Baptist is higher than all those born of women, as the Word of God says of him. This is because he was called to prepare the people to accept the coming of the Savior through repentance. For all sincere repentance presupposes sincere and honest speech. When he who calls to repentance asks unbiased questions he as it were has rights and judgement, he has the right to say what is right and what is wring in human life. And this is what John the Prophet of God did. As the word of God says, John baptised with the Baptism of repentance. He prepared people through repentance so that they would be capable of accepting the word of the Savior, the Messiah, our Lord Jesus Christ.

People seldom like to hear the truth about themselves, only in rare cases and only strong people. Most only like to hear good and pleasant things about themselves. And when something good and pleasant has been said, then people presume that the person of whom it has been said, must in return for these good words, which are often false and hypocritical, do something for the person who said them. And a large part of our life is more or less built on the basis of this simple logic of mutual deceit. If you examine your conversations with others, with your colleagues, at table, especially with those in positions of authority, you will immediately detect this false note. This false note shows hypocrisy and lieing and it does not deter cunning. Those who come out with false and lying words are capable of any cunning act, certain that their false words disarm those against whom they have ill-intentioned thoughts.

Lieing has not only entered into our personal relationships with those close to us, it is also present in social relations. And where there is lieing, there can be no repentance, no consciousness of sin, no desire to unburden ourselves of sin, and this means that there is no sincere desire to move towards God. This is why the Forerunner, who denounced people so threateningly, was required. No doubt some of them shrugged their shoulders in bewilderment, others did not care, some probably just cursed the man and walked away. But how many people heard God’s truth in his words and were later helped by this to accept the word of the Savior! This is why he is higher than all the saints – he prepared the earth where the seeds of Christ’s preaching fell.

Read the rest here.

Feast of Blessed Augustine of Hippo

I refer the reader to this excellent post on the great Orthodox St. Augustine of Hippo.

Feast of St. Alexis (Toth) of Wilkes-Barre

St. Alexis  (+1909)

A New Saint: Blessed Irodion of Lainici is Glorified

The glorification of St. Irodion of Lainici in Romania. Read the story at Mystagogy.

Holy Saint Irodian pray for us!

Feast of St. Ambrose of Milan

Troparion - Tone 4

In truth you were revealed to your flock as a rule of faith,
an image of humility and a teacher of abstinence;
your humility exalted you;
your poverty enriched you.
Hierarch Father Ambrose,
entreat Christ our God
that our souls may be saved.

Kontakion - Tone 3

You shone forth with divine doctrine eclipsing the deception of Arius,
shepherd and initiate of the mysteries, Ambrose.
you worked miracles through the power of the Spirit,
healing various passions;
righteous father, entreat Christ our God to grant us His great mercy.

Feast of St. John of San Francisco

St. John Maximovitch patron of this blog and the namesake of its author.

Sunday May 23: Feast of the Great New Martyr St. Evgeny Rodionov

Evgeny (or Yevgeny) Aleksandrovich Rodionov was eighteen years old and serving his obligatory military service when he was captured by Muslim insurgents near Chechnya. After enduring months of extremely harsh captivity he was told he could save himself by converting to Islam. But he refused to remove the cross he wore. On May 23rd 1996, his 19th birthday, after enduring great torture he was decapitated by his captors and buried with three other murdered soldiers in a shell crater. His mother went to great lengths and expense to locate and recover her son's remains which have been reburied with honor. His grave is now a popular shrine for pilgrims and St. Evgeny has become the unofficial patron of the Russian Army.

His mother is still alive and often writes and speaks about her son.

Great Martyr Evgeny pray for us!

Breaking News: The Orthodox Church is not Catholic

...At least in the sense generally understood by Christians in communion with the Pope of Rome.

Apparently a large number of (big 'C') Catholics and ecumenically minded Orthodox have been disconcerted by the glorification (canonization) of St. Justin Popovic of Celije by the Serbian Orthodox Church, whose ceremony of glorification was held today. It would appear that St. Justin's principal shortcoming was that he lacked the ecumenical spirit. He was hostile (polemically so) to the non-Orthodox in general and Roman Catholicism in particular. One of his better known quotes was...

"In the history of the human race there have been three principal falls: that of Adam, that of Judas, and that of the pope."

Such is unlikely to go over well in the modern age when the answer to all differences is tolerance and endless dialogue.

Now in fairness, I am not a huge fan of polemics. I have never seen anyone converted by insulting them. Still, all of the hubbub now spreading in the blogosphere (I count no less than five blogs that I regularly look at addressing this subject within the last 24hrs) raises an important question. How does St. Justin's position fit in with the opinions of the other Orthodox saints? How does it fit with the historic teachings of the Orthodox Church?

The answer, unfortunately for the kumbaya crowd, is quite well.

I might have chosen other ways to express the point, but the fact remains without exception that no Orthodox saint of the post-schism era has ever even hinted that the Christian West was/is anything other than heretical. We can try and dance around this all we want, but there it is.

None of this of course means that Roman Catholics are evil people. Nor does it mean that we can have nothing at all to do with them. Many members of my family are Catholic. And I still have a great deal of respect for some aspects of the Roman Church including their many charitable works and their heroic witness for life and and against the encroachments of radical secularism. Further, I remain convinced that +Benedict XVI is the best thing to hit Rome in a very long time.

What it does mean is that they are not Orthodox, and we are not simply misguided Catholics who don't realize that we really don't disagree on the important issues. And it is time for people on both sides to stop pretending otherwise. I am a strong supporter of strategic cooperation with the RCC where such is possible and without compromising the Faith. However as far as ecumenism is concerned, I rather support the view of the Bulgarian Church, whose Holy Synod recently concluded that more than four decades of ecumenical dialogue with Rome have proven utterly fruitless and thus have suspended their participation in the every year or two photo-ops over champagne and expensive food in very picturesque locals.

In the end, St. Justin's offense was to rather undiplomatically point out that we don't in fact belong to the same church in large part because we don't believe the same things. Those who try to get around that are going to have to overcome the unanimous concurrence of at least the last five centuries worth of Orthodox saints.

Feast of St. Patrick Enlightener of Ireland

Happy St. Patrick's day to all my fellow Irish both in blood and spirit.

No more posting today. And remember Guinness is not wine. :-)

The service on the 15th anniversary of the glorification of St. John of Shanghai and San Francisco

Video of parts of the liturgy on Saturday July 4th. There is also a close up of St. John's relics.

Hat tip to ROCOR UNITED.

The Incorrupt Relics of St. John (Maximovitch) of Shanghai and San Francisco

I was asked in a previous post about the relics of St. John (+1966) with specific reference to their being "incorrupt." Unfortunatly I did not take any pictures during my recent pilgrimage. This was more of a personal spiritual trip than sightseeing. The next time I go I will try and take some photos. However I did a quick google search and found several photos of St. John's relics.

The top one was taken some years ago during the transfer of his relics into a new coffin after his old one had rotted away. The middle photo is of his relics in their usual shrine in the right side of the Cathedral. And the last Picture is of him lying in repose looking towards his face (which in keeping with Orthodox custom is veiled). I can confirm that these photos were substantially what I saw in San Francisco last Friday.

Feast of the Holy Royal Martyrs of Russia

Sometimes it's easy to forget that saints were real people.

Holy Royal Martyrs of Russia pray for us!

Feast of St. John of San Francisco and Shanghai

Today is the fifteenth anniversary of the glorification of my namesake, St. John Maximovitch.

June 15th: Feast of the Great and Holy Prince Martyr Lazar of Serbia

Holy Prince Lazar pray for us, especially for your suffering children in Kosovo.

June 15th: Feast of Blessed Augustine of Hippo

Yes, he is an Orthodox saint.

He wrote some things which are not generally accepted in Orthodoxy. But we commemorate him for his great spirituality. His confessions are still powerful reading.

Ostrov (Part 1 of 12)

Someone uploaded the entire movie to youtube. The film is in Russian with English subtitles. The other parts are linked at the end of each segment. I can not recommend this movie too strongly.

The Soul of the People

Click on the image for full sized version.