Feasts and Saints

(+) Entrance of the Lord into Jerusalem; +) Martyr Sava of Buzau; 6th Sunday of Great Lent (Palm Sunday)

Palm Sunday Palm Sunday is the celebration of the triumphant entrance of Christ into the royal city of Jerusalem. He rode on a colt for which He Himself had sent, and He permitted the people to hail Him publicly as a king. A large crowd met Him in a manner befitting royalty, waving palm branches…

Apr 12, 2020Iulian Dumitraşcu

Venerable Basil the Confessor; Hieromartyr Proterius the Patriarch of Alexandria (Non-liturgical day. Cheese, milk, eggs, fish allowed)

Venerable Basil the Confessor Saint Basil the Confessor was a monk and suffered during the reign of the iconoclast emperor Leo the Isaurian (717-741). When a persecution started against those who venerated holy icons, Saint Basil and his companion Saint Procopius of Decapolis (February 27) were subjected to much torture and locked up in prison.…

Feb 28, 2020Sorin Ioniţe

St. Cyril the Archbishop of Alexandria; 7th Sunday after Pascha (Holy Fathers of the First Ecumenical Council)

Saint Cyril, Archbishop of Alexandria, a distinguished champion of Orthodoxy and a great teacher of the Church, came from an illustrious and pious Christian family. He studied the secular sciences, including philosophy, but most of all he strove to acquire knowledge of the Holy Scriptures and the truths of the Christian Faith. In his youth…

Jun 9, 2019Gheorghe Anghel

Great and Holy Tuesday (Matins). Martyr Valerius

Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday – these three days, which the Church calls Great and Holy have within the liturgical development of the Holy Week a very definite purpose.   They place all its celebrations in the perspective of End ; they remind us of the eschatological meaning of Pascha. So often Holy Week is considered one…

Apr 23, 2019basilica.ro

Hieromartyr Simeon, the Kinsman of the Lord (Fish permitted)

The holy, glorious, all-laudable Apostle and Hieromartyr Symeon the Kinsman of the Lord (Simeon) of the Seventy, was the second Bishop of Jerusalem, serving for the period of 67 to 107. He is commemorated by the Church on April 27, and on January 4 with the Seventy. St. Symeon was the son of Cleopas, the…

Apr 27, 2018Iulian Dumitraşcu

St. Hypatius the Wonderworker and Bishop of Gangra; Martyr Benjamin the Deacon (Lazarus Saturday – Memorial Saturday)

1. Hieromartyr Hypatius, Bishop of Gangra, was bishop of the city of Gangra in Paphlagonia (Asia Minor). In the year 325 he participated in the First Ecumenical Council at Nicea, at which the heresy of Arius was anathematized. When Saint Hypatius was returning in 326 from Constantinople to Gangra, followers of the schismatics Novatus and…

Mar 31, 2018Iulian Dumitraşcu

The Annunciation (fish allowed); 5th Sunday of Great Lent

1. The Feast of the Annunciation is one of the earliest Christian feasts, and was already being celebrated in the fourth century. There is a painting of the Annunciation in the catacomb of Priscilla in Rome dating from the second century. The Council of Toledo in 656 mentions the Feast, and the Council in Trullo…

Mar 25, 2018Iulian Dumitraşcu

Hieromartyr Gregory, bishop of Greater Armenia; Martyrs Rhipsima and Gaiana

1. The Hieromartyr Gregory, Enlightener of Greater Armenia, was born in the year 257. He was descended from the line of the Parthian Arsakid emperors. The father of Saint Gregory, Anak, in striving after the Armenian throne, had murdered his kinsman, the emperor Kursar, in consequence of which all the line of Anak was marked…

Sep 30, 2017Iulian Dumitraşcu

+) Hieromartyr Anthimus the Georgian, metropolitan of Wallachia; Martyrs Callistratus and Epicharis of Rome

1. This chosen person by God was born in Iviria (today’s Georgia) about 1650, to righteous parents, John and Maria, and baptised Andrew. Grown up in the spirit of the Orthodox tradition, young Andrew received from God the gifts of church painting and sculpture. When the Turks invaded his native place, he was caught, made…

Sep 27, 2017Iulian Dumitraşcu

Holy & Righteous Ancestors of God, Joachim and Anna; †) Ven. Kyriakos of Tazlau; †) Ven Onuphrius of Vorona; Holy Fathers of the 3rd Ecumenical Council

1. Saint Joachim, the son of Barpathir, was of the tribe of Judah, and was a descendant of King David, to whom God had revealed that the Savior of the world would be born from his seed. Saint Anna was the daughter of Matthan the priest, who was of the tribe of Levi. Saint Anna’s…

Sep 9, 2017Iulian Dumitraşcu

(†) The Nativity of Our Most Holy Lady the Theotokos and Ever-Virgin Mary (Fish permitted)

The Most Holy Virgin Mary was born at a time when people had reached such a degree of moral decay that it seemed altogether impossible to restore them. People often said that God must come into the world to restore faith and not permit the ruin of mankind. The Son of God chose to take…

Sep 8, 2017Iulian Dumitraşcu