November brings our attention to 16 saints to whom believers can turn for physical and spiritual healing and for examples of how to navigate the challenges of modern society.
This article provides a brief overview of the lives of 8 saints from the first part of November, noteworthy because they faced the trials of the 20th century, endured great hardships, sanctified their lives, and continue to offer guidance to the faithful.
We have divided the list of saints into two articles to make exploring them easier. Here is the first part of our selection.
Sts Cosmas and Damian of Mesopotamia – November 1
Saints Cosmas and Damian were two brothers from Ephesus, Asia Minor, who lived in the 4th century.
They were raised in the Christian faith by their devout mother, Theodota. Both studied various sciences but ultimately chose to practice medicine. They followed the apostolic mission of spreading the Gospel alongside their medical work. They were gifted with the ability to cast out unclean spirits and heal illnesses not through medicines but through prayer and the name of Christ.
They healed all people, regardless of social status, without asking for anything in return, earning them the title of unmercenary healers. Their compassion extended to all living beings, and they would even heal animals.
Their healing presence continued to aid the faithful through their holy relics and icons in the church built over their burial site.
St David of Euboea – November 1
Saint David was born in the early 16th century in a village near the island of Euboea (Evia).
As a child, Saint John the Baptist appeared to him in a dream, guiding him to a nearby church. There, the boy remained for six days, barefoot, standing in prayer before the icon of the Forerunner. For this reason, Saint David is also known as “the child of the Forerunner.”
At the age of 15, he left his homeland in search of a spiritual father. He was received into the monastic life and, together with his abbot, visited several monasteries across Greece.
He eventually settled on the island of Euboea, where he restored a church dedicated to the Transfiguration and gathered a community of disciples around him.
Saint David showed immense love for everyone who came to the monastery seeking his help, both Christians and Muslims. He was gifted with the ability to perform miracles: He miraculously survived a shipwreck, caused a spring to flow that still runs today, saved a village from a mosquito infestation, and sweetened the bitter food of a family in need.
He continues to work miracles even after his passing, through his holy relics kept at the Transfiguration Monastery in Greece, which was renewed by a contemporary elder, Saint Iakovos Tsalikis. People with physical and spiritual ailments find healing after venerating his holy skull.
St Gabriel of Georgia – November 2
Saint Gabriel (Goderdzi Urghebadze) was born in 1929 in Tbilisi, the capital of Georgia, to an atheist father and a mother initially uninterested in faith, though she later became a nun.
Despite lacking religious education, Saint Gabriel felt drawn to a devout life. At the age of 7, he first heard about Christ and saved money to buy a Bible.
At 12, he attempted to join a monastery but eventually returned home and later served in the military.
Seen as a threat to communist ideology, the security services arranged for a psychiatrist in Tbilisi to declare him mentally ill. This designation, however, proved beneficial for Saint Gabriel, allowing him to devote himself to spiritual life with even greater fervour.
Throughout his life, he intentionally concealed his virtues and gifts under the guise of foolness—a “foolness for Christ,” a cross and a gift God gave His most humble servants.
The theologian Jean-Claude Larchet describes Saint Gabriel as “one of the last holy fools for Christ known throughout the Orthodox world.”
He was tonsured as a monk, taking the name of Saint Gabriel of Mount Athos, the saint who miraculously received the icon of the Mother of God of Iviron (Portaitissa).
Saint Gabriel boldly confessed Christ, once setting fire to a portrait of Lenin, for which he suffered torture in KGB detention. Expelled from both church and societal institutions, he endured a life of extreme poverty.
Eventually, his status was restored through the intervention of a nun, who approached Metropolitan Ilia, the future Patriarch Ilia II. Saint Gabriel became a priest at Samtavro Monastery, though he continued to live humbly, residing in a small shed and dedicating himself to serving others.
He possessed the gifts of insight and prophecy, using them to encourage people, reveal their callings, and guide them back to faith.
In the final year of his life, he endured intense suffering but left behind a profoundly moving spiritual testament, encouraging people to be humble and to love—“the only true goal for humanity in this world.”
The first English book about Saint Gabriel includes numerous testimonies of healing.
One disciple, Tamuna Ioseliani, recalls her husband receiving a jacket from Saint Gabriel on Easter “so he wouldn’t be cold.” Each time their children fell ill, they placed this jacket over them, and they recovered. They began lending it to others, and by the saint’s grace, a 14-year-old boy was healed from a brain aneurysm.
Tamuna later brought the jacket to a young man who had been in a severe car accident and was in the hospital. His family had already said their goodbyes and his pulse was nearly gone, but after being covered with Saint Gabriel’s jacket, the young man regained consciousness.
The same jacket and prayers to Saint Gabriel helped a woman give birth to a perfectly healthy child after a diagnosis of Down syndrome. She named the child Gabriel in honour of the saint.
Another man, who wore the hood from one of the saint’s old jackets for two months, was miraculously healed from an inoperable brain cancer.
St George of Drama – November 4
Saint George Karslidis was born at the beginning of the 20th century in what is now Turkey.
He endured a difficult childhood as an orphan, yet even then, he was deeply immersed in prayer and the spiritual life. The Three Holy Hierarchs appeared to him, foretelling that he would one day become a monk.
At a young age, he entered a monastery in Georgia. It is said that when he was tonsured a monk, the church bells began to ring independently, despite the communist regime’s prohibition against ringing them.
Arrested by the Bolsheviks, he narrowly escaped execution through God’s providence. Imprisoned, he suffered greatly, losing all his teeth and incurring injuries to his legs that affected him for the rest of his life.
He was blessed with the gifts of foresight and discernment from his youth.
In 1929, he moved to Greece, settling in the village of Sipsa near Drama. There, despite his physical ailments, he served as a confessor and began building a monastery.
Many testimonies from this period were shared by his spiritual children, who recounted that Saint George knew people’s hidden or forgotten sins and performed numerous healings, which he humbly sought to conceal. With his gift of foresight, he predicted the onset of World War II and, through his prayers, protected the monastery and the faithful in nearby villages.
He passed away in 1959 and was buried near the monastery he founded. After his repose, he continued to work numerous healings and appear to the faithful.
His relics were uncovered on February 9, 2006. In 2010, Metropolitan Pavlos of Drama gifted a fragment to the Romanian Patriarchate, now kept in the Chapel of the Patriarchal Residence in Bucharest.
Archangel Raphael – November 8
Saint Raphael is an angel from the choir of archangels and is honoured as a healer of the sick, a protector of travellers, and a guardian of married couples.
The archangel is mentioned in the Holy Scriptures, in the Book of Tobit, where he appears as a young man accompanying Tobias on a journey. He heals a possessed woman during this journey and restores Tobit’s eyesight. At the end of the journey, he reveals his true identity, saying, “ I am Raphael, one of the seven angels who stand in the glorious presence of the Lord, ready to serve him.” (Tobit 12:15).
Some sources suggest that Saint Raphael was the angel who stirred the waters of the pool of Bethesda, around which the sick gathered for healing.
Etymologically, Raphael means “God has healed.”
Saint Raphael is celebrated along with the Synaxis of the Holy Archangels Michael and Gabriel and all the Heavenly Bodiless Powers on November 8.
St Nectarios of Aegina – November 9
Saint Nectarios was born to a Christian family in 1846 in Silivria, in present-day Turkey. As a young boy, he was sent to Constantinople on his own to continue his education and earn a living.
At 30, he embraced the monastic life, and nine years later, he was appointed Bishop of Pentapolis. He then moved to Cairo as a preacher and secretary to Patriarch Sophronius of Alexandria.
However, Saint Nectarios’ popularity among the people aroused the envy of some clerics, who slandered him before the Patriarch. As a result, he was exiled to Athens, where he endured a life of hardship, living humbly and often struggling for even his daily bread. He found work as a preacher and eventually became the director of the Rizarios Seminary.
Between 1904 and 1907, he founded a convent for nuns on the island of Aegina, where he spent the last years of his life. During this time, his reputation for holiness and the grace bestowed upon him by God spread widely. He healed many laypeople and monastics of various illnesses and even brought rain to the island during a drought.
In his final years, Saint Nectarios faced a painful illness, which he endured with patience. He passed away peacefully on November 8, 1920, in a hospital in Athens.
His first miracle after death occurred immediately: the man in the hospital bed beside him was healed simply by touching the saint’s clothing.
Miraculous healings continued, and the monastery on Aegina became one of Greece’s most significant pilgrimage sites. Saint Nectarios’s relics have reached churches worldwide, and he is revered as a powerful healer, particularly of those suffering from cancer.
In Romania, the most important pilgrimage site dedicated to him is Bucharest’s Radu Vodă Monastery, which played a vital role in spreading Saint Nectarios’ veneration throughout the country.
St Orestes the Physician – November 10
Saint Orestes was a Christian physician who lived in Cappadocia during the reign of Emperor Diocletian (284-311).
Arrested for his faith, he refused to renounce Christ. Through his prayers, he caused the idols in a pagan temple to collapse. He endured numerous tortures; in the end, nails were driven into his heels and sides, and he was tied to the tail of a wild horse.
With his bones and limbs broken, he passed into eternal life. His body was then thrown into a river to prevent Christians from venerating his holy relics.
In 1685, during the Nativity Fast, Saint Demetrius of Rostov had just finished writing the life of Saint Orestes when he grew tired and fell asleep. In a dream, the holy martyr appeared to him, revealing that he had suffered even more than was written and showed him his wounds.
