daily saints

Great and Holy Thursday (Matins) Virginmartyrs Agape, Irene, and Chionia in Thessalonica

Two events shape the liturgy of Great and Holy Thursday: the Last Supper of Christ with His disciples, and the betrayal of Judas. The meaning of both is in love. The Last Supper is the ultimate revelation of God’s redeeming love for man, of love as the very essence of salvation. And the betrayal of…

Apr 16, 2020Iulian Dumitraşcu

Great and Holy Wednesday (Matins); Apostles Aristarchus, Pudens and Trophimus of the Seventy; Martyr Crescens

On Great and Holy Wednesday, the hymns of the Bridegroom Service remind us of the sinful woman who poured precious ointment on Christ’s head at Simon the leper’s house (Mt. 26:7). The disciples complained about the wasteful extravagance, for the myrrh could have been sold and the money given to the poor. On this same…

Apr 15, 2020basilica.ro

†) Great and Holy Tuesday (Matins); Saint Hierarch Pachomius of Gledin; St. Martin the Confessor the Pope of Rome; Martyr Thomais

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 of…

Apr 14, 2020Iulian Dumitraşcu

(+) 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

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

In pictures: Theology professors, students in Bucharest prayerfully celebrate the Three Holy Hierarchs

The professors and students of the Patriarch Justinian Faculty of Orthodox Theology in Bucharest on Tuesday prayerfully celebrated the feast of the Three Holy Hierarchs, the patrons of theological education. Celebrating the Divine Liturgy at the Faculty’s St Catherine Chapel was His Grace Bishop Varlaam of Ploiesti, who conveyed the blessings and congratulations of Patriarch…

Jan 31, 2018Aurelian Iftimiu

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