by Brent Kostyniuk Of all the saints commemorated in the Byzantine liturgical year, one of the most beloved surely has to be our Holy Father Nicholas the Wonderworker, Archbishop of Myra. Although not exclusively a Ukrainian saint, he has won a special place in the hearts of Ukrainians. In Canada alone, there some two dozen […]
Category: Lives of the Saints
Conception of Saint Anna
by Very Rev. Archpriest David Petras The conception of the all-holy virgin Mary in the womb of Anna is celebrated on December 9 in the Byzantine tradition, for a natural reason, that the Eastern ancients thought a girl was in the womb one day less than a boy. However, in the Ruthenian Church in America, […]
Our Holy Father Nicholas
by Fr. David Petras One can easily say that the greatest saint of the Byzantine Church is Nicholas the Wonderworker, Archbishop of Myra in Lycia. Yet the only thing we know of him for certain is his name, and that a holy man named Nicholas was the bishop in Myra in the fourth century. He […]
Imitator of Stephen in his trials
FROM SEPTEMBER, 2013 TO APRIL, 2014 government and rebel forces struggled for control of the ancient Christian town of Ma’loula, Syria, a UNESCO World Heritage site and home to a number of shrines and monasteries. One of them is the ancient Orthodox women’s monastery of St Thekla from which 12 nuns were abducted and held […]
The Choir of the Holy Unmercenaries
ON THE FIRST SUNDAY in November a number of Byzantine Churches keep a special remembrance (Synaxis) for All the Unmercenary Healers: those who cared for the sick or aged in the spirit of Christ, without concern for gain. These physicians and other medical workers understood their skills in the spirit of St Paul’s teaching on […]
St. Lucian of Antioch: Scholar and Martyr
MOST CHRISTIANS KNOW that the books of the New Testament — the Gospels, the Epistles and the rest — were written in the first century ad. Some know that these books were compiled as the New Testament sometime in the next three centuries. Few know that the form of the New Testament which we use […]
“I Have Now Perceived the One True God”
WHEN TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY AMERICANS think of the Vikings, they may picture seafarers from Scandinavia sailing to Iceland and Greenland or raiding the coasts of England and Ireland. We rarely think of their inland cousins, whose rule extended into what is Russia today in the ninth to fourteenth centuries. Two of the saints commemorated this week […]
The Prophet Isaiah: “More an Evangelist than a Prophet”
Of all the Old Testament Prophets quoted in the New Testament, the most frequently cited is Isaiah, who is remembered on our Church’s calendar on May 9. Isaiah’s prophecies are referenced 66 times in the New Testament; only the Psalms are more frequently quoted. Isaiah lived in the eighth century bc, a time of great […]
Herald of Heavenly Mysteries
Since the second century Christians have been accustomed to identify the second of our four Gospels by the name of its author, Mark the Evangelist. The Gospel itself, however, never identifies its author by name or gives us any clue to the author’s identity. What, then, is the source of this identification with Mark and […]
The Three Holy and Great Hierarchs: Basil the Great, Gregory the Theologian and John Chrysostom
“Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today and forever!” Have you ever been to a symphony and noticed what happens before all the playing begins? All of a sudden you hear the first violinist play a note and everyone tunes their instruments to that one particular and distinct note. This note is the note “A […]