Our monastery's icon of the Synaxis of the Optina saints, a gift from our sister monastery in Bulgaria, which has severl very talented iconographers. St. Ambrose of the Optina monastery reposed on October 10/23. Our monastery has a chapel dedicated to him, but since on that day we celebrate the Synaxis of all the Optina…
St. Nicholas of Myra in Lycea, the 4th century bishop of a minor Cappodocian town, is the only saint that the modern world still venerates, under the guise of “Santa Claus”, the secular patron saint of the “holiday season”, or as the French call it, “les fêtes de fin d’année”- “the end-of-the-year holidays”, when secular…
Mar Saba, in the Judean desert east of Jerusalem is one of the titles or names given to Saint Sabbas the Sanctified in the liturgical texts written in his honor and chanted today, on December 5/18. St. Sabbas the Sanctified is one of, if not The, great monastic father of the Judean desert. The roots…
Today is the feast day of St. Barbara, an early Christian virgin martyr. An extremely popular and greatly beloved saint since ancient times, on icons she is often depicted witha chalice, because she is especially venerated as the saint one prays to so as not to die an unexpected or violent death, and not to…
A Pilgrim's Path 