Venerable Kyriakos the Anchorite Resource Page

St. Kyriakos the Anchorite (Feast Day - September 9)

Verses

The bitterness of the onions you warded off Kyriakos,

Giving them a sweet taste, or you would be condemned to die.

Onion-eating Kyriakos made his end on the twenty-ninth.  

Venerable Kyriakos the Anchorite

September: Day 29: Teaching 1: Venerable Kyriakos the Anchorite

Homilies from the Menaion for Every Day of the Year: September 29 

Venerable Kyriakos the Anchorite in the Hymnography of the Orthodox Church 

Why Saint Kyriakos is Not Called a "Hermit" But Instead Called an "Anchorite"

  

The Relationship Between St. Gerasimos of Jordan and St. Kyriakos the Anchorite

Venerable Chariton the Confessor Resource Page

St. Chariton the Confessor (Feast Day - September 28)

Verses

All earth’s delights Chariton trampled on,

Now taking delight in heaven's graces.

On the twenty-eighth Chariton died in his old age.

 

Venerable Chariton the Confessor

 

Saint Chariton the Confessor as a Model for our Lives

 

September: Day 28: Teaching 1: Saint Chariton the Confessor

 

September: Day 28: Teaching 2: Saint Chariton the Confessor 

 

Homilies from the Menaion for Every Day of the Year: September 28

 

Venerable Chariton the Confessor in the Hymnography of the Orthodox Church 

 

The Rebirth of the First Monastery in the Holy Land - The Lavra of Saint Chariton

  

A Pilgrim Visits Saint Chariton Monastery in the Judean Desert

 

The Eyewitness Account of Saint Stephen the Melodist of the Massacre of the Holy Fathers of the Lavra of Saint Savvas

 

At that time, Fathers died in the Lavra of Saint Savvas by a martyric death, which was described as an eyewitness account by Saint Stephen the Melodist, who was a Hagiopolite and a Sabbaite (+ 807), at the urging of the abbot of the Lavra, Basil, who was absent at the time of the barbarian raid. It is true that the work does not mention a name, but in the biography of Saint Stephen the Wonderworker, its author Leontios, speaking of a certain pious man, a fellow student of Abba Theoktistos, says that he was numbered among the Fathers who were slain by the barbarians in the Great Lavra, “whose account was written by the all-virtuous Abba Stephen, the pride of our Lavra.”

This work bears the following title: “Narration, that is, the Martyrdom of the Holy Fathers who were slain by the barbarians, namely the Saracens, in the Great Lavra of our Holy Father Savvas.” Stephen composed many canons for those who were slain in the Lavra on March 20.

Stephen became an eyewitness of the events in the Lavra, “being one of the monks in this holy Lavra, though unworthy, and one of those who were present at the time of the destructive incursion and attack of the barbarians.” This plundering incursion and attack of the Saracens against the Lavra must be attributed to their inclination toward looting, since they believed that in the cells of the Fathers they would find countless buried treasures. In the year 788, when Elias was Patriarch and Basil was abbot, a great civil war broke out among the Saracens in Palestine. Dividing themselves into two factions, they caused many disturbances by unlawful means: how many robberies, bloodshed, and unjust murders they committed, how many villages they left in ruins by delivering them to the flames, after first plundering their inhabitants and driving them away or killing them — “I do not have the ability, nor is it appropriate to the present time and subject to recount them in order,” says Stephen. Everywhere these monstrous beings brought dreadful desolation. Numerous and populous cities were laid waste. Eleutheropolis (Beit Jibrin) they captured and rendered uninhabited; likewise Ascalon and Gaza and Sariphaia and other cities they took, destroyed, and turned into pastures. They set ambushes, stripped passersby, and wounded them — and these considered themselves fortunate because they had escaped death. Each one sought how to seize what did not belong to him and to amass wealth from others’ possessions and money. And if any of them happened to be angry with someone, or especially against Christians, he seized the opportunity and attempted by violence to kill him and seize his property.

The Tomb of Saint John Moschos

In the biographies of John Moschos it is reported that after the plundering of Jerusalem in 614, because of the growing Persian threat to Alexandria, he and Saint Sophronios, together with Saint John the Merciful, crossed from Egypt to Cyprus. From there John Moschos, stopping at various Mediterranean islands, set out for Rome. There he worked on arranging the recollections of his travels (The Leimonarion, or The Spiritual Meadow), and there he also died (+ 619/634).

John Moschos bequeathed that he be buried at Sinai or, if barbarian raids did not permit this, at the Coenobium of Venerable Theodosios the Great in the Judean desert. In order to fulfill the final wish of his departed friend, Saint Sophronios set out with his body from Rome to Jerusalem and arrived there “at the beginning of the eighth indiction.” John Moschos was buried in the cemetery of the Monastery of Venerable Theodosios the Great.

The Life of Saint Porphyrios, Bishop of Gaza

Saint Porphyrios, Bishop of Gaza

By Aristeidis G. Theodoropoulos, Educator

The “initiate of the Lord and filled with divine zeal,” the God-appointed, compassion-loving and wonderworking Hierarch of Gaza.

Among the God-bearing hierarchs who shone in a manner worthy of God during the 4th–5th centuries A.D., a prominent place is held by the loving and wonderworking shepherd of the people of Gaza, Saint Porphyrios, commemorated by our Orthodox Church on February 26.

This venerable and illustrious native of Thessaloniki is hymned, among other titles, as “an imitator and equal of the Apostles,” as one “who practiced virtue with longing and despised gold for Christ’s sake,” and as “the bulwark of the orthodox dogmas and the downfall of idol-worshippers.”

This most wise hierarch of Christ distinguished himself through simplicity, humility, meekness, freedom from resentment, chastity, compassion, tenderness of heart, and generosity in almsgiving, as well as through his ability to interpret difficult passages of Holy Scripture.

The Birthplace of Saint John Jacob the Chozebite

The Birthplace of Saint John Jacob of Neamt - Crainiceni

 

By Teodor Danalache

The birthplace of Saint John Jacob of Neamț, also known as "the Chozebite," after the place where he engaged in holy ascetic labors, is located in the Romanian village of Horodistea, Păltiniș Commune, along National Road 29A, in Botoșani County, at a distance of only 15 kilometers from Rădăuți Prut, on the road to Dorohoi. The Saint's house is today a memorial house and museum.

The young Ilie Jacob, who later became known as Father John Jacob of Neamț, also referred to as "the Chozebite," was born in the village of Crainiceni on July 23, 1913, into a family of simple and devout peasants named Ekaterina and Maxim Jacob. In 1968, the village of Crainiceni merged with the locality of Horodistea, and today Horodistea is part of the Păltiniș Commune.

March: Day 20: Holy Martyrs John, Sergius, Patrick and Others, Who Were Killed by the Saracens in the Lavra of Saint Savvas

Sts. John, Patrick and Sergius

 

March: Day 20:
Holy Martyrs John, Sergius, Patrick and Others, Who Were Killed by the Saracens in the Lavra of Saint Savvas
 
(On the Sin of Murder)

By Archpriest Grigory Dyachenko

I. From the seventh century onwards, the environs of Jerusalem were constantly subjected to attacks by predatory Saracens. They did not spare even the peaceful hermit monasteries, although hermits who had no earthly wealth hid in them. Once, during the all-night vigil on Palm Sunday, a rumor reached the Lavra of Saint Savvas that the barbarians were preparing to attack the monastery in significant numbers. The brethren decided not to leave the Lavra, for, having completely surrendered themselves to the Lord and having died while still alive to the world, they did not fear death. They began to pray even more ardently, preparing to pass on to a better life. Indeed, on Holy Thursday, the Saracens attacked the monastery with great force and immediately put some of the monks to death. They gathered others into the church and began to interrogate them as to where the monastery treasures were hidden. “Atone for yourself and your church with four hundred gold coins,” the barbarians said to the holy fathers, “otherwise we will kill you all.”

Saint Philoumenos of Jacob's Well According to William Dalrymple

 

The Anglican Hostel, Nazareth, 20 November
 

Around 570 a.d., after he was first professed as a monk at the Abbey of St Theodosius, John Moschos withdrew into the wilderness and spent ten years in the remote cave monastery at Pharan, to the north of Jerusalem.
 

Pharan, the modern Ein Fara, is reputedly the oldest abbey in Palestine. It was founded in the early fourth century by the great Byzantine hermit St Chariton, who, it is said, settied here in a cave above a pool of pure spring water. There he gathered a community of like-minded ascetics around him, living a life of silence, self-abnegation and severe fasting, interspersed with long hours of prayer. Two hundred years later, Moschos appears to have been drawn to the site less by its antiquity than by the wisdom of its then hegumen, Abba Cosmas the Eunuch. In a crucial passage in The Spiritual Meadow, Moschos credits Cosmas with first giving him the idea to collect the sayings of the fathers: 'Whilst he [Abba Cosmas] was speaking to me about the salvation of the soul, we came across an aphorism of St Athanasius, Archbishop of Alexandria. And the elder said to me, "When you come across such a saying, if you have no paper with you, write it on your clothing" - so great was the appetite of Abba Cosmas for the words of our holy fathers and teachers.' It was advice that was eventually to lead Moschos to compiling The Spiritual Meadow, and so to preserve the otherwise largely unrecorded history of the monks of Byzantine Palestine.
 

Saint Hilarion the Great Resource Page

St. Hilarion the Great (Feast Day - October 21)

Verses

Sowing with tears and pain below,

Hilarion reaps rejoicing above.

On the twenty-first Hilarion entered his final sleep.

 

Saint Hilarion the Great (+ 372) 

 

The Life of Saint Hilarion the Great (St. Jerome)

 

The Life of Saint Hilarion the Great (Sozomen)

 

The Life of Saint Hilarion the Great (St. Dimitri of Rostov)

 

October: Day 21: Teaching 5: Venerable Hilarion the Great

 

October: Day 21: Teaching 6: Venerable Hilarion the Great

 

Homilies from the Menaion for Every Day of the Year: October 21 

 

Venerable Hilarion the Great in the Hymnography of the Orthodox Church 

 

Saint Hilarion the Great as an Exorcist 
  

Saint Pelagia of Antioch Resource Page

St. Pelagia the Former Courtesan (Feast Day - October 8)

Verses

Being washed of disgrace and abandoning the foolish,
You have attained refuge in Heaven, Pelagia.
On the eighth Pelagia fled a life in a sea of troubles. 

 

Synaxarion of Venerable Pelagia, Who Was Formerly A Courtesan

 

The Life of Saint Pelagia of Antioch, the Nun Who Was Once a Courtesan

  

Saint Pelagia of Antioch: A Repentant Courtesan

 

October: Day 8: Teaching 1: Venerable Pelagia of Antioch 

 

October: Day 8: Teaching 2: Venerable Pelagia of Antioch 

 

Homilies from the Menaion for Every Day of the Year: October 8 

 

Venerable Pelagia of Antioch in the Hymnography of the Orthodox Church (1 of 2) 

 

Venerable Pelagia of Antioch in the Hymnography of the Orthodox Church (2 of 2)

 

On the Repentance of the Anonymous Harlot of Antioch (St. John Chrysostom) 

 

The Tomb of Saint Pelagia of Antioch on the Mount of Olives

 

Saint Pelagia the Harlot, A Living Embodiment of the Goddess Aphrodite

 

Three Holy Responses to Sexual Immorality: Pelagia the Virgin, Pelagia the Courtesan and Thais the Harlot

 

Saint Nonnus, Bishop of Heliopolis (+ 471)  

 

Synaxarion of Venerable Sophia, Mother of Venerable Savvas the Sanctified

 

By Hieromonk Euphrosynos the Hagiosabbaite

 

 On the 18th of this month [December], we commemorate Venerable Sophia, the mother according to the flesh of Venerable Savvas the Sanctified.

Verses

Land of Bethlehem bury the body of Sophia,
Land of the meek receive the soul of the venerable one.
On the eighteenth Sophia gladly flew away from life.

Synaxarion

 

This Venerable gave birth to Venerable Savvas the Sanctified, around the year 439, during the reign of Theodosius the Younger, in the village of Moutalaske in Cappadocia. Because her husband John was a soldier in the higher offices of the Roman military, he was transferred to Egypt, where Sophia followed him, and they lived there until his death. Around the year 491, when the Venerable was at an old age, she heard about the accomplishments of her son, so she went to the desert of Judea, where she offered all her possessions to the Venerable. Savvas, because his Lavra was to be untrodden by women, sent her to the Coenobium of Venerable Paula in Bethlehem, where Sophia struggled well, and attained to a perfect measure of virtue. A few years later, during the reign of Empreror Anastasios, she reposed peacefully in the Lord, and buried in a venerable coffin by Savvas, and with the money of his mother, Savvas founded a metochion in Jericho, for the respite of the Fathers. After the translation of the relics of the Venerable, the Fathers built a small hesychasterion in her honor next to the Lavra, and there they placed her relics. However, due to security reasons, they were transferred to the Monastery during the abbacy of Joasaph the Cretan (1835-1874), where they were hidden in an unknown crypt within the Monastery. A small portion of her relic is preserved in an old reliquary within the Skeuophylakion.

The Tomb of Saint Prokopios of Caesarea

Saint Prokopios was from Caesarea of Palestine and lived during the reign of Diocletian around 303 AD. He served as a Duke in Alexandria, a former persecutor of Christians, who was called to Christ by a vision of a crystal Cross and a voice saying: “I am the crucified Jesus, the Son of God.” Accepting the calling, he began preaching Christ and was denounced by his own mother Theodosia. Through his preaching though, his mother and many others believed in Christ. He was imprisoned and tortured, confessed Christ until the end and for Him he was beheaded.

The Patriarchate of Jerusalem commemorates Saint Prokopios annually at the Holy Monastery of Saint Modestos, on the hill of Abu Tor, opposite the hill of Holy Zion in south new Jerusalem. It is at this location where there is a chapel dedicated to Saint Prokopios as well as his tomb. In the same area can also be found the tomb of Saint Modestos the Patriarch of Jerusalem.

 

Saint Theodosios the Cenobiarch Resource Page

St. Theodosios the Cenobiarch (Feast Day - January 11)

Verses

Theodosios abbot of the common life,
As a common monastic you lost your life.
On the eleventh the Cenobiarch departed this life.

 

Synaxarion of Saint Theodosios the Cenobiarch

January: Day 11: Venerable Theodosios the Great

 

Prologue in Sermons: January 11 

 

Saint Theodosios the Great, Teacher of the Desert

St. Theodosios the Coenobiarch: "Behold, the Grave Is Ready!"

 

History of the Monastery of Saint Theodosios in Palestine

The Appearance of Saint Theodosios the Cenobiarch in Rakantzi of Kefallonia

Church of Saint Theodosios the Cenobiarch in Acheleia of Paphos