Prologue in Sermons: April 26

Against Laziness

April 26

(Commemoration of our Holy Father Stephen, Bishop of Perm, the New Wonderworker)

By Archpriest Victor Guryev

No one boasts of his imaginary labors as much as the lazy. “Is it not I,” such people usually say, “who labor? Is it not I who work? And yet no one pays attention to my labors, and people toward me prove altogether ungrateful.” Thus the lazy usually speak, and instead of working, they only trouble others. What is to be said to such people, and by what can they be stirred to labor?

April: Day 26: Saint Stephen, Bishop of Perm

April: Day 26:
Saint Stephen, Bishop of Perm
 
(How Christians Can Participate in the Spread of the Christian Faith Among Pagans)

By Archpriest Grigory Dyachenko

I. Saint Stephen, the enlightener of the pagans in Perm, whose memory is celebrated today, lived in the second half of the 14th century. As a young clerk of the Ustyug Cathedral, by the grace of God he conceived the desire to devote his life to the enlightenment of the Zyryans, the wild sons of the northern forests. In the Rostov Theophany Monastery, under the guidance of Arseny, the Rostov bishop and former prince, he studied the dogmas of faith from Slavic books: “Desiring greater understanding,” says his biographer Epiphanius, “he also studied Greek literature.” The Zyryan language was familiar to him even in his homeland in Ustyug; and now he studied it in order to be able to translate ecclesiastical books into it. What needed to be translated for the first acquaintance of the Zyryans with the faith, Stephen translated from Slavic with the help of the Greek language. Having thus prepared himself for the title of preacher of the faith, he asked for a blessing for his work from the then overseer of the Moscow Metropolis, Gerasim, Bishop of Kolomna; and the Grand Duke secured him with his charter. With these aids he arrived at the mouth of the Vychegda River to the rude but simple-minded people, and began to preach the true God.