(Feast Day ~ October 30) Our Lord has promised that the gates of Hell shall not prevail against His Church [Matt. 16:18]. For nearly two thousand years, we have witnessed the truth of this promise. In times of repression and persecution, the Church has survived through the constancy of Christian believers and especially its hierarchs, […]

(Feast Day ~ October 27) Adventure novels and Hollywood movies are usually the settings for tales of travel to faraway places, shipwreck, murder, enslavement – tales which eventually have happy endings. However, many such tales fill the history of the Christian Church as it spread through the world. One such story is that of St. […]

(Feast Day ~ October 26) The earliest of the saints of the Church were the martyrs who gave up their earthly lives rather than deny Christ or pay homage to false gods. The early Martyrologies, or lists of saints’ days as they were celebrated in the Church year, are filled with the names of innumerable […]

(Feast Day ~ October 25) How often do Christians today underestimate the power of personal influence? We so seldom realize how much our behavior, attitudes and reactions affect those around us. Our friends and co-workers learn much about our faith from noticing how we treat others, observing our positive or negative attitudes in different life […]

(Feast Day ~ October 25) Christ warned his followers that they would experience hardships and persecutions for His sake: “…they will deliver you up to councils, and you will be beaten…You will be brought before rulers and kings for My sake…when they arrest you and deliver you up, do not worry beforehand or premeditate what […]

Feast Day ~ October 25 It is not unusual for a saint to be made famous by something other than his holy life or his courageous martyrdom. St. Valentine, for instance, is noted in our secular world by the pagan Roman festival celebrating romantic love which falls around February 14, the date of the saint’s […]

(Feast Day ~ October 21) In Palestine, in the city of Tabatha, south of Gaza, a son was born into a pagan family around the year 291. The boy Hilarion showed intellectual promise as he grew, so his parents sent him to Alexandria, one of the chief cities of the Roman Empire, to receive a […]

(Feast Day ~ October 19) The patron saint of the city of Oxford, England, is St. Frideswide, whose day is commemorated on October 19. Born around the year 680, Frideswide was the daughter of a Christian King of Wessex. She chose the monastic life for herself, but royal marriages were a means of creating political […]

Feast Day ~ October 18 Everyone admires a “Renaissance” man or woman: one who is broadly educated, widely read, skilled in several fields, who has traveled extensively and is able to carry on intelligent conversations on many subjects. In the historical period we designate as the Renaissance, these characteristics would also have included being able […]

(Feast Day ~ October 16) How often, in the history of the Christian Church, have great things resulted from unlikely beginnings? Since the Resurrection, when the instrument of death – the Cross – became the symbol of our salvation, there have been many times when a humble beginning or an apparent failure has brought about […]