(Feast Day ~ November 13) In reading Holy Scripture and the lives of the saints, we are reminded of how often God takes sinful, fallen men whose lives have been anything but exemplary and, through his merciful kindness, brings them to repentance and change of heart so that others may revere them and look to […]

Feast Day ~ November 12 Many of the saints of the Church have been martyrs for the faith. They have sacrificed their lives rather than deny Christ or compromise the teachings of the Church which have been revealed by God. Most of these saints became martyrs during Christianity’s early years when the prevailing culture was […]

(Feast Day ~ November 11) About the same year that St. Helena discovered the True Cross (c. 316), a son was born to a Roman army officer and his wife in Pannonia (modern Hungary). The parents were pagans, but the child, Martin, was attracted to the Christian religion he learned about when his family moved […]

(Feast Day ~ November 9) The lives of the saints are not tales of happy days, good deeds, reverence by all, and peaceful death. More often, the lives of the saints have been filled with conflict and difficulties of all sorts in which the saint has had to rise above adversities. But these stories are […]

(Feast Day ~ November 9) When St. Patrick, the “Apostle to the Irish”, returned to that land where he had been held as a slave and had accepted God’s challenge to convert its people to the Christian faith, he knew that he needed converts with particular skills who could help in this work. He was […]

(Feast Day ~ November 8) On the Western Rite calendar, November 8 – the “octave” of All Saints Day – is set aside for honoring the Patriarchs and Prophets of the Old Law. This is not an ancient feast day in the West, but one which was adapted from Eastern practice by Fr. Alexander Turner, […]

(Feast Day ~ November 7) The arduous life of a missionary involves experiences and events which have been common to all who would take on the challenge of bringing the Christian message to a pagan people. From the first missionary journeys of the Apostles, and particularly St. Paul, to the work of missionaries serving today […]

(Feast Day ~ November 6) In the Psalms, we are told that the Lord “looseth men out of prison” [Ps. 146:7]; in the Gospels, Jesus tells us that we minister to him when we visit those in prison. On November 6, the Church presents to us a holy saint who took these words to heart. […]

Feast Day ~ November 5 In our aggressively “feminized” secular world, the Orthodox Church is most often considered to be an oppressive, patriarchal, out-dated institution which does not give women their rightful place among the powerful. This very negative perception completely disregards the fact that the Church holds a woman – the Blessed Virgin Mary, […]

(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, […]