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St. John of Kronstadt
A 20th-Century Saint, 1829 - 1908
Commemorated on October 19
The Wonder-Working Father John Sergiev is another of the great elders and
saints who were a part of the spiritual revival started by St. Paisius Velichkovsky. Widely venerated as a saint even during
his lifetime, and the only married parish priest in the Russian calendar of saints, Father John is known for spiritual gifts
of powerful prayer, healing, spiritual insight and great love for all people. He reawakened the Russian Orthodox Church to
the Apostolic tradition of receiving Holy Communion at every Divine Liturgy. This is why he ismost commonly portrayed holding
a Communion chalice, as he is in the Russian icon above.
Born to poor, devout parents in a small in the far north of Russia,
Father John experienced the power of prayer even as a child. While at the Theological Academy in St. Petersburg, he wanted
to be a missionary where he was. Thus he married ans was ordained priest in 1855. He was assigned to the St. Andrew Cathedral
on the Island of Kronstadt, in the bay near St. Petersburg. Kronstadt was filled with unspeakable squalor and misery, disease
and starvation, crime and alcoholism. However, Father John remained there for 53 years as an urban missionary, putting into
action Christ's command to love our neighbor, healing people's bodies and souls, and teaching children whom he especially
loved. As his reputation as a healer and miracle-worker spread the many requests for his help that flowed in were accompanied
by much money, which he used for extensive charitable works, including building a "House of Industry" that provided jobs,
job-training, food, shelter and medical care for the poor.
Father John managed to perfect his holiness, not in a peacful, remote monastery,
but in a large, noisy, dirty, stressful, crime-ridden city, always surrounded by crowds of people everywhere, with time to
himself. He received his strength from the overwhelming awareness of the Presence of God from reading the Bible, and from
daily serving the Divine Litugy and receiving Holy Communion. Every day his cathedral was packed with 5,000 people for Matins
and Litugy: it lasted from 4 am until noon, because there were so many requests for his prayers. After, he healed and prayed
for those who asked his help, treating rich and poor equally, and rarely returned home before midnight. Despite his demanding
schedule, he managed to maintain a spiritual diary of simple and practical Bible-based meditations, published as My Life
in Christ. He teaches that the weapons in spiritual warfare are the traditional Orthodox armor: prayer, repentance, fasting,
reading the Bible, and at least weekly Confession and Holy Communion. Father John was a simple parish priest who was endowed
with an absolute faith in the power of prayer, a power that he used daily, and continues to use, to help people who request
his aid.
Although venerated as saint since before his repose, he was officially glorified/canonized
1988. St. John's relics are located in the crypt of the St. John of Rila Women's Monastery, which he founded in northeastern
St. Petersburg. Today as even throughout the Communist era, flowers were regularly placed outside by the street, on the window
ledge closest to his burial site in the crypt on the other side of the wall.
Source: Jane M. deVyver, M.Th., PH.D.
St. James the Just
Commomorated on October 23 & December 26
Saint James the Just, also called James Adelphos and James the Brother of Our Lord (died AD 62),
was the first Bishop or Patriarch of Jerusalem. According to the Protoevangelion of James, James was the son
of Joseph—along with the other 'brethren of the Lord' mentioned in the scripture—from a marriage prior to his
betrothal to Mary. He wrote an epistle which is part of the New Testament. St. James is commemorated on October 23; on December
26 and also on the first Sunday after the Nativity, along with David the King and St. Joseph; and on January 4 among the Seventy
Apostles.
source: OrthodoxWki
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St. Luke the Evangelist
Commemorated on October 18
This Apostle was an Antiochean, a physician by trade, and a disciple and companion of Paul. He wrote his Gospel in Greek
after Matthew and Mark, after which he wrote the Acts of the Apostles, and dedicated both works to Theophilus, who, according
to some, was Governor of Achaia. He lived some eighty-six years and died in Achaia, perhaps in Patras, the capital of this
district. His emblem is the calf, the third symbolical beast mentioned by Ezekiel (1:10), which is a symbol of Christ's sacrificial
and priestly office, as Saint Irenaeus says. Also, Christian tradition states that St. Luke was the first iconographer.(source:
GOArch)
St. Gerasimus of Cephalonia
Feastday: October 20
Saint Gerasimus was from the Peloponnesus, the son of Demetrius and Kale, of the family of Notaras. He was reared in piety
by them and studied the Sacred writings. He left his country and went throughout various lands, and finally came to Cephalonia,
where he restored a certain old church and built a convent around it, where it stands to this day at the place called Omala.
He finished the course of his life there in asceticism in the year 1570. His sacred relics, which remain incorrupt, are kept
there for the sanctification of the faithful. (source: GOArch.)
St. Demetrius (Dimitri), Metropolitan of Rostov
Commemorated on October 28
Saint Demetrius, Metropolitan
of Rostov (in the world Daniel Savvich Tuptalo), was born in December 1651 in the locale of Makarovo, not far from Kiev. He
was born into a pious family and grew up a deeply believing Christian. In 1662, soon after his parents resettled to Kiev,
Daniel was sent to the Kiev-Mogilyansk college, where the gifts and remarkable abilities of the youth were first discovered.
He successfully learned the Greek and Latin languages and the entire series of classical sciences. On July 9,1668 Daniel accepted
monastic tonsure with the name Demetrius, in honor of the Great Martyr Demetrius of Thessalonica. Prior to the spring of 1675
he progressed through the monastic obediences at Kiev's Kirillov monastery, where he began his literary and preaching activity.
The Archbishop of Chernigov Lazar (Baranovich) ordained Demetrius as hieromonk on May 23, 1675. For several years
Hieromonk Demetrius lived as an ascetic and preached the Word of God at various monasteries and churches in the Ukraine, Lithuania
and Belarus. It was while he was Igumen of the Maximov monastery,and later the Baturinsk Nikol'sk monastery, in 1684 he was
summoned to the Kiev Caves Lavra. The Superior of the Lavra, Archimandrite Barlaam (Yasinsky), knowing the high spiritual
disposition of his former disciple, his education, his proclivity for scientific work, and also his undoubted literary talent,
entrusted the hieromonk Demetrius with organizing the MENAION, the Lives of the Saints for the whole year.
From this
time, all the rest of St Demetrius's life was devoted to the fulfilling of this ascetic work, grandiose in its scope. The
work demanded an enormous exertion of strength, since it necessitated the gathering and analizing of a multitude of various
sources and to expound them in a fluent language, worthy of the lofty subject of exposition and at the same time accessible
to all believers. Divine assistance did not abandon the saint for his twenty year labor.
According to the testimony
of St Demetrius himself, his soul was filled with impressions of the saints, which strengthened him both in spirit and body,
and they encouraged faith in the felicitous completion of his noble task. At this time, the venerable Demetrius was head of
several monasteries (in succession).
The works of the ascetic brought him to the attention of Patriarch Adrian. In
1701, by decree of Tsar Peter I, Archimandrite Demetrius was summoned to Moscow, where on March 23 at the Dormition cathedral
of the Kremlin he was consecrated as Metropolitan of the Siberian city of Tobolsk. But after a certain while, because of the
importance of his scientific work and the frailty of his health, the saint received a new appointment to Rostov-Yaroslavl,
and on March 1, 1702 assumed his duties as Metropolitan of Rostov.
Just as before, he continued to be concerned about
the strengthening of the unity of the Russian Orthodox Church, weakened by the "Old Believers" schism.
From his inspired
works and preachings many generations of Russian theologians drew spiritual strength for creativity and prayer. He remains
an example of a saintly, ascetic, non-covetous life for all Orthodox Christians. Upon his death on October 28, 1709, it was
discovered that he had few possessions, except for books and manuscripts.
The glorification of St Demetrius, Metropolitan
of Rostov, took place on April 22, 1757. He is also remembered on September 21, the day of the uncovering of his holy relics.
Source: OCA
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