SAINT  KOSMAS AITOLOS Seventeen centuries after St. Paul journeyed across Greece, a solitary man of God travelled the same country from border to border, sea to sea, and island to island in a magnificent religious spirit, which strengthened the fires of Christianity and the flickering hopes of a nation, that was straining under the yoke of Turkish occupation after nearly …

A desperate father tried to find a cure for his suffering son by every means. He had probably heard rumours of Jesus and his disciples, that they could heal the sick and drive out unclean spirits. However, although he had asked for help from Christ’s disciples, the disciples were not able to set the son free from the dumb/mute unclean …

(Commemorated on 3rd May and the 24th December) Saint Ahmed (or Ahmet) Kalphas came from a Muslim family in Constantinople, and was raised as a devout Muslim. He worked as a secretary (deftedar) in the office of the Chief Secretary of the Ottoman Empire, that is in Ottoman terms, within the Sultan’s Chancellery as Scribe of the Second Rank. Thus …

Epistle Reading – 1 Cor. 6:12-20 All things are lawful for me, but all things are not helpful. All things are lawful for me, but I will not be brought under the power of any. Foods for the stomach and the stomach for foods, but God will destroy both it and them. Now the body is not for sexual immorality …

Schlumberger writes somewhere that if the students brought up amid the serene beauties of the Princes Islands in the study of the ancient fathers do not become accomplished priests, it can only be because their souls are vide d’aspirations, incapable d’essor. Such a sweeping judgment is probably unfair to any academy but it remains true, that the mystic, natural beauty of …

Gospel Reading of St Mark Chapter 8, Verses 34, till Chapter 9: Verses 2 [34] And he called to him the multitude with his disciples, and said to them, “If any man would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me. [35] For whoever would save his life will lose it; and whoever …

  In this Gospel story, the paralytic man was hoping his illness would be cured. And so were the four men, wishing from their compassionate hearts that the man suffering from paralysis would be cured. They had come to the house in Capernaum where Jesus was preaching in. No matter what it took, they wanted earnestly to participate at the …

St Anastasios the Persian Historical Context According to historical evidence, as well as the collective memory of the Church, Christianity has been present within Persia (Iran) from as early as the time of the Apostles. The reason for this, was that Persia was outside the control of the Roman Empire, and even posed a threat to it. Thus it was …

St. Artemios the Great Martyr What history is capable of recalling about the early life of St Artemios is somewhat scant.  All that has survived to our own times is that Artemios came from a noble family, and that he had served as one of Emperor Constantine’s generals. The account of his own conversion simply cites that when he saw …

  The Other Great Apostle of the English and Enlightener of Northumbria “Verily, Saint Aidan, the first Bishop of Lindisfarne, kindled the lamp of Christianity in the North of England. It was a lamp whose rays would illumine the civilisation of Western Europe and give Lindisfarne a Golden Age whose afterglow confers upon the little island still an aura, an …