Saints, Seasons, Society, Sins, plus Travels mostly to Greece and who knows what next? by Father Bill Olnhausen
Before we get started on Saint Meletios: Does the Orthodox Church celebrate Saint Valentine’s Day? Yes, three times for three Saint Valentines, commemorated on October 24, April 24 and July 6. Hooray for love! but (Saint) Valentine’s Day on February 14 seems to derive from a Roman pagan holiday of love, originally celebrated on February […]
Read More »Yes, already. We just celebrated the Feast of the Presentation of Christ in the Temple – a “flashback” to Christmas and Christ as an infant. However, the Troparion of the Feast concludes like this: “Rejoice, O righteous Elder; you received in your arms the Redeemer of our souls, Who grants us the Resurrection.” And with […]
Read More »Next Thursday, February 2, is the famous festival of the Holy Groundhog, more properly titled the Feast of the Presentation of Our Lord and God and Savior Jesus Christ in the Temple. I wrote a Post about both these celebrations some years ago, titled “The Groundhog who stole Candlemas”, which (if you’re interested) can be […]
Read More »or Pre-Pre-Pre-Pre Pascha, if you wish A Very Long Introduction If you were going on a long auto journey to some lovely place, how would you approach it? Here, I think, is what you would not do: You would not wait till the very last minute, then just jump in your car and drive off. […]
Read More »The Holy Orthodox Church is running over with Saint Gregorys. I wrote last year about “Another great Saint Gregory” – Gregory of Nyssa. (If you’d like to read it, go to the far bottom right of this page, and scroll down to January 2022.) Before we get to this year’s great Saint Gregory the Theologian, […]
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