5/22/2023
Rating: 6.4|Votes: 9
Alexei Cominos ascended the throne of the Byzantine Empire in 1081, in which year Asia Minor suffered various attacks and threats of barbarian invasion. St Nicholas' relics at this time remained in his city of Myra. However, a priest in the Italian city of Bari soon beheld a vision in which Nicholas appeared and informed him that he did not wish to remain in a city as barren as the defeated Myra. He instructed the priest to remove his body from the city. After informing the residents of Bari of his vision, three ships were sent to Myra to retrieve the saint's relics.
Rating: 2|Votes: 1
Nicholas was taught by his parents to love the Lord with his whole mind, heart, soul, and with ail his strength. When they died he inherited their money. He used this to help the poor, the hungry, and the sick. Whenever he helped anyone he did it secretly, so that only God would know, He did not want praise from people; he wanted his reward to be only in Heaven.
Rating: 9.2|Votes: 13
“I took the sack. It was heavy. I took it inside the hut and opened it… My dear children!...” the elder began to sob. “There were fresh loaves of bread in the sack. And they were still warm, absolutely hot! As if they had just taken them out of the oven. But what oven could be there?! There wasn’t a single home within fifty versts, only exiles and prisoners.
Nun Cornelia (Rees)
Rating: 6.8|Votes: 6
On this day, the 19th of December (December 6 according to the Julian calendar), the Church celebrates the memory of one of her most beloved saints—St. Nicholas the Wonderworker of Myra and Lycia. We are half way through Advent, the fast preceding the feast of the Nativity of our Lord Jesus Christ, born as a babe to the Virgin Mary. This is a time when we especially delight in the beauty and sanctity of children—defenseless, dependent, yet meaning everything to us. We would do anything to protect a child, even die ourselves, because we see in him God’s gift of our own eternal existence.
Archpriest Nicholai Agofonov
Rating: 7.4|Votes: 12
God has granted me in my life to experience many miracles of St. Nicholas, some of which I have written about in my short stories. But there is one incident that shook all of Russia over fifty years ago in the city of Kuibishev, now Samara. This was an event that occurred with the girl, Zoya. Many of you already know about this—another miracle of St. Nicholas.
Metropolitan Philaret (Voznesensky)
Rating: 8.9|Votes: 17
The Russians like to call Saint Nicholas “Nikola the Merciful” because his miracles are as numerous as the stars of heaven. I would like to remind you of one touching miracle that shows his mercy. This did not happen once upon a time, long ago; it happened in our time, in the city of Harbin [China], where I lived for over 40 years.
Rating: 7.9|Votes: 28
A true incident which shocked and brought repentance to hundreds of people in the Russian Soviet city of Kuibyshev (modern day Samara), in the year 1956.
Svetlana Khorkina
Rating: 10|Votes: 4
The heroic achievement of the navigator Albanov who crossed the distance of approximately 420 km, walking on drifting ice to Franz-Josef land, added a glorious page to the history of Russian polar research. This journey had a great scientific significance, and the story itself was well covered in specialized and popular scientific literature of the Soviet period. A famous Russian writer Veniamin Kaverin created the character of navigator Klimov in his novel «Two Captains» with Albanov as his prototype. However the heroic exploits of the navigator is not only the result of his personal courage, but also another evidence of St. Nicholas’ help to «those at sea and travelling».
Rating: 6.2|Votes: 23
Prayerful intercessor for those in need, St. Nicholas is fervently and sincerely loved by people on all continents. You will hardly find a single Orthodox church anywhere that does not have a fresco or icon with his image.
Natalya Chernykh
As I fell, I felt an elderly man catch me and gently lay me down on a straightedge (a tool used to level plastered walls).
Hieromonk Pamphil (Osokin)
The cab door opened; standing before the girl was St. Nicholas himself. He extended his hand to her, led her out of the cab, calmed her, gave her water to drink, then showed her the way home and instructed her not to look back.
Metropolitan Tryphon (Turkestanov)
Why does this saint of God enjoy such respect among all peoples? Because he embodies an expression of Christian love.
Archpriest Sergei Pravdoliubov
Vasily Ivanovich began to call for help—but there were no sounds except for some quiet wheezing. No one could hear him. It was late afternoon, and there was no one on the river bank.
These miracles were performed by the holy hierarch near the village of Syntul in the Ryazan region.
Ryassafore Nun Natalia (Kaverzneva)
The young lady heeded this advice and began to pray with simplicity and zeal. She would even fall asleep with an akathist to the saint.
Archpriest Alexander Shargunov
For St. Nicholas, people are like children to whom he brings gifts. A gift is hope. This saint is a giver.
Svetlana Sidorova
The pilgrim travel agency voiced their condolences to us: “Do you know how many V.I.P. guests are going with you? Someone on your list will stay home but the VIPs will fly for sure!”
St. Seraphim (Sobolev)
Of course, acquiring humility is the most difficult of all podvigs.
Irina Krikheli
My husband found a large bill on a busy street. No one was searching for money. My doctor visit cost exactly what my husband had found.
Alexandra Gripas
One step, then another, and it seemed harmless, my feet still felt the bottom. Suddenly, there was nothing under my feet! I was able only several times to push myself up from the bottom to get a breath of air—several seconds of fruitless struggle and then emptiness and darkness.
Elena Zoubareva
Thus, “exuding the precious myrrh of mercy and an inexhaustible sea of miracles to the whole world,” St. Nicholas walks the face of the earth, from Alabama to Buzuluk. There are St. Nicholas churches all across the world, and every family has stories of help from the wonderworker of Myra in Lycia.
Ivan Streltsov
St. Nicholas Monastery, like the rest of Mogilev, was destined to play a significant role in the life of the last Russian Emperor Nicholas II and his family.
Hieromonk Ignaty (Shestakov)
Whenever he saw untruth, he struggled against it; whenever he saw any injustice, sin, or evil happening to his neighbors, St. Nicholas at once did his best to stop it and help them.
Emilia Volkova
Rating: 9.2|Votes: 19
The small space of the crypt is divided into three parts: the central one—the sanctuary where St. Nicholas’s relics rest; the Orthodox side-altar on the left; and the Catholic side-altar on the right. The iconostasis is portable and improvised, with a number of icons fixed to metalwork grills.
Monk Barsanuphius (Kuznetsov)
Rating: 9.7|Votes: 47
No one is surprised by miracles at war. The very fact that you are alive alone is considered a miracle.
Andrei Zaitzev
Rating: 5.6|Votes: 26
This is only a small portion of the puzzles, to which we can find answers through attentive reading of the corrected Life of this saint who is so famous in Russia, whose icon can be found in every home and automobile.
Rating: 9.4|Votes: 43
In this photogallery we would like to take our readers on a pilgrimage tour of Moscow’s St. Nicholas Churches.
Archpriest Andrew Phillips
Rating: 10|Votes: 20
Finally, there is one question about St Nicholas which we must answer. Why does everybody love St Nicholas? Why is he so popular? Why do Muslims venerate him?
Deacon Vladimir Vasilik
Rating: 10|Votes: 64
Sasha took his dad to his grandmother’s room. There he clambered up onto the stool and pointed his finger at the ancient icon of St. Nicholas in the modest prayer corner: “Papa, it’s him!”
Metropolitan Onuphry (Berezovsky)
Rating: 10|Votes: 10
His Beatitude Metropolitan Onuphry speaks on the most important miracle in every man’s life, and the speedy aid and miracles of St. Nicholas by prayers to him.
Anna Erakhtina
Rating: 10|Votes: 6
When contemplating how they should oppose enemies of the Church, Orthodox Christians often recall St. Nicholas, who slapped Arius in the face. Several Russian Orthodox clergymen talk with us about the saint’s “intolerant” deed.
Metropolitan Nicholai (Yarushevich)
Rating: 4.7|Votes: 3
This virtue of love and mercy in all its beauty and power is personified, my dear ones, by the one whom our faithful, pious hearts glorify today: the “feeder of orphans,” consoler of the sorrowing, intercessor in prayer for all who seek God’s help and mercy—St. Nicholas the Wonderworker.
Andrei Salnikov
Rating: 10|Votes: 7
There isn’t an Orthodox church in Russia that does not have an icon of St. Nicholas. His image appears also on the wall of a church that was once the main cathedral of the St. Kirill of Novozersk (New Lake) Monastery on Ognenny (Fiery) Island in Novozersk (Belozersk region). The Monastery has long been occupied by a penal colony, and in 1990 they began sending here those who have been given life sentences.
Rating: 9.5|Votes: 32
The weather forecasts were good, and nothing indicated any trouble. Just the same, on the horizon there appeared at first a large dark cloud, which started growing rapidly. A sharp wind blew, which grew into a strong squall. A storm began. Huge waves started beating against the small ship.The ship was tossed from side to side. Water flowed into the machinery area. The ship was on the verge of stopping, and that would fatal for all.
Metropolitan Anthony (Khrapovitsky)
Tell me, Orthodox Christians: If there were ever such a man who for a grave crime were sentenced by royal decree to eternal prison, and his kind master would ask of the king that he would be forgiven, and instead this master accepted his punishment upon himself, while the criminal remained free; and that this good master sent him this good news, in a letter saying “I freed you, and took upon myself your just punishment from the king”? Tell me, brothers, what would the emancipated criminal do with this treasured letter?
