February 28, 2022. + Orthodox Calendar

Orthodox Calendar 2022

Святой праведный Николай, Христа ради юродивый, Псковский

Преподобный Иоанн Кассиан Римлянин

Преподобный Василий Декаполит, исповедник

Old Style

February 28

Sunday

New Style

March 13

First Sunday of Great Lent. Tone 5.
Great Lent.

Wine and oil allowed.

St. John Cassian the Roman, abbot, of Marseilles (435). St. Basil the Confessor (ca. 750). St. Arsenius (Matsievich), metropolitan of Rostov, confessor (1772).

Hieromartyr Nestor, bishop of Magydos, at Perge in Pamphylia (250). Sts. Marina and Kyra, nuns, of Beroea in Syria (ca. 450). St. John, called Barsanuphius, of Nitria in Egypt (5th c.). Hieromartyr Proterius, patriarch of Alexandria, and six companions (457). St. Theosterictus the Confessor, abbot, of Pelecete Monastery near Prusa (8th c.). Blessed Nicholas of Pskov, fool-for-Christ (1576). St. Cassian, founder of Muezersk Hermitage (16th c). St. Meletius, archbishop of Kharkov (1840).

Apostles of the Seventy Nymphas and Eubulus (1). St. Romanus, desert-dweller of Condat in the Jura Mountains (Gaul) (460). New Virgin-martyr Kyranna of Thessalonica (1751). St. Germanus of Dacia Pontica (Dobrogea, Romania) (5th c.). St. Oswald, archbishop of York (992). St. Barsus of Damascus, bishop

Thoughts for Each Day of the Year
According to the Daily Church Readings from the Word of God
By St. Theophan the Recluse

St. Theophan the Recluse

The First Sunday of Lent. [Heb. 11:24–26, 32–12:2; John 1:43–51]

The Sunday of Orthodoxy.[1] Do not forget the right word[2] which you spoke to God, renewing your testament with Him which you broke through your negligence. Remember how and why you broke it and try to avoid being unfaithful again. Pretty words are not glorious; faithfulness is glorious. Is it not glorious to have a testament with a king? How much more glorious is it to have a testament with the King of kings! But this glory becomes your disgrace if you are not faithful to this testament. How many great people have been glorified since the beginning of the world! And all of them have been glorified for their faithfulness, in which they stood firm, regardless of great misfortunes and sorrows as a result of this faithfulness. They had trial of cruel mockings and scourgings, yea, moreover of bonds and imprisonment: They were stoned, they were sawn asunder, were tempted, were slain with the sword: they wandered about in sheepskins and goatskins; being destitute, afflicted, tormented; Of whom the world was not worthy: they wandered in deserts, and in mountains, and in dens and caves of the earth…. Wherefore, seeing we are compassed about with so great a cloud of witnesses, let us run with patience the race that is set before us, looking unto Jesus the author and finisher of our faith (Heb. 11:36–38; 12:1–2).

[1] The first Sunday of Great Lent is called “The Sunday of Orthodoxy,” and celebrates the restoration of the veneration of Icons and the victory of Orthodoxy over the Iconoclast heresy.

[2] “The right word” is a reference to the meaning of the word “Orthodox” in Russian, which is literally “rightly glorifying.”

Articles

Venerable John Cassian the Roman

Saint John Cassian the Roman was born around 360, probably in Lesser Scythia (in Dacia Pontica). His pious Christian parents gave him an excellent classical education, and also instructed him in the Holy Scriptures and in the spiritual life.

John Cassian: Half-Heretic or Saint?

Deacon Pavel Serzhantov

St. John Cassian expressed not simply his own theological opinion, but gave voice to the experience of the hesychastic monks’ ascetical experience of synergy. Striving for their own salvation, the hesychasts saw and understood that asceticism is salvific then and only then when two powers are at work within it in harmony—the Divine and the human. God and man are co-workers in the cause of salvation; their synergy leads sinners into the Heavenly Kingdom.

Venerable Basil the Confessor, companion of the Venerable Procopius at Decapolis

Saint Basil the Confessor was a monk and suffered during the reign of the iconoclast emperor Leo the Isaurian (717-741).

Hieromartyr Nestor the Bishop of Magydos in Pamphylia

During a persecution against Christians under the emperor Decius (249-251), he was arrested while praying in his home.

Sts. Marina and Kyra, nuns, of Beroea in Syria

Having cleared off a small plot of land, the holy virgins sealed up the entrance to their refuge with rocks and clay, leaving only a narrow opening through which food was passed to them. Their little hut had no roof, and so they were exposed to the elements.

Venerable John-Barsanuphius the Bishop of Damascus

Saint John, called Barsanuphius, was a native of Palestine. He was baptized when he was eighteen years old, and later became a monk.

Hieromartyr Proterius the Patriarch of Alexandria

The insolent heretics broke into this refuge and killed the Patriarch and six men who were with him. The fact that it was Holy Saturday and the Canon of Pascha was being sung did not stop them. In their insane hatred they tied a rope to the body of the murdered Patriarch, and dragged it through the streets.

Martyr Theokteristus

The Holy Martyr Theokteristus, Igumen of the Pelekete monastery, suffered for the holy icons under the impious emperor Constantine Copronymos (741-775).

Blessed Nicholas (Salos) of Pskov the Fool-For-Christ

Blessed Nicholas of Pskov lived the life of a holy fool for more than three decades. Long before his death he acquired the grace of the Holy Spirit and was granted the gifts of wonderworking and of prophecy.

St. Meletius, Archbishop of Kharkov and Akhtyr

With a fatherly love the saint looked after young foster-children, raising them in a spirit of devotion to the Church of Christ. The saint particularly cared for the needy, widows and orphans.

Holy Hierarch Oswald, Bishop of Worcester and Archbishop of York

Dmitry Lapa

Oswald was the offspring of pagan Danes who had invaded England in the ninth century and settled in the east and north of England, the region that came to be known as the Danelaw.

From a Homily on the Sunday of the Triumph of Orthodoxy

St. Ignatius (Brianchaninov)

The word anathema means severance, rejection. When the Church anathematizes a teaching, it means that that teaching contains blasphemy against the Holy Spirit, and for the sake of salvation it should be rejected and removed, as poison is removed from food.

Commemoration of the Holy Fathers of the Seventh Ecumenical Council (787). The Holy Icons.

The Iconoclasts, by repudiating all representations of God, failed to take full account of the Incarnation. They fell, as so many puritans have done, into a kind of dualism. Regarding matter as a defilement, they wanted a religion freed from all contact with what is material; for they thought that what is spiritual must be non-material. But this is to betray the Incarnation, by allowing no place to Christ’s humanity, to His body; it is to forget that man’s body as well as his soul must be saved and transfigured.

The Triumph of Jesus Christ in the Triumph of Orthodoxy

Gabe Martini

But again, the celebration is about more than just the restoration and veneration of holy icons; it is a celebration of the victory of the Orthodox Faith itself. That is to say, it is a victory of both right-belief in (and right-worship of) our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.

On the Sunday of Orthodoxy

St. Luke, Archbishop of Crimea

Really, did the Lord Jesus Christ, who we glorify amd who we venerate in icons, not living among us? Did the Virgin Mary, who was painted by the apostle and evangelist Saint Luke not live among us? This icon was blessed by the very Theotokos herself, saying that grace would always be with this icon. Do you know how many miracles happen from icons of the Virgin Mary?

The First Sunday of Lent: The Sunday of Orthodoxy

The theme of the victory of the icons, by its emphasis on the incarnation, points us to the basic Christian truth that the one whose death and resurrection we celebrate at Easter was none other than the Word of God who became human in Jesus Christ.

Triumph of Orthodoxy Sunday

Fr. Thaddaeus Hardenbrook

After the exercise of Clean Week, the wisdom of the Church grants us a rest in the joy of Triumph of Orthodoxy Sunday.

Sunday of Orthodoxy

Archpriest Alexander Schmemann

Rejoicing today in the triumph of Orthodoxy on this first Sunday of Lent, we joyfully commemorate three events: one event belonging to the past; one event to the present; and one event which still belongs to the future.

No Graven Image: Icons and Their Proper Use

Fr. Jack N. Sparks, Ph.D.

The first time I invited a particular Protestant friend to step inside an Orthodox Church, he looked around very slowly, carefully, cautiously. “It’s pretty,” he said, “but doesn’t the Bible warn against graven images?”

The Triumph of Orthodoxy and Holy Icons

An icon celebrating the veneration of icons, the Triumph of Orthodoxy is the festal icon for the first Sunday of Great Lent. As Lent is a period of communal fasting which continues for seven weeks, such triumphalism early on is understandable: it helps to strengthen the faithful for the coming days.

The First Sunday of Great Lent: The Triumph of Orthodoxy

Fr. Sergei Sveshnikov

The iconoclast heresy rejected not only the icon as a window through which a ray of light may shine into the darkened human soul, but also the Orthodox teaching about Christ as fully God and fully human in the hypostasis of God the Son.

The Triumph of Orthodoxy: Why we kiss Pictures

A poster of the solar system on a kid's bedroom wall violates the commandment because it is an image of "heaven above." Jesus-fish stickers are also excluded because they depict something from "the water under the earth."

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