Rating: 10|Votes: 3
Saint Mark Eugenikos, Archbishop of Ephesus, was a stalwart defender of Orthodoxy at the Council of Florence.
Saint Macarius of Alexandria was a contemporary and friend of Saint Macarius of Egypt (January 19). He was born in the year 295, and until the age of forty he was occupied in trade. Later, he was baptized and withdrew into the desert, where he spent more than sixty years.
Fr. Andrei Chizhenko
Rating: 10|Votes: 2
January 20, in the afterfeast of Theophany (the Baptism of the Lord), the Orthodox Church honors the one who (as it says in the canon dedicated to him) “wast found worthy to touch the head of Christ the King,” and of whom the Savior Himself said in the Gospel: Among those that are born of women there is not a greater prophet than John the Baptist (Lk. 7:28). On this day, the apodosis of the Theophany, we would like once again to remember the great Forerunner of Christ.
Victor Kasyanenko
Rating: 6,6|Votes: 11
Having gathered my last strength, I decided to go to church, figuring it’s no problem if I died: I’m in a monastery, and they can serve my funeral here. I wanted to go to one last service. And in this joyless state I headed for church. When the anointing began, I was barely able to venerate the icon of the Equal-to-the-Apostles Nina, after which the abbot of the monastery Schema-Igumen Agafon (Chesnokov) anointed me with oil.
Fr. Stephen Freeman
That Christ is the precise image of the Father is put forth in the book of Hebrews (1:3). This is refined in Nicaea’s language of “homoousios” (“same substance”). But while that language speaks of “being” or “substance,” we easily lose sight of what is being put forward.