St. John of Rila

Joyous feast! Today we commemorate one of the great lights of Bulgarian Orthodoxy, our Holy Father John of Rila. St. John was born in the late 800s in the vicinity of the current Bulgarian capital, Sofia, and at a young age was orphaned and became a cowherd. Even as a youth he worked miracles, once rescuing a calf from the Struma River by causing its waters to part by his prayers.

As a boy the Saint left his village, becoming a monk in an unknown monastery and pursuing a life of extreme asceticism on a hill and then in a cave alongside his nephew St. Luke. After twelve years of laboring in the cave St. John withdrew to the Rila wilderness, where he settled in the hollow of a tree to fast and pray, eating only grass when he needed food until God caused beans to grow nearby for the ascetic to eat.

The Saint was eventually discovered by nearby shepherds when their sheep led them to the monk's tree and soon they began to bring him the sick and possessed, who were healed through St. John's prayers. Fleeing the celebrity he attained through the healings St. John took refuge on a rock crag that was difficult to access, dwelling there for seven years under the open sky.

Despite his flight from the world the reports of St. John's holiness continued to spread, reaching even the Bulgarian imperial court and bringing a number of monks and novices to Rila, where the Saint eventually accepted them as his disciples and allowed them to build a monastery with a church in the cave where he had previously lived.

St. John shepherded the Rila Monastery until his repose on this day in 946 at the age of seventy. Before his death he wrote one of the most celebrated pieces of literature in the old Bulgarian language. Through both his holy life and his prayers St. John did much to strengthen the Orthodox Faith amongst the newly baptized Bulgarians.

St. John's relics remained at the Rila Monastery until their transfer to Sofia in the face of an invasion of Bulgaria by the East Roman Empire. At some point one of the Saint's hands was translated to Russia, to the city of Ryl'sk, which was named after the place of St. John's ascetic struggles, and he soon became as beloved amongst the Russians as he was amongst his native Bulgarians. The main part of the Saint's relics were later translated back to Rila from the new Bulgarian imperial capita, Turnovo, in 1469, where they remain to this day.

More on St. John's life can be found here. May his blessing and prayers be with us all!

68th Anniversary of Tsar Boris III's Repose Commemorated in Sofia

The 68th anniversary of the repose of Tsar Boris III of Bulgaria was commemorated yesterday in the patriarchal Monastery of St. John in Rila, Bulgaria, with a memorial served by the Rila Monastery's abbot, Bishop Evlogiy of Adrianople. When the tsar died in 1943 he was initially buried in the Rila Monastery's catholicon before being disinterred by the Bulgarian Communist regime. The location of his remains are unknown, though his heart was discovered and returned for reburial at the Rila Monastery following the collapse of the Bulgarian Communist government in 1991. More (in Bulgarian) here.

Although responsible for allying Bulgaria with Germany during World War II, Tsar Boris worked first and foremost to unify the Bulgarian nation, making the alliance with Germany in the hopes of regaining historically Bulgarian territories lost to neighboring Yugoslavia and Greece and refusing to hand over Bulgaria's Jews to the Nazis or to send Bulgarian troops to fight the Soviet Union due to the close bonds formed with Russia during Bulgaria's liberation from the Ottoman Turks.

Catechetical Conference to be Held at Rila Monastery

With the blessing of the Bulgarian Orthodox Holy Synod a conference on catechism in the Bulgarian Orthodox Church will be held tomorrow at the famous Rila Monastery in southwestern Bulgaria. The conference will include clerical and lay participants and will both discuss current experiences in religious education and seek to develop principles for a comprehensive catechetical strategy to promote the spiritual enlightenment of the Bulgarian nation. More (in Bulgarian) here.