St. Fulgentius of Ruspe

Joyous feast!

Today we celebrate the memory of our Holy Father Fulgentius of Ruspe. St. Fulgentius was a monastic father of the Church in North Africa. Born and raised in the formerly Roman province of Byzacena (now eastern Tunisia), after embracing the monastic life as an adult the Saint struggled as an ascetic in Byzacena, Mauretania (now Algeria), and Sicily, co-founding monasteries in Byzacena and Mauretania before founding his own monastery in Byzacena, from which he retreated to live as a hermit.

In the early 500s the Orthodox in North Africa decided to secretly rebel against their Arian rulers by electing new bishops for the many vacant sees in the region. St. Fulgentius was nominated for several sees and fled into hiding. The Saint, thinking that all of the vacant sees had been filled, eventually came out of hiding in the town of Ruspe, where he was promptly made bishop of the city, which had been unable to choose a bishop due to the lack of a suitable candidate.

Enduring exile in Sardinia for his witness to the Orthodox Faith, St. Fulgentius was later summoned to Carthage by the Arian ruler of North Africa to give an explanation of the Apostolic Faith on behalf of the North African episcopate, much of which had also been exiled to Sardinia. While in Carthage the Saint reconciled many of the city's inhabitants to Orthodoxy and consequently was sent back into exile, only returning to Africa in 523 after the death of the Arian ruler then enthroned in Carthage.

Returning to Ruspe, St. Fulgentius took up his shepherding of the Orthodox there, ensuring that his clergy did not adorn themselves and that they celebrated the services with attention while also encouraging the monastic life and exhorting his flock to greater fasting and holiness of life. After a brief retirement to the island of Circe the Saint fell asleep on this day in 533 at the age of sixty-five.

May St. Fulgentius' blessing and prayers be with us all! More on his life may be found here.

St. Laura of Cordoba

Joyous feast! Today we celebrate the memory of our Holy Mother Laura of Cordoba. Like most women in her time St. Laura, who lived in the 9th century, was married. Following her husband's repose, however, the Saint embraced the angelic life, becoming a nun at a convent in Cuteclara. St. Laura was later martyred in 864 by the Arab and Berber Muslims who had conquered most of the Iberian Peninsula. More on her life can be found here. May St. Laura's blessing and prayers be with us all!

St. Lawrence the Archdeacon

Joyous feast! Today we celebrate the Holy Martyr Lawrence the Archdeacon of Rome and his companions, Pope Sixtus, the Deacons Felicissimus and Agapetus, and Romanus the Soldier. Pope Sixtus was enthroned on the Roman cathedra at a time of persecution and was arrested not long after his election, being imprisoned with two of his deacons. In jail St. Lawrence visited the confessors and begged to be allowed to join them St. Sixtus told him to wait, for in three days God would given him a greater trial and martyrdom than he and his deacons would endure.

At Pope St. Sixtus' trial it was revealed that St. Lawrence had distributed the Papacy's monies to the poor, per St. Sixtus' instructions, and the Saint was arrested and imprisoned. In prison St. Lawrence healed the sick through his prayers and baptized many of those around him, including his jailer Hyppolitus. When he was brought before the Roman Emperor Valerian St. Lawrence asked for three days to gather the Church's treasure for him, after which he presented to the emperor a crowd of the poor and the sick who had been helped out of the Church's charity.

The emperor handed St. Lawrence over to brutal tortures, having him scourged with an iron flail, burned, and struck with metal switches. One of his torturers, the soldier Romanus, was converted by a vision of an angel healing some of the Saint's wounds and later baptized when St. Lawrence was returned to jail. At the last St. Lawrence was placed in an iron cage and burned alive in it, praying to his God, saying, "I thank You, O Lord Jesus Christ, that You have counted me worthy to enter into Your gates!"

After the Saint had given up his spirit his former jailer, Hyppolitus, took his relics in the night, anointed them with ointments, and gave them into the care of a priest of the city, who served the Holy Mass over them and then buried them in a cave. Three days later St. Hyppolitus the Jailer and his companions were also martyred for the Orthodox Faith. The Holy Archdeacon Lawrence and the other Holy Roman Martyrs before and after him suffered in 258.

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

St. John Cassian

Joyous feast! Today we commemorate our Holy Father John Cassian the Roman, who is well known for his writings on the ascetic life and his introduction of monastic rules from Scetis in Egypt to the West in the late 300s and early 400s.

St. John Cassian was born in the Roman Empire to wealthy parents and at an early age went on pilgrimage to the Holy Land, which so impacted him that he became a monk in Bethlehem, later moving to Scetis to become a disciple of the elders there. After laboring in Egypt as a monk for a number of years the Saint moved to Constantinople where he became a disciple of St. John Chrysostom, who ordained him to the deaconate and appointed him as sacristan of Holy Wisdom Cathedral.

When St. John Chrysostom was exiled from Constantinople the city's clergy sent St. John Cassian as their representative to Rome to ask Pope Innocent I to intervene with the emperor on the exiled archbishop's behalf. In Rome the Saint was ordained a priest, and after some time in Italy he left for Provence in what today is southern France.

In Provence St. John Cassian founded two monasteries, one for men and one for women, in the coastal city of Marseille. (The men's monastery, St. Victor's Abbey, survives to this day as a Benedictine institution of the Roman Catholic Church.) Through both his labors and his writings St. John Cassian did a great deal to advance the spread of monasticism in the West, and both his Institutes and Conferences are treasured to this day by both Orthodox Christians and Roman Catholics.

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

St. Jerome of Stridonium

Joyous feast! St. Jerome was born to an Orthodox family in the Roman city of Stridonium, which is believed to have been in ancient Dalmatia, now part of Croatia, or Pannonia, now divided between western Hungary, eastern Austria, and countries of the former Yugoslavia. As a youth he was sent to Rome to further his studies. While there he fell into dissolution, but by the age of twenty the Saint had repented and been baptized.

Not long after his baptism St. Jerome visited Gaul, present day France, and there began to desire to dedicate his life to God as a monk. Returning to his home city in 372 the Saint found his parents departed and took over the care of his siblings, putting everything in order before leaving the West to study and struggle in the monasteries of Syria before traveling to Constantinople, where he met Sts. Gregory the Theologian and Gregory of Nyssa before leaving in 381 for Rome.

In Rome St. Jerome continued his study of the Scriptures, but became resented for his denunciation of the lax morals of the city's Orthodox faithful. Consequently the Saint left the imperial city for the Holy Land, where he settled in a cave in Bethlehem near the place of the Lord's birth and entered more deeply into the ascetic life. Troubled in his last years by the Goths' sack of Rome and the depredations of Arab tribes, St. Jerome reposed around the year 420. His relics were later translated from Bethlehem to Rome.

St. Jerome is remembered for his prolific commentaries on the Scriptures and writings on the Faith, asceticism, and history. Perhaps his most lasting legacy, however, was his translation of the Bible into the Latin, with his version, the Vulgate, becoming the standard text used throughout the Church in the West. More on the Saint's life can be found here. May his blessing and prayers be with us all!

St. Augustine of Hippo

Joyous feast! St. Augustine was born in the Berber territory of Numidia, then the Roman province of Africa and now divided between Algeria and Tunisia, in 354 and was raised by his devout mother, St. Monica, who eventually sent him to ancient Carthage to further his studies.

The Saint, then a Manichean, eventually became a professor of rhetoric and moved to Milan to teach in the late 300s. In Milan St. Augustine met the great St. Ambrose and was converted to Orthodoxy, giving away his worldly possessions to the poor to become a monk.

In 391 St. Augustine was ordained a priest and, four years later, consecrated to the episcopacy and after some time as an auxiliary was in 395 elected Bishop of Hippo in Numidia. During his 35 years as a bishop St. Augustine wrote his famous Confessions as well as many works combating the various heresies besetting the Church at that time.

St. Augustine fell asleep during the Vandal siege of his see in 430 at the age of seventy-six. More on his life can be found here and here. May his blessing and prayers be with us all!

St. Clotilda

Joyous feast! St. Clotilda was Queen of the Franks through her marriage to Clovis I and it was thanks to her influence (and a battlefield victory) that Clovis accepted baptism in 496 and converted the Franks to Orthodoxy. After Clovis' death in 511 St. Clotilda remained for a time in Paris and at the center of Frankish politics, but later withdrew to Tours to live in seclusion and prayer near the relics of St. Martin, for whom she had a strong devotion.

After 34 years as a widow St. Clotilda reposed and was buried with her husband in the mausoleum church they had founded together in Paris. More on her life can be found here. May St. Clotilda's blessing and prayers be with us all!

St. William of Gellone

Joyous feast! St. William of Gellone, also known after his homeland as St. William of Languedoc, was a count in the southern reaches of the empire of Charlemagne and led the forces that defeated the invading armies of the Emir of Cordoba at the Battle of Orange. The Saint later founded a monastery in Gellone (near Montpellier) that strictly followed the Rule of St. Benedict and eventually retired there as a monk, falling asleep in 812.

After St. William's glorification his relics were exhumed and enshrined in the Gellone Monastery's main church alongside a fragment of the Cross that the Saint had given the Monastery at its founding. Thanks to St. William's popularity his monastery became a major stopover for pilgrims from across Western Europe who were making their way to Compostela.

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

Pictured is the Gellone Monastery, now known as the Abbey of St. William 'of the Desert.'

In Memoriam: Fr. Dn. Polycarp Sherwood

Fr. Dn. Polycarp Robert Sherwood of the Russian Orthodox Church Abroad in Ontario unexpectedly fell asleep earlier this afternoon. Fr. Polycarp was a long-time supporter, both financially and in terms of time and talent, of Christ the Savior Monastery in Hamilton, Ontario, and is survived by his wife and family. Fr. Polycarp's funeral Mass will reportedly be at St. Mark's Church in Denver, Colorado, after which he is to be buried on the grounds of St. Laurence's Center, a Western Orthodox retreat center in Talahasee Creek, Colorado. May his memory be eternal!

2011 Western Orthodox Conference Announced

It has been announced that the Western Rites conference being sponsored by the Fraternity of St. Gregory the Great for the Western Orthodox clergy and faithful of the Russian Orthodox Church Outside Russia will be held this October at a retreat center in upstate New York. The conference will also be open to the Western Orthodox clergy and faithful of the Antiochian Orthodox Archdiocese of North America. More here.

St. Ethelbert the Royal Martyr

Joyous feast! St. Ethelbert was a king of the East Angles known for his great piety and humility. Although he desired to remain celibate he bowed to the pressures of his court to marry and went to nearby Mercia to court the daughter of its king. The Mercian king, fearful of his daughter's love for St. Ethelbert and her urgings that he accept the Saint as his overlord, had his visitor beheaded and buried anonymously. A heavenly light shone where the Saint's relics were buried, however, and they were taken and enshrined in Hereford and London. More on the St. Ethelbert's life and legacy can be found here. May his blessing and prayers be with us all!

Ordination at Christminster

Brother Joseph (del Giorno), a monk at the Benedictine Monastery of Christ the Savior in Hamilton, Ontario, was ordained to the deaconate by the Russian Orthodox Church Abroad's Bishop Jerome (Shaw) of Manhattan this past Saturday. The ordination services were celebrated according to the Roman Rite as it is observed at the Monastery and were well attended by Orthodox and non-Orthodox alike.

Bishop Jerome stayed at the Monastery for the weekend to celebrate a pontifical Sunday Mass and formally install Dom James (Deschene) as abbot, although he has served as abbot of Christ the Savior for several years now. More on both Saturday and Sunday's services can be found here.

Pictured is Bishop Jerome (vested according to the practice of the Roman Rite) as he gives the pontifical blessing at the end of this past weekend's ordination Mass.

St. Monica of Tagaste

Christ is risen! Joyous feast! St. Monica was the mother of one of the great Fathers of the Orthodox West, St. Augustine of Hippo, and her prayers are credited with bringing him to faith. More on her life can be found here. May her blessing and prayers be with us all!

New Western Rites Priest Ordained in Minnesota

Bishop Jerome (Shaw) of Manhattan, auxiliary to the First Hierarch of the Russian Orthodox Church Abroad, has ordained Philip Ramstad to the holy priesthood to serve the Church of Sts. Aidan and Cuthbert in St. Paul, Minnesota. Axios! More here.

Correction (2/5/2011): Reader Philip Ramstad was ordained to the deaconate on 28 April by Archbishop Justinian (Ovchinnikov) of Narofominsk at the Cathedral of our Lady of the Sign in New York, but has not yet been ordained to the priesthood.

St. Rupert of Salzburg

Joyous feast! St. Rupert was the enlightener of what today is Bavaria and Austria who also founded the modern city of Salzburg on the ruins of an old Roman town. St. Rupert fell asleep in 710 and is widely venerated in both Austria and Bavaria. More on his life can be found here. May his blessing and prayers be with us all!

Ordination at Christminster in May

Bishop Jerome (Shaw) of Manhattan of the Russian Orthodox Church Abroad will be visiting Christ the Savior Monastery in Hamilton, Ontario, this coming May for an ordination in the Monastery's church. The ordination Mass will be the first pontifical (hierarchical) Mass served in the Roman Rite since 1967. More here.

St. Patrick of Ireland

Joyous feast! St. Patrick is probably one of the best known Saints in the West, as evidenced by all the parades theoretically in his honor in the United States and Canada :-). He's also my 'go to' saint for the Canadian half of my family given our largely Irish and British descent. More on his life can be found here. May his blessing and prayers be with us all!

Hermitage to be Founded in Scotland

Metropolitan Hilarion (Kapral) of New York of the Russian Orthodox Church Abroad has blessed the establishment of a hermitage in Scotland. The hermitage, which will be dedicated to St. Drostan, will be formally established later this year. More here.

St. Benedict of Nursia

Joyous feast! St. Benedict was one of the great organizers of monasticism in the Orthodox West, parallel to Sts. Anthony the Great and Basil the Great in the East, and is therefore known as the 'Patriarch of Western Monasticism.' His rule continues to be followed today by several Roman Catholic monastic orders as well as by Western Orthodox monastics under the Russian Orthodox Church Abroad. More on his life can be found here. May his blessing and prayers be with us all!

St. Gregory the Great

Joyous feast! Pope St. Gregory the Great of Rome was one of the great lights of the Church of the West and many continue to read his writings throughout the Orthodox world. He is so esteemed in the East that a service, the Presanctified Liturgy, is attributed to him, while the West remembers him as the last great reformer of the Mass of the Roman Rite, whose last significant changes in form and content took place during his papacy. More on his life can be found here. May his blessing and prayers be with us all!