Major Orthodox Saints Commemorated This Week
On the Orthodox Old Calendar, this is a very impressive week for commemorating great ascetics, apologists and confessors of Orthodoxy. Today we commemorate St. Antony the Great, the great Father who blazed the trail of all later monasticism, and remember the most pious emperor Theodosios I. Tomorrow we commemorate Sts. Athanasios and Cyril, the two preeminent Patriarchs of Alexandria who combated the Arian and Nestorian heresies respectively. On Wednesday we commemorate the great ascetic St. Makarios the Great and St. Mark Evgenikos, one of the “Pillars of Orthodoxy” (along with St. Photios and St. Gregory Palamas) and the only Byzantine bishop who refused to sign the union agreement at Florence in 1439. St. Euthymios the Great, one of the major Fathers of Orthodox monasticism and a prodigious founder of monasteries in fifth century Palestine, is commemorated on Thursday. St. Maximos the Confessor, one of the foremost Greek theologians of all time (and my personal favourite) and the scourge of the heresy of monotheletism, is commemorated on Friday. On Saturday we commemorate the Apostle Timothy, and then venerate the memory of the Sixth Ecumenical Council of 680-81, which condemned monoenergism and monotheletism, on Sunday. Vechnaya pomyat!
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