Holy New Virginmartyr Zlata of Măglen

Saint Zlata of Măglen

The feast-day of Saint Luke the Evangelist and of Saint Ioulianos Saba is also shared by a young Bulgarian maiden who suffered under the Ottoman yoke: Saint Zlata of Măglen. This headstrong and holy young woman lived and died during the late 1700s, and she is venerated in particular by the Bulgarian and by the Serbian people.

Zlata [Bg. And Srb. Злата, Gk. Χρυσή, meaning ‘Golden’] was born in the village of Slatina in the region of Măglen, which was then ruled by the Ottoman Empire. (The modern town in Greece is actually named after her, and called Chrysē.) Her parents were poor villagers, who after her had three more daughters. Zlata had a character which was humble, God-loving and chaste-minded, but which also had an inner strength and resolve that was the result of careful prayer. As is often the case when young people cultivate such an inward beauty of character that becomes stamped upon the face, and it was said of her that she grew up extraordinarily beautiful. This beauty of hers was the occasion for which she suffered martyrdom, in a glorious and valiant way, for Christ.

Reading a novel like Ivan Vazov’s Under the Yoke, one is very quickly struck by the arbitrary nature of Turkish rule in the time before reform. There was no rule of law. The Bulgarian peasants were ruthlessly exploited, even more brutally than peasants in Western Europe were, and anything a Turkish paşa wanted to take from the Bulgarian peasants, he could take without fear of reprisal. That included not just crops and goods but also sexual favours, unfortunately. And any attempt to resist such a Turkish advance was met with cruel violence and tortures. (Think of what black people endured in the South under Jim Crow, and that provides perhaps not an exact picture but an approximation.)

So when a Turkish nobleman happened to see Zlata while riding through Slatina, and was at once seized with a cruel lust and a desire for her body. He followed her, concocted a plan, lay in wait. Zlata went out with some of the village women to collect firewood, not knowing that she was marked by a Turk with evil intentions upon her. He marked which house she belonged to, and also observed what times her parents and sisters came and went. Then he gathered some other Turks with him, and kidnapped her when the opportunity presented, and brought her to his home.

At first, the Turk tried to persuade her with words. He told her, that if she would convert to Islâm, he would make her his first wife, give his household into her hands, shower her with gifts and finery. He made her all sorts of these kinds of promises, not knowing that for the girl whose very name means gold, promises of gold and silver were as nothing compared to the love of Christ. She refused them all, even though she understood the sort of plight she was in. She called upon the name of the Lord, saying, ‘I believe in my Lord Jesus Christ, and I worship Him. He alone is my Bridegroom and I will never forsake him – even if you submit me to thousands of tortures and cut my body into pieces!’

The Turk and his family did not give up after this, but resorted to a different kind of cunning. He withdrew from Zlata and gave her over to his mother and sisters and female in-laws to be ‘worked on’. And they did their best to ply her, to cajole her in every possible way, to convert her to Islâm. They spoke highly of the man of the family, told her she was marrying well, pointed out the obvious material advantages; and when this didn’t work, they snubbed her, made her do the hard work and ridiculed her. But nothing worked on her. For six months they tried in vain to make her renounce Christ, and for six months she resisted steadfastly.

At last the Turk grew impatient. He had her parents and sister arrested and brought to his estate, and made all sorts of threats against both parents and her sisters. The Turk told them to persuade their daughter to convert to Islâm, otherwise he would have Zlata killed, have them tortured, have their other daughters dishonoured and have all their property confiscated. They knew all too well that these things lay within his power to do. And so, in utter dread, Zlata’s own family tried to get her to at least say she would convert, for appearance’s sake, to spare all their lives. They implored her: ‘Have pity upon yourself, on your poor parents, on your sisters; otherwise we shall all perish and be destroyed on your account! Just seem like you are renouncing Christ, so that all of us may be happy. Christ is merciful; He will forgive you the sin and understand your necessity!’

Zlata heard these things and was deeply saddened, but her resolve was even more firmly fixed. She saw this snare of the Devil and she skirted it. She made herself deaf to the tears of her parents and sisters, and told them firmly: ‘When you tell me to forsake Christ, the true God, you are no longer my parents and my sisters! I have a father in Christ; I have a mother in the Theotokos; and I have brothers and sisters in the communion of the saints!’

When the Turk who had kidnapped her heard her say this, and realised that all his planning and plotting and labours had been to no avail, he resorted to tortures. He threw Saint Zlata into a dark basement, shackled her by her wrists, and had her beaten with wooden clubs every day for three months until her blood soaked the entire floor. Then the Turks flayed the skin from her back in strips and hung them before her eyes so as to frighten and dismay her, and the blood flowed in streams down her body. At last the Turks took an iron rod, held it in the fire until it was white-hot, and impaled her through one ear and out the other, such that smoke came out of her nose and mouth.

This young girl braved torments that would overawe and break even the strongest of men. But the power of the Cross gave her an indomitable courage, and her great love for Christ which not even the tears of her family could shake gave her strength. As St Symeōn Metaphrastēs says: ‘The soul, which is bound by the chains of love to God, considers suffering to be as nothing, rejoices in pain, and flourishes in torment.’

During her imprisonment the saint heard that somewhere nearby was the Abbot Timofei of the Athonite monastery of Stavronikita, who was the spiritual father of her father. Before her death, she sent word by a Christian who visited her to him, and begged him that he would pray for her, that God would strengthen her to the very end and help her to complete the course of her martyrdom. It is from Abbot Timofei that the account of her martyrdom comes down to us.

The cruel Turk, who was not satisfied with all the tortures to which the saint was subjected, wondered how she could endure such inhuman treatment and yet not break. It wounded his pride that he could be thwarted by a mere girl. And so he had Christ’s saint hanged by her arms from a pear tree in the courtyard, and cut into small pieces. Holy Zlata, who lived up to her name being smelted and purified like a precious metal in a furnace, finished the contest and won a double wreath, being perfected in her martyrdom and in her purity of mind and resolve. In the villages of Heaven she rejoices together with the wise virgins, and with all the company of saints who have been honoured by God, sitting at the right hand of Christ, who rules forever and ever. Several of the relics of the doubly-honourable saint were taken secretly by local Christians and buried with deep reverence in her home village of Slatina, which indeed now bears her name now that Greece is again an independent country. Holy virginmartyr Zlata, more precious by far than your namesake and outshining it by far in your witness, pray unto the only Lover of Mankind that our souls may be saved!

Apolytikion to Saint Zlata of Măglen, Tone 1:

Having come to love the Cælestial Bridegroom,
You have shown no fear of the tortures of the wicked infidel
And have shed your blood even to death, O Zlata,
Worthy of all praise, O pride of Măglen!
That is why you are now being recompensed according to your merits:
Æternal joy in the palaces of Christ our God.
To Him do pray that He may save our souls.

Venerable Ioulianos Saba, Hermit of Edessa

Euphratēs River

The eighteenth of October, in addition to being the feast-day of Saint Luke the Evangelist, is also the feast-day of another Levantine saint. Saint Ioulianos Saba of Mesopotamia was a fourth-century Syrian ascetic who lived on the banks of the Euphratēs River, and pursued a solitary desert existence there. Celebrated by both Saint John Chrysostom and Saint Ephraim the Syrian, Saint Ioulianos is considered to be one of the most important founding fathers of Syriac monasticism, and his life is treated at length in Blessed Theodoret of Kyrrhos’s History of the Monks of Syria.

Saint Ioulianos [Gk. Ἰουλιανὸς, L. Julian, Ar. Yûliyyân يوليان] was apparently ‘self-taught’, possibly suggesting humble social origins, and lived as an ascetic for many years in the desert outside Edessa, now ar-Ruhâ. He received the honourific cognomen of ‘Saba’, meaning ‘the grey(-headed)’, or ‘the old man’. Following the call of Christ out into the deserts of Mesopotamia, Ioulianos found a small, damp cave on the riverbank ‘not made by hands’, and lived there. He held his meagre, uncomfortable cell to be more valuable than a palace filled with gold and silver. He ate only once a week, subsisting on barley bread taken with some salt, and drinking meagre handfuls of water from a holy well nearby. He counted it as luxury to sing from the Psalter, and to spend long hours in prayer. The lifestyle of the ‘Saba’ began to attract younger men to him, who themselves sought the quietude and austerities of the desert. Ioulianos soon had around him not just a handful of disciples, but a full hundred monastics, who made up a community on the banks of the Euphratēs.

The hundred dwelt in a monastic complex, and emulated Saint Ioulianos’s way of life. The first building they were given permission to make was a store-house for the wild vegetables they would gather for the infirm amongst them, which would spoil and go rotten in the damp cave. Saint Ioulianos instructed them to go out into the wilderness in pairs, and alternatively throughout the day either to stand and sing from the Psalter, or to kneel in contemplative prayer to God.

Saint Ioulianos had a favourite disciple, a tall Iranian youngster named Iakōbos (or James), who followed him at a distance while they were walking in the desert. This Ioulianos did to keep conversation from distracting Iakōbos’s mind from the contemplation of God. One time as they walked Iakōbos saw a huge serpent lying across the path between him and Ioulianos. Iakōbos was stricken with fear, and could not move for a long time. At length he reached down and tossed a pebble at the beast, and only then did he observe that it was dead. He hurried to catch up with his master, and later on in the day he asked Ioulianos about the serpent. At first Ioulianos refused to tell him anything, but as Iakōbos kept insisting, Ioulianos relented. Forbidding his disciple to speak a word about it as long as he was alive, Saint Ioulianos related how he had come across the venomous reptile which had reared up to strike him, but when the hermit had made the Sign of the Cross the serpent fell down dead.

At another time, a well-bred youth named Asteriōn begged Saint Ioulianos to allow him to accompany him into the desert, on a long vigil which would last over a week. Seeing how ill-suited Asteriōn was to such feats of ascesis, Ioulianos refused at first. But the youngster pressed him until at last the elder relented. The youth accompanied Saint Ioulianos into the desert, and for three days he was well. But the sun beat down upon him, and the dry wind scorched his mouth and throat, and though he did not say a word of complaint he succumbed to heat stroke. Ioulianos revived the boy and told him to return to the cave to recover. Weak as he was, though, Asteriōn could not find the way. Ioulianos knelt down and wept, praying to God to save the young man, and then the wonder – the streams of the saint’s tears became a holy well of pure, cool spring water. With this the holy man tended to Asteriōn’s heat stroke, and quenched his thirst, and by God’s grace the youth was saved.

Asteriōn would go on to become a great ascetic himself, and would become the spiritual father and mentor of the bishop Akakios of Beroia (that is, Aleppo). Lifelong Asteriōn held his elder Ioulianos in reverence, twice a year bringing him a heavy load of fresh figs on his back. The first time he did this, Ioulianos sternly rebuked Asteriōn, and told him he would not eat them, for it was not seemly for an elder to enjoy the fruit that the younger had sweated and suffered in bringing him. But Asteriōn, as stubborn as ever, refused to put down his sack until Ioulianos agreed to eat the contents. At last the Saba agreed, so long as Asteriōn would put down the sack of fruit at once. Saint Ioulianos did not like it that others should serve him, but out of love for his student he accepted the service that was given to him.

At length, in order to escape from his growing fame and the temptations of praise and vainglory, the Saba set out with a handful of close disciples into the desert and made for Mount Sinai, taking with them only salt and bread, and a cup and sponge for water. Ioulianos climbed Sinai with his pupils, and when he had ascended there, he and his disciples built with their own hands a little chapel at the summit where Moses hid from God, which is actually still standing today, and is governed under the care of Saint Catherine’s by the autonomous Orthodox Church of Sinai. Once this chapel was completed, Ioulianos returned to the deserts of Mesopotamia.

It later happened that Antioch came under the persecutions of the warmongering, idolatrous Emperor Julian the Apostate – ‘who shared his name,’ as Blessed Theodoret says, ‘but not his piety’. The emperor set out to make war on Persia, breathing threats against Christ’s Church. Ioulianos retreated into his cave and held a vigil in fervent prayer that lasted for ten days. When the Emperor Julian was killed in battle with the Persians, the Saba received a whisper from God telling him what had happened. At once Saint Ioulianos’s prayers of supplication were transformed into hymns of joy. ‘Having rebelled against God who is Creator and Saviour, he has justly been slain at the hand of a subject,’ the Saba said to his disciples.

The Saba also gave voice to the Church’s stand against the impieties of Arius, though it took some persuasion for him to leave his desert solitude. The Arians had shamelessly propagated the lie, that Saint Ioulianos was of their party. In answer to this, Saint Flavianos, then a priest recently ordained from the diaconate, took counsel with his friend Diodoros and with Saint Aphraatēs the Persian, and together they applied to Akakios of Beroia and Asteriōn to ask Saint Ioulianos’s help. Asteriōn, however, having turned to the Arian doctrines himself, was of no help. Akakios alone came to the Saba’s desert abode and, reminding him of the Lord’s admonition to Peter in the Gospel of John – if he loved Him, to ‘feed my sheep’ – asked him to come out with them into Antioch and enter disputations with the Arian party. When it was put to him like this, the Saba agreed, and came out of his desert abode and went with Akakios into the city.

On the way into Antioch, a wealthy woman came out to greet the Saba and his party, and invited them all into her house. She at once began making ready to serve Saint Ioulianos… but one of the household servants came in and told her that her infant son had fallen down a well. The wealthy woman was stricken, but she went right on serving the holy man as though nothing was wrong. When at last, though, Saint Ioulianos asked that her son be brought to him to receive his blessing, the woman could not hide her grief and vexation. And so the Saba asked to be shown the well. The household servants brought him there, and he peered down into it, and saw the young child laughing and playing on the surface of the water below as though nothing was wrong. When the child was brought up, he ran at once to Saint Ioulianos, and recounted that he had seen Saint Ioulianos beckoning to him from above the surface of the water and then holding him up, keeping him from drowning. In this way the Saint requited the hospitality of this kind woman.

Such wonders accompanied Saint Ioulianos all the way into Antioch. However, when he drew near the church, the saint himself was suddenly stricken with a fever, and had to go withindoors to rest. The humble saint told his followers not to despair, and that if health was something God saw fit to give him, He would give it. He prayed to God, touched his forehead to the ground. He went into a sweat and his fever broke. He proceeded into the assembly of the Orthodox Christians, and he healed many who were sick, including a beggar who had been lame since childhood, and a military governor who was bedridden with a strange sickness. In this way he bore witness to the truths of the Orthodox faith, and confounded the falsities and insinuations of the Arians. Saint Ioulianos, having already advanced to a great old age, reposed in peace in the year 367.

Saint Ioulianos Saba was the first of many anchorites to seek struggle in the breathtakingly-beautiful arid landscapes of what is now northeastern Syria and northern Iraq. It may justly be said of him that he founded a tradition – an entire Syriac mode of holiness, if it can be described in so monistic a way – which emphasised extreme renunciations of both physical comfort and social standing, even social standing within the Church. It is with gratitude that we ask of him today: Holy and venerable Ioulianos Saba, humble and gentle athlete of the desert in Edessa and on Sinai, pray unto Christ our God that our souls may be saved!

Jabal Mûsâ Summit Greek Orthodox Chapel, Sinai, Ægypt

Holy Apostle and Evangelist Luke

Saint Luke the Evangelist

Today is the feast-day in the Orthodox Church of Saint Luke the Evangelist. The importance of Saint Luke to the development of the Christian faith and the Orthodox Church in particular cannot be overstated. He authored two of the books of Holy Scripture – the Gospel account bearing his name, and also the Book of Acts: the single largest contribution to the Greek-language Scriptures by any single author. It is on account of Luke that we even have a comprehensive account of Christ’s early life, and it is also on account of Luke that we have an account of what happened to the followers of Christ in the immediate wake of His Crucifixion and Resurrection. Luke’s account of Christ emphasises the social and historical dimensions of His life on earth, and also the universal importance of His ministry. Although devotion to this great saint is universal, he was born and raised in Antioch, and thus is glorified and venerated among the Antiochian saints.

Saint Luke [Gk. Λουκᾶς, L. Lucas, Ar. Lûqâ لوقا], a Greek by parentage, was raised in Antioch. Luke was probably from a fairly well-to-do family, because he was versant in Greek philosophy, in art, and in the study of medicine. He became a physician upon reaching adulthood, and having been in contact with Jews among his patients in Antioch he may have been drawn to their prophetic religion, and may have come to believe in the Jewish God. According to the tradition of the Church, when Luke was a young man he had occasion to visit Jerusalem, and was called out to the nearby village of ‘Imwâs – which is to say, Emmaus – near ar-Ramla:

Now behold, two of them were travelling that same day to a village called Emmaus, which was seven miles from Jerusalem. And they talked together of all these things which had happened. So it was, while they conversed and reasoned, that Jesus Himself drew near and went with them. But their eyes were restrained, so that they did not know Him. (Lk 24:13-16)

The companion of Luke on this journey is named in his account as Kleopas, identified in Orthodox tradition as the brother of Saint Joseph. Luke does not name himself as the other companion – in keeping with the literary custom used also by Saint Mark and by Saint John. Jesus, who was disguised such that Kleopas did not know Him, asked the two men why they were sad. Kleopas had entertained the hopes, common among Jesus’s disciples, that the Messiah would come and restore the righteous reign of the Hasmonean Kingdom, and rule in the name of the Heir of David in perpetuity. After the Crucifixion, these worldly, political hopes were utterly dashed. He said to Jesus that ‘certain women of our company’ had come to the tomb and found it empty, but in so saying he revealed his unbelief.

Jesus rebuked him and Luke together for not having believed what the women had told them, which was true, and then began to expound those passages in the Hebrew prophets which hint at what the Messiah must suffer. When the three of them came to ‘Imwâs, Jesus wanted to go on, but Luke and Kleopas insisted that he stay with them. Jesus agreed, and when He came inside, and broke bread and blessed it, then all of a sudden Kleopas recognised Him, and Luke knew Him, and at once He vanished from sight. Thus Saint Luke was among the first to be given the honour to behold the Risen Lord, despite being a Gentile and despite being a newcomer to Jerusalem.

Saint Luke was quickly welcomed into the company of the Apostles, as he is numbered among the Seventy. The next we hear about Saint Luke is from the lips, or rather the pen, of Saint Paul – in whose company Luke was constant in brotherly and devoted attendance. He is mentioned in the benediction of Paul’s epistle to Philemon, along with Demas and the saints Mark and Aristarchos. He appears in a similar litany of ‘fellow workers’ in the benediction of the Pauline epistle to the Colossians. At the end of his second epistle to Timotheos, Paul complains that Demas and Saint Titos and Saint Kreskēs have all abandoned him, and that ‘Λουκᾶς ἐστιν μόνος μετ’ ἐμοῦ’ – ‘Only Luke is with me’.

If we take Luke’s account of himself in Acts as authoritative – that is to say, those places in Acts where he refers to the Apostles in the first-person rather than in the third-person – then we can assume that he accompanied Saint Paul from Trōada until he departs from Philippoi, where Saint Luke evidently stayed until Saint Paul returned there. From then on Luke accompanied the chief of the Apostles until his martyrdom.

The community of Christians put Saint Luke’s talents to good use. He wrote one Gospel account – in fact, the only account to be addressed to a specific person, Theophilos – and the Acts of the Apostles as a seamless continuation of the Gospel narrative. The Orthodox tradition identifies Theophilos with the governor of Achaïa in Greece, who went by that name. (This was one of the places that Luke visited after the martyrdom of Saint Paul.) In writing his Gospel, Saint Luke relied on primary source documents and eyewitness testimony. He may indeed have relied upon the eyewitness testimony of the Most Holy Theotokos, and he even depicted the likeness of the Most Holy Theotokos – thus becoming the first iconographer of the Church. As a historian, Saint Luke is meticulous, thorough, and responsible to the facts: his knowledge of contemporary political and physical gæography is impressive by Classical standards. (As it should be: he travelled in person to many of the places he speaks of!) Although he uses certain figurative language and inflates some figures to suit a didactic objective, this practice is fully in keeping with the histories of Herodotos and Thoukydidēs.

Saint Luke’s primary themes were the universality of the Gospel message – extended even to women, Samaritans, Gentiles, lepers and tax collectors; the particular care and concern Christ had for sinners; and the identification of Christ with the poor and sorrowful. Mary’s ode of praise, with all its social potentials, is found in the very first chapter of Saint Luke’s Gospel, setting the tone for his work. It is indeed Saint Luke who most strongly emphasises – in chapter 12, verse 48 of his Gospel, for example – the particular responsibility that those who enjoy material prosperity and political power have, to meet the needs of those who are materially poor.

If we consider Saint Mark to have been the founder of the allegorical-symbolic and philosophical Alexandrian school of exegesis (as the Copts claim), then it seems altogether fair to consider Saint Luke to have been the spiritual progenitor of the social-historical Antiochian school of exegesis. We can see præfigurations of Saint John Chrysostom in the Gospel of Luke; his concerns are much the same. Saint Luke emphasises the concrete, the factual, the present-right-in-front-of-you, in his Gospel account – and he also grounds his Gospel in the social concerns of the early Christian community. Note that Christ first appears right in front of Luke on the road to ‘Imwâs; also that He chides Luke for not having believed the women who were, in fact, right there to see the empty tomb!

According to Holy Tradition, Saint Luke was beheaded by the Roman government under Nero while preaching the Gospel. His grave and his final resting-place were located in Thēbai in Boiōtia, Greece. The relics of the Saint were plundered from Thēbai at some point in the Middle Ages – possibly during the Fourth Crusade – and brought to Padua, to the Benedictine Abbazia di Santa Giustina. The head of Saint Luke was bought by Karel IV of Bohemia, and brought to the Cathedral of Saint Vitus in Prague, where it still rests.

In 1992 the then-Metropolitan Ierōnymos of Thēba (now Archbishop Ierōnymos II of Greece), made a request of the Catholic bishop Antonio Mattiazzo of Padua to return a significant part of the relics of Saint Luke to their rightful resting place in Greece. As a result of his request, the relics in both Padua and Prague were subjected to a scientific investigation and compared. It was determined that the relics belonged to a man of Syrian descent, elderly at the age of death but vigorously built, who had died sometime between the years 72 and 416. The skull in Saint Vitus Cathedral and the body in the Abbey of Saint Justina were determined to have belonged to the same man. Bishop Mattiazzo, in a touchingly selfless gesture of goodwill, sent to Metropolitan Ierōnymos the rib of the man which rested closest to his heart, to be venerated at Thēba. Holy evangelist and apostle Luke, physician and iconographer who met the Risen Lord face-to-face, pray unto Christ our God that our souls may be saved!

Apolytikion to Saint Luke the Evangelist, Tone 5:

Let us praise with sacred songs the holy Apostle Luke,
The recorder of the joyous Gospel of Christ
And the scribe of the Acts of the Apostles,
For his writings are a testimony of the Church of Christ:
He is the physician of human weaknesses and infirmities.
He heals the wounds of our souls,
And constantly intercedes for our salvation!

Monastery of Saint Luke, Thēba, Greece

Why Glo?

Gloria La Riva and Leonard Peltier

I cast my ballot already this time. The most ‘comfortable’ vote I cast on that ballot was for the Independent local author and self-described ‘Eisenhower-Lincoln Democratic-Republican’ Scott J Raskiewicz for US Senate – who, like me, has been both a blue-collar worker and a grade school teacher. Raskiewicz’s platform calls for œconomic democracy, Medicare for All, education reform (reducing reliance on high-stakes testing), reinstatement of the Fairness Doctrine, enforcing anti-monopoly legislation on media corporations, and – most importantly – a restrained, realist foreign policy. He’s basically what the Republicans were during the Eisenhower and Nixon years, including the Clean Air and Clean Water environmentalism, but with an added measure of Laschian populism and support for local and worker-owned businesses. Raskiewicz was, in a certain way, something of a way to ease my crunchy-con / distributist conscience – given that he’s easily the most distributist-sounding option on the ticket.

I also cast a vote for the Greens-endorsed Toya Woodland, a Christian minister, activist and organiser with Isaiah, Justice 4 Jamar and Stand Up MN. Ilhan Omar has proven, unfortunately, to be a vast disappointment. This is on account of her anti-Semitic rhetoric, her anti-Armenian vote refusing to recognise the Medz Yeghern, her willing association with the ’Ikhwân grifters in CAIR and her general foreign policy alignment toward the right-wing intégriste régime in Turkey which most of her constituents do not share. Toya, thankfully, brings the focus much closer to home, with a clear stance opposing private prisons and supporting criminal justice reform, affordable housing, fixing local infrastructure and bringing back local business. Her priorities are a lot closer to mine than Omar’s.

I am sure, however, that my most controversial endorsement will be the protest vote that I cast on the Presidential ticket: Gloria Estela La Riva for President, and Leonard Peltier for Vice-President, representing the Peace and Freedom and the Socialism and Liberation parties. I am also sure that this endorsement will ruffle a few feathers and probably lose me a few friends in Orthodox circles, given that La Riva is an avowed Marxist.

I anticipate the usual, tired and ugly pushback from the PO-and-OiD-type liberals who were all ‘I’m With Her’ in 2016, in whose eyes any vote that is not cast for Joseph Biden is an unpardonably selfish act and tantamount to a support of Donald Trump. My answer to them now is the same as it was then, and the same as it was when I refused to vote again for Obama in 2012. Biden’s record is simply against him on foreign policy (Yugoslavia, 1990s; Palestine, 1995 – and 2020; Iraq, 2002; Syria, 2011; Ukraine, 2014 – and after; Yemen, 2015). His record is against him on criminal justice reform. His record (and statements) are against him on healthcare. His record (and statements) are against him on humane treatment of immigrants. His record isn’t so great even on labour rights.

But I also anticipate even greater pushback from the American Orthodox right – which is still driven to a significant extent by white-émigré politics which are sadly out-of-sync with the common political feeling in the Rodina. How is this any different, I know it will be asked, from supporting the unholy murderers of Tsar Saint Nikolai and his family? (The more so since Dreher has been gloatingly shoving that shameful little historical incident back in the faces of the entirety of the American left – thanks to Bhaskar Sunkara’s now-deleted tweet which was, it must be said, both unpardonably stupid and morally deranged.) A stronger critique I anticipate would be: how is La Riva’s militant revolutionary Marxism any different than the social dogmatism, historical determinism and deadweight materialism that you have so busily critiqued in the past? Haven’t you gone full-on Raskol’nikov (or Ivan Karamazov) here? Haven’t you become a predictable, pædestrian leftist bore with this endorsement?

I could make, and it had crossed my mind to make, the good old Russell Kirk defence for voting Socialist. That seems a trifle too pat, though. It should not need saying, but I do not and cannot endorse La Riva’s entire programme. I agree with about 70 per cent of it, but try not to read too much into that. For example: she is pro-choice; I am pro-life. Unfortunately, as our culture becomes cruder, coarser, stingier, more cut off from our neighbours, and in fact softer and more divorced from any kind of actual struggle, we are also closing off to ourselves the opportunities to make real and meaningful reforms. If we Americans are, as Dreher enjoys pointing out (but has no clue about its import), on the ‘road to revolution’, then the hour is indeed later than we think. The question is, where do we place ourselves?

And my mind keeps going to the Russian catacomb saints, particularly Bishop Saint Andrei of Ufa and Saint Valentin of Kansk, who were among the first ‘red priests’. Both men were driven by deeply conservative convictions, Slavophil convictions, about the spiritual potentials of Russia and the ideals of harmony and sobornost’. And they were deeply troubled by the violent upheavals from the left as well as from the right. But when the time came to choose between the right-nationalist Black Hundreds, the liberal Kadets and the populist Social Revolutionaries – they chose the Social Revolutionaries. Bishop Saint Andrei was even (admiringly) called a ‘clerical Bolshevik’ – an epithet he at first claimed for himself and used liberally, but which he later came to resent.

The reason for this was: compassion. Saint Andrei and Saint Valentin both had a deeply-felt compassion for the lost, the hungry, the homeless, the prisoners, the despised. Saint Valentin’s Christian Brotherhood of Struggle was entirely aimed at mobilising both urban workers and poor peasantry to overcome financial and labour exploitation. Saint Andrei in particular spoke up against the Black Hundreds, in an almost Saint Herman-like way, for the Indigenous inorodtsy of the Russian Far East. Despite an initial enthusiasm for World War I in defence of the wrongfully-attacked Serbia, both men were driven by the refugee crises from the Eastern Front to adopt a homiletical tone of anti-war activism, even interpreting Russian suffering in the war as a punishment from God.

I share Saint Andrei’s and Saint Valentin’s distaste for revolution. If I am a revolutionary in any sense, it is in Georges Sorel’s sense that we need a revolution of myths, in Henri Bergson’s sense that we need a revolution of knowledge, in Oswald Spengler’s sense that we need a revolution of ethics, and ultimately in Dorothy Day’s sense (and St Maria Skobtsova’s) that we need an inward revolution of the heart. But who is it now who is preaching – as Saint Andrei and Saint Valentin did – compassion for America’s Indigenous, compassion for the incarcerated, compassion for the victims of American wars abroad? It shames me to say this, but the socialists are better about, not virtue signalling, but actually doing compassion – voluntary compassion, even, on an individual level – in many of these cases, than the soi-disant Christian politicians are. Gloria La Riva actually goes to visit and comfort those in prison. Can I say that of any other politician on my ballot, except maybe Yeezy (who is not in the running anymore)? Can I say that, even, of myself? God may be more merciful to her on the Last Judgement than He is to me.

The day may come – and I may live to see it – that those lonely few of my persuasion are persecuted by a surveillance-state woke capitalism, or by a full-fledged communist state, for being Christian, or that we are persecuted by a rising American totalitarian-nationalism for being ‘leftist’ (in that crude, caricatured definition that Americans tend to use today). That day may come soon. On that day I hope to have the strength of a Saint Andrei or a Saint Valentin in the face of it. But on this day, now, in the year 2020… I hope to have the strength of a Saint Andrei or a Saint Valentin to stand against a lack of compassion and a lack of brotherhood, even if it is merely in a symbolic way like this.

Holy Priestmartyr Loukianos of Antioch

Saint Loukianos of Antioch
القدّيس لوكيانوس الشهيد في الكهنة المعلّم الأنطاكي

Today in the Orthodox Church, the fifteenth of October, we celebrate the memory of the priestmartyr Saint Loukianos of Antioch. Saint Loukianos was a priest, a scholar and a brilliant – perhaps even a bit too brilliant – intellect of his age, having interests in the recension of Scripture and in the controversies over the substance of the Son. However, much more important from the Church’s perspective of him was his truly heroic and even prophetic witness to Christ, for which the Roman authorities tortured and killed him. His final proclamation of ‘the unity of God announced to us in Christ Jesus’ more than assures him a place among the hallowed martyrs.

Saint Loukianos [Gk. Λουκιανός, L. Lucian, Ar. Lûkyânûs لوكيانوس] was born in Samosata – that is to say, modern-day Samsat – around the year 240. His parents were Christian, and probably quite well-to-do, given that he was given a thorough education in the liberal arts, rhetoric and philosophy from a young age. When he was twelve, both of his parents passed away and he was left orphaned. Being both charitable and of a serious turn of mind, he left all of his parents’ fortune to the poor, and went to enrol in the School in Edessa in Mesopotamia. His schoolmaster, the confessor Makarios, taught him the Hebrew language and the art of Scriptural exegesis as well as the principles of the ascetic life.

Loukianos left the academy and at once took to intellectual arguments against Jews and pagans in the Levant. He made his way to Antioch where he became famous for his public oratory and skill in philosophical debate. The Christians of Antioch asked that he be ordained a priest. Soon after his ordination Loukianos founded his own school in Antioch where he began teaching pupils by the same precepts as Makarios had taught him. He taught the Scriptures, and also instructed children and youths in both the classical and the theological virtues. Loukianos was known in particular for his scepticism toward the allegorical method of biblical interpretation that characterised the exegetes of Alexandria, in Ægypt. Thus, certain modern theologians have speculated that his school was the basis for the Exegetical School of Antioch to which belonged Diodoros of Tarsos, Theodore of Mopsuestia, John Chrysostom and Gennadios of Constantinople; however, the evidence for this assertion is mostly circumstantial.

It was here that he began his project of embarking on a recension of Scripture. As a student of Hebrew, he wished to produce from the originals a functioning Greek version of the Old Testament that had not suffered the corruptions and additions – many of these often being hæretical in nature and inserted for gain by unscrupulous redactors – that contemporary versions were often riddled with. The recension of Loukianos was hidden in a wall in his school in Antioch, and was not found until many years after his death, during the reign of Emperor Saint Constantine.

Saint Loukianos suffered persecution, along with many other Christians of Antioch, under the reign of Diocletian. He was placed under arrest and marched to Nikomēdeia, where he was thrown into prison for nine years. During his time in prison, he gave counsel and spiritual strength to his fellow-prisoners of conscience, urging them not to fear persecution, tortures, hunger or death, but to remain steadfast to the end. ‘Look at how the pagans fear us that they must lead us before consuls and governors as bound victims,’ he famously told his fellow-prisoners. ‘But let them look in the histories, and they will see the wonders which inevitably follow our deaths at their hand!’

It must be remembered that the Romans under Diocletian could be pitiless to confessed Christians or even those suspected of being Christians. Two young boys held at Nikomēdeia, who refused to eat meat that had been sacrificed to pagan idols, were martyred when the guards threw them into a vat of boiling pitch. One of Loukianos’s students, a certain fifteen-year-old Pelagia – in fact, the virgin-martyr who shares a feast-day with Saint Pelagia the Penitent – threw herself from a rooftop to preserve herself from rape at the hands of the Roman soldiery.

Saint Loukianos himself was martyred under the torture by the Roman guards, who deliberately starved him. Hunger, beatings and even more ruthless tortures could not, however, break his spirit. He was chained down to a bed which was made of broken shards of glass. When he wished to offer the Holy Gifts, Christians had to bring him the Eucharistic bread and wine in secret, and placed them upon his chest where he could say the Divine Liturgy, bless them and offer them to his fellow-prisoners.

But it is the confession of Saint Loukianos that has survived and inspired Christians, from Saint John Chrysostom all the way down to the present. During his interrogation, he was asked what manner of man he was. His reply? ‘I am a Christian.’ He was asked his profession. ‘I am a Christian.’ He was asked his name. ‘I am a Christian.’ He was asked his origin. ‘Christian.’ His lineage. ‘Christian.’

In the end, when it could be plainly seen that torture would not work on Saint Loukianos, his tormentors ran him through with a sword. In this way he became a victorious martyr for the Christ he confessed. The date of his death has been traditionally fixed at the seventh of January – and this date is still observed in the Latin Church. However, in the Orthodox Church, this date is preserved for the Synaxis of Saint John the Forerunner and for Theophany. The feast of Saint Loukianos was thus moved to the fifteenth of October, which is said to be the date on which the saintly Empress Helena of Constantinople dedicated a church in Antioch over the relics of the holy martyr.

Saint Loukianos is recorded as having been a presbyter – that is, a priest. In the Russian school of iconography, however, he is often portrayed as wearing a bishop’s robes and omophor. This is to reflect his importance to the Church in the days of the early persecutions under pagan Rome. Holy priestmartyr Loukianos, fearless and bold confessor of Christ before the pagans, pray unto Christ our God that our souls may be saved!

Apolytikion of Saint Loukianos of Antioch, Tone 3:

Radiant with the Spirit,
You taught true knowledge of the true faith;
A trainer of martyrs, O Loukianos,
You were glorified in contest.
Intercede with Christ our God that he may grant us great mercy!

Ruins of Nikomēdeia, near İzmit in Turkey

Holy Martyrs Sarbēlos and Bebaia, and Holy Hierarch and Confessor Barsimaios of Edessa

Saint Sarbēlos of Edessa
القديس شربل الرهاوي

The fifteenth of October is actually one of several feast-days for Saints Sarbēlos and Bebaia, who along with Bishop Saint Barsimaios are remembered on the fifth of September and the twenty-ninth of January as well. Martyrs of the early second century, they achieved the life æternal during the reign of Emperor Trajan.

Sarbēlos [Gk. Σάρβηλος, Ar. Šarbil شربل] was a pagan priest in Edessa at the time. He was given great honour and wealth on account of his position, and held a place of great respect in the pagan festivities. As he was preparing to preside over one such feast, decked out in his ceremonial regalia overflowing with gold and precious stones, he was accosted by the Christian bishop in Edessa, Barsimaios [Gk. Βαρσιμαίος]. Barsimaios in his zeal had already led many souls in Edessa to embrace Christ, and on this occasion he came to warn Sarbēlos of the great and dread judgement that would await him, if he continued to lead so many souls astray. Barsimaios must indeed have been convincing. Even though Sarbēlos went through with the ceremony, the following day he went back to Barsimaios along with his sister Bebaia [Gk. Βεβαία, Ar. Baybâyâ بيبايا], threw himself down at Bishop Barsimaios’s feet, repented of his sins and asked to be received together with his sister in Holy Baptism. In baptism Sarbēlos was given the Semitic name of Thathuel [Ar. Ṯâṯwîl ثاثويل].

News travelled fast. It was soon heard in the court of the governor Lysias that the chief priest among the pagans had abjured the gods and confessed Christ. Sarbēlos was summoned to the court and questioned, but he did not abjure Christ or return to his former belief. For this, Lysias ordered that Sarbēlos be flogged and subjected to numerous other tortures, and thrown into prison. Without complaint Sarbēlos endured two months of this treatment, until the cruel governor ordered that he be sawn asunder and beheaded. Sarbēlos did not cry out, but remained impassive as though his soul were already in heaven. His sister Bebaia, seeing this, went to his broken body and covered it with a coat in order to save his precious blood, and whispered to him that soon they would be united in Christ. Some soldiers overheard this and reported it to Lysias, who ordered that Bebaia should be beheaded along with him. Thus the brave Bebaia too at once joined the company of saints. This happened around the year 110.

It happened afterward that Saint Barsimaios was apprehended and made to answer for Sarbēlos’s conversion, and was tortured with whips and prods, and instructed to deny his faith – which he did not do. He was released alive, however, when Trajan handed down an edict of toleration for the Christians in the Roman Empire, and Saint Barsimaios continued to oversee the Church in Edessa until the natural end of his earthly life. Holy martyrs Sarbēlos and Bebaia, and holy hierarch and confessor Barsimaios, pray unto Christ our God that our souls may be saved!

Apolytikion for Saints Sarbēlos and Bebaia, Tone 4:

Your holy martyrs O Lord,
Through their sufferings have received incorruptible crowns from You, our God.
For having Your strength, they laid low their adversaries,
And shattered the powerless boldness of demons.
Through their intercessions, save our souls!

Holy Mother Paraskeuē the Younger of the Balkans

Saint Paraskeuē (Petka) of the Balkans

The fourteenth of October, in addition to being the date when we remember King Harold Godwineson of England, is the feast day of Saint Paraskeuē the Younger, one of the greatest holy Church Mothers of the Balkans, venerated throughout southeastern Europe. The centre of her cultus is in Iași, from which it spread into Russia. An incredibly pious young nun who lived her short earthly life in the eleventh century, Saint Paraskeuē has been kept near and dear especially to the hearts of Bulgarians, Serbs and Romanians for the ten centuries since.

Saint Paraskeuē [Gk. Παρασκευὴ, Bg., Srb. and Rus. Параскева, Ro. Parascheva] who is also known as Saint Friday [Bg., Srb. and Rus. Петка, Ro. Vineri – the name Παρασκευὴ in Greek actually means ‘Friday’], was born in the seaside town of Epibates (modern-day Selimpaşa in Turkey) to a wealthy landowning Greek family. Her father’s name was Nikētas; though her mother’s name is unknown to us on earth, it was owing to her wholesome influence over the young Paraskeuē that she learned to love Christ and His Church, and to follow His precepts and commandments. She also had a brother, Saint Euthymios ‘the Myrrh-Gushing’, who would go on to become a bishop in Madytos.

Young Paraskeuē went to Church and performed her prayers, and also listened very carefully to the Liturgy, to the prayers of the Church, to the homilies. At the age of ten she heard the tale in the Gospel of the rich young man, whom Christ told to go and sell all he had, and give to the poor. Once she heard the tale, Paraskeuē told her mother seriously, ‘He is speaking for me’. As soon as she left the Church, she saw a poor beggar girl in the street, ran to her, took off her own clothes and gave them to the girl, putting on her shabby beggar’s robe in her place. She did this several other times, as well as giving her food to the other children in her parish who did not have enough.

An example of her generosity, even as a little girl, was that one day she went out walking with her servant, and they came across a girl who was clothed in tatters. Saint Paraskeuē had no money on her, and so she took off the golden cross that she wore. Her servant upbraided her, saying that what she was doing was wrong, but Paraskeuē answered her: ‘The Cross teaches us mercy. How can it be wrong for me to use my cross to help this poor girl, who does not deserve such a hard life, in a society ruled by Christ?’ And just like that, she gave her cross to the girl over her servant’s objections. The girl thanked Paraskeuē with tears of gratitude. Paraskeuē thus not only showed a personal generosity, but also a preference for the rule of Heaven with its many mansions, over the unjust rule of earth which can find no room for the unfortunate.

When she grew old enough, her parents began to take thought to having her married. And, since her considerable natural beauty was fully eclipsed by her virtue and beauty of spirit, she was much sought-after, and many rich young men offered for her. She refused them all. Her parents objected, saying that she ought to be cared for, looked after and protected even after they died. But Paraskeuē answered them that Jesus cared for her, looked after her and protected her; and that they ought not to think of what would happen after their own deaths, because ‘God only knows the number of our days’. When their father died, their mother took Euthymios to a monastery in Constantinople where he learned to follow the ascetic life. But Paraskeuē remained with her mother for a time.

She was not content to stay at home, however, and she ran off without telling anyone. Her mother hunted for her high and low. But Paraskeuē undertook a barefoot pilgrimage, divested entirely of her fine clothes (which she had given to the poor), that took her to visit the holy places in Constantinople; to Chalcedon, where the Fourth Œcumenical Council was held, and where she visited the relics of Saint Euphēmia the All-Praised; and then to the Pontian Hērakleia, where she lived for five years at a church dedicated to the Most Holy Theotokos. She spent her time there in prayer and fasting and vigil, and when she slept it was on a mat laid out on the ground.

She very much desired, however, to continue her pilgrimage, and she begged Christ and His Mother in tears to allow her one day to see the Holy Places in which they had lived and reposed, which have been so important to many generations of Christians before her. Her wish was granted. A group of pilgrims came through the Pontian Hērakleia on their journey south, and they were agreeable to the idea of taking young Paraskeuē with them. They arrived in Jerusalem, and she went at once to Bethlehem, to Gethsemane, to the Holy Sepulchre. When she had prayed and meditated upon these places, she crossed the Jordan River and found a community of nuns living in the desert. She lived in the Jordanian desert until she was twenty-five years of age, fighting off the temptations of the Devil and doing war against the passions. She drank only water, and ate only what plants and herbs the desert provided. She slept on a mat under the open air and dressed only in a single tattered robe. One day as she prayed with her arms stretched towards heaven, an angel appeared to her in the form of a young man, and told her to return to her home country – for soon she would go to the Æternal Bridegroom, whom she loved more than even her mother.

She crossed the Jordan again, and returned to Constantinople. This time she visited not only the Hagia Sophia, but also the Church to the Holy Theotokos at Blachernæ. Here she stayed, and asked the Holy Virgin’s guidance and protection, just as she had protected Byzantium from the heathen. This was Saint Paraskeuē’s prayer:

My Holy Lady, all my hopes are directed towards you. Don’t reject your humble servant, accept me, the sinner. I’ve kept loving your Son and my God since childhood. You know the weakness of human nature. You are the protector of my life. You helped me in the desert and now, when I’m back in the world, I beg you to help me again. Stay beside me; give me advice and guide me until the end of my life.

Saint Paraskeuē did indeed receive the protection of the Holy Mother of God. She grew frail, and set sail from Constantinople to return home, but a storm blew up at sea. She lifted her voice in prayer to God, and although the ship was wrecked, her life was spared. She came ashore at a place called Kallikrateia, which is now Büyükçekmece on the Turkish side of Thrace, in the western suburbs of the City. She thanked God and the Blessed Virgin for her deliverance, and she made her abode at the Church of the Holy Apostles. Here she lived for two years in obscurity and solitary prayer, until she was twenty-seven years old. She reposed in the Lord here, and her body was claimed by the sea. Years passed, and the people of Kallikrateia forgot the strange young woman who had tended the verge in the Church.

But God did not forget her. One day not that long afterward, the body of a sailor was found by the shore. He stank badly, and his stench disturbed some monks who were living nearby. The monks gave a direction to the villagers of Kallikrateia to bury the body along the shore. The villagers started to dig, and they found the incorrupt remains of a young woman whose body had washed ashore in a like manner. The villagers, ignorant of what they had found, simply piled the two bodies together in the same grave, covered it up and went home.

However, a man from the village named Geōrgios, who was known for his long devotions, took a nap shortly after vigil. Saint Paraskeuē appeared to him, clad in a raiment of dazzling white. She was seated on a throne such that Geōrgios thought he was beholding a great empress, and she was accompanied by a throng of soldiers whose armour was likewise dazzling. Geōrgios fell upon his face in terror, but one of the soldiers lifted him up, saying: ‘Why have you not cared for the body of Paraskeuē? She is adored in Heaven: let her also be adored upon earth.’ The woman on the throne then related to Geōrgios her name, her birthplace and the details of her life such that she would be correctly remembered. As it turned out, the exact vision came to an observant woman of the village named Euthymia. Geōrgios and Euthymia went out the next day and told the villagers of Kallikrateia what they had heard.

Paraskeuē’s incorrupt relics were dug up and placed in a proper coffin, and translated into the Church of the Holy Apostles. The translation was accompanied by many manifestations of divine grace, many wonders as well as a sweet fragrance that permeated the air as she was borne within. In the years that followed, by the power of her prayers to Christ, the relics of Saint Paraskeuē cured many who were ill, who were crippled, or who were afflicted by devils. The Church of the Holy Apostles in Kallikrateia became a popular destination for pilgrims as well as sick and injured people – who sought, and found, respite for their ailments by Saint Paraskeuē’s powerful prayers.

Saint Paraskeuē is a fascinating saint because she truly does attest to the transnational character of Byzantine spirituality, even long after the fall of Constantinople. This is attested both in her life, having visited so many different places within the Empire itself, and in the tale of her relics after her earthly repose. Her Life was first committed to writing by a certain Deacon Basilikos in the middle of the twelfth century, on the orders of Œcumenical Patriarch Nikolaos IV Mouzalōn of Constantinople. After her relics were moved to Great Tărnovo in the Bulgarian Empire around the year 1200, they continued to work wonders and spread faith among the Bulgarian people – who loved her and considered their ‘Petka’ as one of their own. In the year 1385, Saint Evtimii of Tărnovo, Patriarch of Bulgaria, committed to writing another Life to honour Saint Paraskeuē.

When the Turks attacked Bulgaria in 1393, Saint Paraskeuē’s relics were translated to Vidin for safekeeping, but they fell into the hands of the Ottomans anyway after Bulgaria was conquered, following the battle of Nikopol in 1396. The relics were ransomed from the Ottoman Sultan Bayezid by the queen of Serbia, Saint Milica Hrebeljanović – and for a time, Saint Paraskeuē was kept in reverence by the Serbs in Belgrade, where she stayed from 1398 to 1521. During this time she continued to work wonders for the Serbs, and she became a patron of the Serbian people. When Serbia was conquered by the Ottomans that year, the Church in Constantinople was able to procure the relics and bring them into the city; in 1605 the Metropolitan of Myra in Asia Minor wrote another Life of Saint Paraskeuē in Greek. As thanks to him for repeatedly defraying the Church’s substantial debt to the Ottoman Sultans, as well as for contributing to the upkeep of the Holy Places in Jerusalem, the Œcumenical Patriarch gifted Saint Paraskeuē’s relics to the great Moldavian Orthodox voivode, Vasile ‘the Wolf’, around the year 1640. Shortly after this, in 1643, Metropolitan Varlaam of Moldavia wrote yet another Life of Saint Paraskeuē, who became the patroness of Moldavia and its people. Saint Paraskeuē’s relics remain at rest in Iași, at the Metropolitan Cathedral… though her cultus continued to spread even into the Russian Empire, which exercised sovereignty over Iași for some time.

In this way, Saint Paraskeuē became a beloved local saint in five local Orthodox Churches: the Church in Greece, the Church in Bulgaria, the Church in Serbia, the Church in Romania and the Church in Russia – particularly the Metropolis of Chișinău and All Moldova. As a girl, she knew no earthly home or homeland, being perpetually on pilgrimage. Because of her love of the poor, she is the patron of the Saint Paraskeva Orthodox Charity, which works with poor children and orphans in Romania. The society she swore homage to, was the society where all the homeless are housed, all the naked clothed and all the hungry fed: the Kingdom of Heaven. She swore fealty to only one Lord, Jesus Christ. But she did not turn her face away from her righteous rulers like Saint Milica and Vasile ‘the Wolf’. Instead she bestowed her blessings about her no matter where she was. Her ‘hereness’ was the ‘hereness’ of the Mother of God she venerated so much. Let us take from the example of Saint Paraskeuē these lessons: we are not to swear any final fealty to any earthly prince, only to Christ. But neither are we to abandon the cause of those who are poor and hungry, those who suffer from the torments and ravages of wars, famines, fires, floods and earthquakes. Thus we must always take the side of the least of these, the side of those who have nothing: just as Saint Paraskeuē always did. Holy Mother Paraskeuē, friend of the poor, everlasting pilgrim and seeker after Christ, pray unto Him who loves mankind that our souls may be saved!

Apolytikion to Saint Paraskeuē the Younger, Tone 4:

You are worthy of praise, Paraskeuē.
You loved the ascetic and hesychast life.
You ran with longing to your Bridegroom, Christ.
You accepted His good yoke in your tender years,
Marking yourself with the sign of the Cross.
You fought against impure thoughts;
Through fasting, prayer and the shedding of tears
You quenched the burning coal of the passions.
Now in the heavenly bridal chamber of Christ,
As you stand together with the wise virgins
Intercede for us who honour your precious memory.

Iași Metropolitan Cathedral, Romania