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The Saint, the Priest, and Face-tattoos
By Fr Photios Parks Some years back, there was a point in my life when I didn’t give a second thought to the Saints. I really didn’t see how they had any place within my faith. In Bible College and in Protestant seminary, I was fed the idea that saints were either a type of good luck charm to sell my house, a statue in your yard to attract birds, or they were individuals likened to magicians whose bones were exploited in medieval times. Fortunately, I had a life-changing experience that dispelled my incorrect notions about Saints and changed my whole paradigm in the way I view these holy servants.…
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José Muñoz-Cortez: Chosen of the Mother of God
The Russian Orthodox Church Abroad was making preparations to celebrate the 15th anniversary of the Myrrh-streaming Iveron Icon of the Mother of God, when it was shaken by the news of the tragic death of the icon’s guardian, Brother Joseph (José) Muñoz- Cortes. He was brutally murdered on the night of October 31 in a hotel room in Athens. Brother Joseph was born in Chile in 1950, into a pious Roman Catholic family of Spanish descent. He was a boy of twelve or thirteen when, passing by the Russian Orthodox church in Santiago, he was attracted by the sound of singing and went in. There he became acquainted with Archbishop…
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Martyr Yevgeny Rodionov
Martyr Yevgeny When he was 11 years old, Yevgeny Rodionov received from his grandmother a little cross on a chain. He wanted to wear it to school, but his mother, a devout atheist, warned him against it, since the communist authorities frowned on such things. Yevgeny wore it anyway and refused to ever take it off. When Yevgeny grew, up he enlisted as a soldier in the Russian army. When he was 19, he was violently taken hostage by Muslim Chechen rebels. They kept him hanging by his wrists in a basement. He was left days without food and was severely beaten. He did not take off his cross even…
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St. Juvenaly – First Martyr of America
The holy, glorious, right-victorious hieromartyr Juvenaly of Alaska, Protomartyr of America, was a member of the first group of Orthodox missionaries who came from the monastery of Valaam to preach the Word of God to the native inhabitants of Alaska. He was martyred while evangelizing among the Eskimos on the mainland of Alaska in 1796. His feast day is celebrated on July 2, and he is also commemorated with all the saints of Alaska (September 24), and with the first martyrs of the American land (December 12). He was born in 1761 in Ekaterinburg, Russia, and was named Jacob Govouchkin. In his monastic life he was tonsured and given the…
