When Saint Panteleimon Talks To One of Your Students

By Vasilis Frangos

Lately I have often been talking with D. who is in his first year of High School. He tells me that he likes History very much and is looking for the lives of various heroes in Byzantium. We were talking a lot about them yesterday. Yesterday, however, he told me that he was reading the lives of Saints, such as Saint Nicholas Planas, who was celebrating, and a Neomartyr, unknown to me. We used to say that the Saints are always by our side, when we talk about them and read their lives.

At that moment he spontaneously tells me that he especially loves Saint Panteleimon. To my question why him in particular, he replied that the Saint was a doctor and he would like to become a doctor himself. But the most shocking thing I heard at the end: he told me that he once saw Saint Panteleimon himself in his dream saying to him:

A Short Film of the Life of Saint Sophrony of Essex By and For Children

A Short Film About the Life of St Sophrony of Essex

Made for the Sunday School of the 

Annunciation Greek Orthodox Church in Manchester

St Sophrony was born in Moscow in 1896. He had a big family with many siblings. He loved painting from a very young age. He started painting before he could say mum and dad. As a boy, he was watching his parents praying.

His nanny was taking him to the church. There, she spent hours praying while he sat next to her. This is how he started praying since he was a child. Prayer was a natural part of his life.

As he was growing up, his love for painting was growing too. He studied fine arts and began a career as an artist. During this period, he started having doubts about God and he tried to find the truth in other eastern religions. The warm prayers of his mother and nanny helped him return to Orthodoxy. He repented deeply for this period of turning away from God in all his life.

Little Kyriaki Tells the Story of Saint Kyriaki

Saint Basil and our Spiritual Roots

By Protopresbyter Vasilios Kalliakmanis

Whenever there’s mention of Saint Basil, we always highlight his studies in Athens, his ascetic life in Pontus, his lack of possessions, his contributions to society, and his literary oeuvre. It’s certainly true that the author of that outstanding theological text, the Divine Liturgy, distinguished himself as a diligent student, charismatic ascetic, selfless social worker and consummate writer.

What may not be so widely known is that, apart from that of his parents, an important role in the upbringing of the leading ecumenical teacher was played by his grandmother. Recalling his grandmother, Saint Basil the Great says: "Macrina the famous, through whom we were taught the words of the most blessed Gregory." Grandmother Macrina transfused the spirit of life into her grandchildren. She passed on the experience which she had drawn from Saint Gregory the Wonderworker of New Caesarea.

Saint Marina As A Role Model For Young Women

Saint Marina the Great Martyr (Feast Day - July 17)

Marina was born in Southern Anatolia, specifically from Pisidia in Antioch, at the end of the third century during the reign of Claudius II (268-270). She was the only daughter of noble pagan parents.

When she was five years old her mother died (some sources say she died shortly after childbirth), and since her father, Aidesios, was too busy carrying out his duties as a pagan priest to care for her properly, he turned her care over to a woman who happened to be a Christian.

This nanny lived in a small town about fifteen miles from where Marina was born. Away from her father’s idols and blasphemous practices her nanny taught her about the Christian Faith. As Marina increased in age, more so did she advance in knowledge, understanding, and compassion. Her faith in the Living God was so great that she desired the difficult path of Martyrdom. She told her father that she wished to become a Christian and to never marry so as to live a life of virginity. Her father despised her for her faith and disowned her as his daughter.