Bible and Saints
Posts in The Copybook tagged ‘Bible and Saints’
Three fishermen let their tongues run away with them, and were left counting the cost.
On August 15th each year, the Orthodox Church commemorates the Falling Asleep of the Mother of God, that is, the death of the Virgin Mary. One of the oldest churches in the world, the Panagia Ekatontapyliani on Paros, was involved in a remarkable series of events on this day in 1931.
An everyday act of charity triggered off a series of extraordinary events.
Alfred the Great ruled Wessex (roughly, southern and western England) from 871 to 899, but he had to reclaim it from Danish invaders first. The King had only a handful of loyal men to rely on, and was hiding out on a hill amid the Somerset levels, at that time a marshy lake.
Once a year, regular as clockwork, the little snakes slither into the convent for a Feast of the Virgin Mary.
Every August, on a great feast of the Virgin Mary, small snakes slither into the chapel of a tiny village on the Greek island of Kefalonia. There is a curious story behind it, going back to the days when Greece was under the Ottoman Empire, and pirates roamed unchecked among the islands.
A widow cast her precious icon into the sea rather than see it dishonoured by government agents, but that wasn’t the end of the story.
In the days of the Byzantine Emperor Theophilus (829-842), it was illegal to possess religious art depicting people. Houses were searched, and offenders saw their precious icons destroyed with dishonour.
Following an appalling atrocity in fourth-century Thessalonica, two strong and determined men refused to back down.
Theodosius I ruled the Roman Empire from 379 to 395. He was the first to adopt Christianity as the State religion, and an Orthodox believer who rejected Arianism, a heresy that Bede described as a ‘high-road of pestilence’ for every other. But Theodosius was also an absolute ruler, whose word was law, and to be a Bishop in his Imperial Church demanded a great deal of courage.