www.byzcath.org Forums Faith & Christian Life The Christian East & West Saints and feast days

I meant "I'm not sure about other countries".
Of course, he is widely venerated in the Coptic Church.


Martyrdom of St. Mina (Menas) the Wonder Worker [stmina-monastery.org]

Beyond the Coptic Orthodox Church [stmina-monastery.org]

St. Mina: Blessed With the Gift of Healing [stmina-monastery.org]

I just received this interesting wealth of information about St. George from a former poster named Dr. Alex Roman, and with his permission I am sharing it:

"The icon of St George slaying the dragon represents him putting down the emperor Diocletian who was determined to exterminate every single last Christian in the Roman empire. The virgin that stands by watching him (and which he is protecting from the dragon) is the Church of Christ. The Greek missionaries very wisely substituted this depiction of St George for that of pagan “protector” deities in places like Ethiopia where St George is venerated only next after the Theotokos herself.

In fact, Georgia in the Caucasus is named for him and there are so very many churches and shrines to St George throughout that country that St George is commemorated liturgically EVERY DAY there, somewhere, 365 days a year! There are also miraculous icons of St George on Mt Athos (five popular ones) and throughout Greece, Ukraine and Russia.

In East Slavic lands, the agricultural year begins in April with the feast of St George (May 6th on the old calendar) and ends on November 23rd, the day of the consecration of the Cathedral of St George in Kyiv (built by St Yaroslav the Wise in honour of St George whose name he took in Baptism).

Also, there are three Saints whose birthdays we celebrate liturgically – The Theotokos, St John the Baptist and . . . St Nicholas. The actual date of the liturgical celebration of his birthday was . . . yesterday on the old calendar! According to his Akathist, God sanctified him in his mother’s womb."

Lutherans remember Martin Luther, Doctor and Confessor both on the day of his Baptism (St. Martin's Day, November 11) and the day of his departure, February 18.

Article XXI of the Confession of Augsburg (a Lutheran confessional document) declares "It is also taught among us that the saints should be kept in remembrance so that our faith may be strengthened when we see what grace they received and how they were sustained by faith"

My understanding is that when Saints have been dropped from the calendar of the Roman Church, it hasn't been so much their sainthood as their earthly existence that has been in question. I.e., the Church has reservations about veneration of those it can't be sure had actual earthly lives . . .

St. Christopher was one of these, but now the question seems to be *which* saint is widely known as St. Christopher (scholars think they've identified him). . . and as I type this, this sure sounds like a western rather than eastern concern.

hawk

A liturgical calendar is not a list of all saints, but only of those who are venerated in a particular place or liturgical tradition. A martyrology, on the other hand, may attempt to list all known saints.

The General Roman Calendar only contains a very small number of all the saints mentioned in the Roman Martyrology. Saints who are not listed in the General Roman Calendar may still be found in local calendars and may be venerated locally.

St. Christopher was added to the General Roman Calendar only around 1550, and then removed in 1970. Neither event says anything about his status as a saint. He is still included in the Roman Martyrology.

If you have a Roman Catholic church dedicated to St. Christopher, that church would still celebrate its patron saint with a solemn feast on July 25 (or more likely on the last Sunday of July).

Well, there are plenty of unknown saints whose earthly existence was very real, so I like to think that these take on the petitions addressed to canonical saints whose existence is essentially legendary (there are a lot more than just Saint Christopher)--a kind of heavenly dead letter box. Since prayers addressed to these putatively "mythical" saints have often proven efficacious, my explanation is as good as any.

The matter of periodically cleaning up the Roman Rite calendar so too many saints' days don't interfere with the liturgical cycle is often misunderstood, made worse by the fact that the last big cleanup was in 1969 when there was a lot of heresy and iconoclasm going on in practice in the Roman Church.

Although proof of their existence often seemed a criterion for keeping a saint on the universal calendar of the rite, dropping one for lack of that proof or any other reason didn't 'de-saint' them.

Those saints' days are kept as options to be celebrated locally.