CATECHESIS & DAILY INSPIRATION
THE VENERABLE ATHANASIUS OF MOUNT ATHOS (1003)
Reflections and Daily Inspiration
“Have no anxiety about anything, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God.”

— St. Paul
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The Hagia Sophia - an Uninterrupted Liturgy for the Whole World
by Bishop Maxim 2020
APPEAL TO TURKEY

Serbian Patriarch Irinej , Head of the Holy Synod of Bishops

There is hardly anyone in civilized world not knowing of Hagia Sophia, a magnificent and unique church, at a time the most important church of the entire Christian world, both in the East and in the West. It is also generally known that Hagia Sophia was the Christian church for more than nine centuries and the mosque for more than five centuries. Due to its architecture and fresco painting it is one of the most important cultural monuments and monuments of mankind’s spiritual heritage, protected by UNESCO. If an unknown Muslim poet could write on the Church of the Mother of God of Ljeviša in Prizren (Serbia) that pupil of his eye is the nest to her beauty, whose eye and what kind of sophisticated artistic feeling could express the unparalleled beauty of Hagia Sophia?

SAINT OF THE DAY

 JULY 18 / JULY 5
The Venerable Athanasius of Mount Athos (1003) and his six disciples

Athanasius was born in Trebizond of God-fearing parents. He was orphaned at an early age, but by the providence of God a military officer took him under his care and brought him to Constantinople to be educated. Because of his meekness and humbleness, he was the favorite of his peers. During their games, the children chose one to be an emperor, another a commander—and Athanasius an abbot, as though it were a prophecy! Having completed his education, Athanasius (who before tonsure was called Abraham) withdrew into the desert of Maleinos near the Holy Mountain, where he lived the life of an ascetic, as a disciple of the then renowned Michael Maleinos. Desiring a more difficult life of asceticism, Athanasius moved to Mount Athos, to live in silence. But many that were desirous of a life of asceticism began to gather around him, and he was compelled to build his famous Lavra. He was assisted in this by the Byzantine emperors, first by Nicephorus Phocas, who himself intended to withdraw and become a monk, and then by John Tzimiskes.
Countless temptations befell Athanasius, both from demons and from men—but he, as a brave soldier of Christ, resisted and conquered them all, by his immeasurable meek- ness and continual prayer to the Living God. Filled with the grace of God, Athanasius was found worthy to see the All-holy Theotokos, who miraculously brought forth water from a rock and promised that she would always be the Abbess of the monastery. In work and in prayer, Athanasius surpassed his brethren, and he loved all with the love of a spiritual father and shepherd. Death came to Athanasius unexpectedly. He and six other monks had climbed up onto a newly built vestibule of the church to inspect a wall that was being constructed, and the wall caved in on them and buried them. Thus died this great beacon of monasticism, in the year 1003. Many times following his death Athanasius appeared to his brethren—sometimes to comfort them, and some- times to reprimand them.