Posts Tagged ‘life’

Saint Emilianos (Emilian) of Dorostorum (Silistra) ancient saint venerated in Bulgarian Orthodox Church

Saturday, August 5th, 2023

saint_Emilian-Dorostolski-Dorostorum-780x470-orthodox-icon

Saint Emilian / Emilianos Dorostolski is a martyr revered with a feast day by the Bulgarian Orthodox Church.

According to his biography, he was born in Durostorum (now Silistra Bulgaria), where he spent his life as a servant (or slave) to the mayor.
He lived in the time of Emperor Julian (the apostate).

Emperor Julian sent a new governor to Dorostol charged with the task of eradicating Christianity from the city.

Frightened by his fame as a very cruel ruler, the local inhabitants hide from him that there are Christians among them and declare that they all worship the pagan gods.
Satisfied, he gives a feast to the citizens, but for the zealous Christian Aemilianus (Emilianos), the boasting of the pagan governor is unbearable, and during the feast he smashes the statues of the pagan gods in the sanctuary with a hammer.

An innocent person is accused of the crime, but knowing this, Emilian appears before the governor and confesses his guilt.

The city was fined for harboring Christians, and Aemilianus himself, after torture, was burned at the stake by the Danube[1] (river) on July 18, 362; this date is today the day of his veneration by the church[2].

It is assumed that the life of Saint Emilian was written immediately after the saint's death – the end of the 4th and the beginning of the 5th century. Its earliest variants are generally two.

The first is based on the so-called Codex Vaticanus 866 (published by Boschius in 1868), and the second is based on the so-called Codex Parisiensis of the 9th century (published by François Halkin). Although the Codex Parisiensis largely repeats the Codex Vaticanus, there is a difference between the two lives in both the date of Aemilian's martyrdom and the location of his obituary. According to the first, Emilian was burned at the stake on September 3 in Gedina (localized near the present-day village of Golesh), and according to the second, it happened on July 18 in Gezedina, right next to Durostorum (fortress).

Information about Saint Emilian can also be found in blessed Jerome, and saint Ambrose (Ambrosius) of Milan, Theophanes the Confessor and Nicephorus Callistus.
In the Church-Slavic hagiography, the life enters mainly from its later copies in the Paschal Chronicle (Chronicon Paschalae), the Synaxarium (Church book with the service text dedicated to the sant) of the Constantinople Patriarchate (Synaxarium Constantinopolitanum) and the Monthly Message of Emperor Basil II (Menologium Basilii (Basilius) II).

A major difference between the early lives and their later editions is Aemilian's social status.

According to the late Church Slavonic redactions, he was a slave / servant of the mayor of Durostorum (today city of Silistra Bulgaria), while according to the earlier ones he himself was of noble birth – his father Sevastian was the governor of the city – and was a soldier (presumably from the XI Claudius Legion)[3].

 

Sources

 1. Georgi Atanasov, 345 early Christian saints-martyrs from the Bulgarian lands I – IV centuries / Publisher: Unicart ISBN: 9789542953012 / page 11
  2. Lives of the Saints. Synodal publishing house. Sofia, 1991. pp. 337-338.
  3. St. Emilian Dorostolski: My name is Christian

Other Research sources

  • Constantinesco, R. Les martyrs de Durostorum. – Revue des Etudes Sud-Est Europeennes, 5, 1967, No. 1 – 2, 14 – 19.
  • G. Atanasov. St. Emilian Dorostolsky († 362) – the last early Christian martyr in Mysia. – In: Civitas divino-humana in honor of Professor Georgi Bakalov. S. 2004, 203 – 218.
  • Ivanova, R., G. Atanasov, P. Donevski. History of Silistra. T. 1. The ancient Durostorum. Silistra-S., 2006.
  • Atanasov, G. The Christian Durostorum-Druster. Varna, 2007.

Install btop on Debian Linux, btop an advanced htop like monitoring for Linux to beautify your console life

Tuesday, May 30th, 2023

btop-linux-monitoring-tool-screenshot-help-menu

I've accidently stubmled on btop a colorful and interactive ncurses like command line utility to provide you a bunch of information about CPU / memory / disks and processes with nice console graphic in the style of Cubic Player 🙂
Those who love htop and like their consoles to be full of shiny colors, will really appreciate those nice Linux monitoring tool.
To install btop on latest current stable Debian bullseyes, you will have to install it via backports, as the regular Debian repositories does not have the tool available out of the box.

To Add backports packages support for your Debian 11:

1. Edit /etc/apt/sources.list and include following repositories

 

# vim /etc/apt/sources.list

deb http://deb.debian.org/debian bullseye-backports main contrib non-free
deb-src http://deb.debian.org/debian bullseye-backports main contrib non-free


2. Update the known repos list to include it

 

# apt update


3. Install the btop deb package from backports

 

# apt-cache show btop|grep -A 20 -i descrip
Description-en: Modern and colorful command line resource monitor that shows usage and stats
 btop is a modern and colorful command line resource monitor that shows
 usage and stats for processor, memory, disks, network and processes.
 btop features:
  – Easy to use, with a game inspired menu system.
  – Full mouse support, all buttons with a highlighted key is clickable
  and mouse scroll works in process list and menu boxes.
  – Fast and responsive UI with UP, DOWN keys process selection.
  – Function for showing detailed stats for selected process.
  – Ability to filter processes.
  – Easy switching between sorting options.
  – Tree view of processes.
  – Send any signal to selected process.
  – UI menu for changing all config file options.
  – Auto scaling graph for network usage.
  – Shows IO activity and speeds for disks
  – Battery meter
  – Selectable symbols for the graphs
  – Custom presets
  – And more…
  btop is written in C++ and is continuation of bashtop and bpytop.
Description-md5: 73df6c70fe01f5bf05cca0e3031c1fe2
Multi-Arch: foreign
Homepage: https://github.com/aristocratos/btop
Section: utils
Priority: optional
Filename: pool/main/b/btop/btop_1.2.7-1~bpo11+1_amd64.deb
Size: 431500
SHA256: d79e35c420a2ac5dd88ee96305e1ea7997166d365bd2f30e14ef57b556aecb36


 

# apt install -t bullsye-backports btop –yes

Once I installed it, I can straight use it except on some of my Linux machines, which were having a strange encoding $LANG defined, those ones spitted some errors like:

root@freak:~# btop
ERROR: No UTF-8 locale detected!
Use –utf-force argument to force start if you're sure your terminal can handle it.

 


To work around it simply redefine LANG variable and rerun it
 

# export LANG=en_US.UTF8

# btop

 

btop-linux-monitoring-console-beautiful-colorful-tool-graphics-screenshot

btop-linux-monitoring-tool-screenshot-help-menu

Linux extending life time for a damaged hard drive server tricks on a live server. Force fcsk on next reboot.Read-only file system error solutions

Friday, February 17th, 2023

linux-extending-life-time-for-a-damaged-hard-drive-server-tricks-can-not-read-superblock-linux-force-fsck-on-next-reboot

In our daily work as system administrators we have some very old Legacy systems running Clustered High Availability proxies using CRM (Cluster Resource Manager) and some legacy systems still using Heartbeat to manage the cluster instead of the newer and modern Corosync variant.

The HA cluster is only 2 nodes Linux machine and running the obscure already long time unsupported version of Redhat 5.11 (Ootpa) who was officially became stable distant year 1998 (yeath the years were good) and whose EOL (End of Life) has been reached long time ago and the OS is no longer supported, however for about 14 years the machines has been running perfectly fine until one of the Cluster nodes managed by ocf::heartbeat:IPAddr2 , that is  /etc/ha.d/resource.d/IPAddr2 shell script. Yeah for the newbies Heartbeat Application Cluster in Linux does work like that it uses a number of extendable pair of shell scripts written for different kind of Network / Web / Mail / SQL or whatever services HA management.

The first node configured however, started failing due to some errors like:
 

EXT3-fs error (device dm-1): ext3_journal_start_sb: Detected aborted journal
sd 0:2:0:0: rejecting I/O to offline device
Aborting journal on device sda1.
sd 0:2:0:0: rejecting I/O to offline device
printk: 159 messages suppressed.
Buffer I/O error on device sda1, logical block 526
lost page write due to I/O error on sda1
sd 0:2:0:0: rejecting I/O to offline device
sd 0:2:0:0: rejecting I/O to offline device
ext3_abort called.
EXT3-fs error (device sda1): ext3_journal_start_sb: Detected aborted journal
Remounting filesystem read-only
sd 0:2:0:0: rejecting I/O to offline device
sd 0:2:0:0: rejecting I/O to offline device
sd 0:2:0:0: rejecting I/O to offline device
sd 0:2:0:0: rejecting I/O to offline device
sd 0:2:0:0: rejecting I/O to offline device
megaraid_sas: FW was restarted successfully, initiating next stage…
megaraid_sas: HBA recovery state machine, state 2 starting…
megasas: Waiting for FW to come to ready state
megasas: FW in FAULT state!!
FW state [-268435456] hasn't changed in 180 secs
megaraid_sas: out: controller is not in ready state
megasas: waiting_for_outstanding: after issue OCR. 
megasas: waiting_for_outstanding: before issue OCR. FW state = f0000000
megaraid_sas: pending commands remain even after reset handling. megasas[0]: Dumping Frame Phys Address of all pending cmds in FW
megasas[0]: Total OS Pending cmds : 0 megasas[0]: 64 bit SGLs were sent to FW
megasas[0]: Pending OS cmds in FW :

The result out of that was a frequently the filesystem of the machine got re-mounted as Read Only and of course that is
quite bad if you have a running processess of haproxy that should be able to be living their and take up some Web traffic
for high availability and you run all the traffic only on the 2nd pair of machine.

This of course was a clear sign for a failing disks or some hit bad blocks regions or as the messages indicates, some
problem with system hardware or Raid SAS Array.

The physical raid on the system, just like rest of the hardware is very old stuff as well.

[root@haproxy_lb_node1 ~]# lspci |grep -i RAI
01:00.0 RAID bus controller: LSI Logic / Symbios Logic MegaRAID SAS 2108 [Liberator] (rev 05)

The produced errors not only made the machine to auto-mount its root / filesystem in Read-Only mode but besides has most
likely made the machine to automatically reboot every few days or few times every day in a raw.

The second Load Balancer node2 did operated perfectly, and we thought that we might just keep the broken machine in that half running
and inconsistent state for few weeks until we have built the new machines with Pre-Installed new haproxy cluster with modern
RedHat Linux 8.6 distribution, but since we have to follow SLAs (Service Line Agreements) with Customers and the end services behind the
High Availability (HA) Haproxy cluster were at danger … 

We as sysadmins had the task to make our best to try to stabilize the unstable node with disk errors for the system to servive
and be able to normally serve traffic (if node2 that is in a separate Data center fails due to a hardware or electricity issues etc.)
.

Here is few steps we took, that has hopefully improved the situation.

1. Make backups of most important files of high importance

Always before doing anything with a broken system, prepare backup of the most important files, if that is a cluster that should be a backup of the cluster configurations (if you don't have already ones) backup of /etc/hosts / backup of any important services configs /etc/haproxy/haproxy.cfg /etc/postfix/postfix.cfg (like it was my case), preferrably backup of whole /etc/  any important files from /root/ or /home/users* directories backup of at leasts latest logs from /var/log etc.
 

2. Clear up all unnecessery services scripts from the server

Any additional Softwares / Services and integrity checking tools (daemons) / scripts and cron jobs, were immediately stopped and wheter unused removed.

E.g. we had moved through /etc/cron* to check what's there,

# ls -ld /etc/cron.*
drwx—— 2 root root 4096 Feb  7 18:13 /etc/cron.d
drwxr-xr-x 2 root root 4096 Feb  7 17:59 /etc/cron.daily
-rw-r–r– 1 root root    0 Jul 20  2010 /etc/cron.deny
drwxr-xr-x 2 root root 4096 Jan  9  2013 /etc/cron.hourly
drwxr-xr-x 2 root root 4096 Jan  9  2013 /etc/cron.monthly
drwxr-xr-x 2 root root 4096 Aug 26  2015 /etc/cron.weekly

 

And like well professional butchers removed everything unnecessery that could trigger any extra unnecessery disk read / writes to HDD.

E.g. just create

# mkdir -p /root/etc_old/{/etc/cron.d,\
/etc/cron.daily,/etc/cron.hourly,/etc/cron.monthly\
,/etc/cron.weekly}

 

And moved all unnecessery cron job scripts like:

1. nmon (old school network / memory / hard disk console tool for monitoring and tuning server parameters)
2. clamscan / freshclam crons
3. mlocate (the script that is taking care for periodic run of updatedb command to keep the locate command to easily search
for files inside the DB to put less read operations on disk in case if you need to find file (e.g. prevent yourself to everytime
run cmd like: find / . -iname '*whatever_you_look_for*'
4. cups cron jobs
5. logwatch cron
6. rkhunter stuff
7. logrotate (yes we stopped even logrotation trigger job as we found the server was crashing sometimes at the same time when
the lograte job to rotate logs inside /var/log/* was running perhaps leading to a hit of the I/O read error (bad blocks).


Also inspected the Administrator user root cron job for any unwated scripts and stopped two report bash scripts that were part of the PCI tightened Security procedures.
Therein found script responsible to periodically report the list of installed packages and if they have not changed, as well a script to periodically report via email the list of
/etc/{passwd,/etc/shadow} created users, used to historically keep an eye on the list of users and easily see if someone
has created new users on the machine. Those were enabled via /var/spool/cron/root cron jobs, in other cases, on other machines if it happens for you
it is a good idea to check out all the existing user cron jobs and stop anything that might be putting Read / Write extra heat pressure on machine attached the Hard drives.

# ls -al /var/spool/cron/
total 20
drwx——  2 root root 4096 Nov 13  2015 .
drwxr-xr-x 12 root root 4096 May 11  2011 ..
-rw——-  1 root root  133 Nov 13  2015 root


3. Clear up old log files and any files unnecessery

Under /var/log and /home /var/tmp /var/spool/tmp immediately try to clear up the old log files.
From my past experience this has many times made the FS file inodes that are storing on a unbroken part (good blocks) of the hard drive and
ready to be reused by newly written rsyslog / syslogd services spitted files.

!!! Note that during the removal of some files you might hit a files stored on a bad blocks that might lead to a unexpected system reboot.

But that's okay, don't worry most likely after a hard reset by a technician in the Datacenter the machine will boot again and you can enjoy
removing remaining still files to send them to the heaven for old files.

 

4. Trigger an automatic system file system check with fsck on next boot

The standard way to force a Linux to aumatically recheck its Root filesystem is to simply create the /forcefsck to root partition or any other secondary disk partition you would like to check.

# touch /forcefsck

# reboot


However at some occasions you might be unable to do it because, the / (root fs) has been remounted in ReadOnly mode, yackes …

Luckily old Linux distibutions like this RHEL 5.1, has a way to force a filesystem check after reboot fsck and identify any
unknown bad-blocks and hopefully succceed in isolating them, so you don't hit into the same auto-reboots if the hard drive or Software / Hardware RAID
is not in terrible state
, you can use an option built in in /sbin/shutdown command the '-F'

   -F     Force fsck on reboot.


Hence to make the machine reboot and trigger immediately fsck:

# shutdown -rF now


Just In case you wonder why to reboot before check the Filesystem. Well simply because you need to have them unmounted before you check.

In that specific case this produced so far a good result and the machine booted just fine and we crossed the fingers and prayed that the machine would work flawlessly in the coming few weeks, before we finalize the configuration of the substitute machines, where this old infrastructure will be migrated to a new built cluster with new Haproxy and Corosync / Pacemaker Cluster on a brand new RHEL.

NB! On newer machines this won't work however as shutdown command has been stripped off this option because no SystemV (SystemInit) or Upstart and not on SystemD newer services architecture.
 

5. Hints on checking the hard drives with fsck

If you happen to be able to have physical access to the remote Hardare machine via a TTY[1-9] Console, that's even better and is the standard way to do it but with this specific case we had no easy way to get access to the Physical server console.

It is even better to go there and via either via connected Monitor (Display) or KVM Switch (Those who hear KVM switch first time this is a great device in server rooms to connect multiple monitors to same Monitor Display), it is better to use a some of the multitude of options to choose from for USB Distro Linux recovery OS versions or a CDROM / DVD on older machines like this with the Redhat's recovery mode rolled on.
After mounting the partition simply check each of the disks
e.g. :

# fsck -y /dev/sdb
# fsck -y /dev/sdc

Or if you want to not waste time and look for each hard drive but directly check all the ones that are attached and known by Linux distro via /etc/fstab definition run:

# fsck -AR

If necessery and you have a mixture of filesystems for example EXT3 , EXT4 , REISERFS you can tell it to omit some filesystem, for example ext3, like that:

# fsck -AR -t noext3 -y


To skip fsck on mounted partitions with fsck:

# fsck -M /dev/sdb


One remark to make here on fsck is usually fsck to complete its job on various filesystem it uses other external component binaries usually stored in /sbin/fsck*

ls -al /sbin/fsck*
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root  55576 20 яну 2022 /sbin/fsck*
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root  43272 20 яну 2022 /sbin/fsck.cramfs*
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root      9  4 юли 2020 /sbin/fsck.exfat -> exfatfsck*
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root      6  7 юни 2021 /sbin/fsck.ext2 -> e2fsck*
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root      6  7 юни 2021 /sbin/fsck.ext3 -> e2fsck*
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root      6  7 юни 2021 /sbin/fsck.ext4 -> e2fsck*
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root  84208  8 фев 2021 /sbin/fsck.fat*
-rwxr-xr-x 2 root root 393040 30 ное 2009 /sbin/fsck.jfs*
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 125184 20 яну 2022 /sbin/fsck.minix*
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root      8  8 фев 2021 /sbin/fsck.msdos -> fsck.fat*
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root    333 16 дек 2021 /sbin/fsck.nfs*
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root      8  8 фев 2021 /sbin/fsck.vfat -> fsck.fat*


6. Using tune2fs to  adjust tunable filesystem parameters on ext2/ext3/ext4 filesystems (few examples)

a) To check whether really the filesystem was checked on boot time or check a random filesystem on the server for its last check up date with fsck:

#  tune2fs -l /dev/sda1 | grep checked
Last checked:             Wed Apr 17 11:04:44 2019

On some distributions like old Debian and Ubuntu, it is even possible to enable fsck to log its operations during check on reboot via changing the verbosity from NO to YES:

# sed -i "s/#VERBOSE=no/VERBOSE=yes/" /etc/default/rcS


If you're having the issues on old Debian Linuxes  and not on RHEL  it is possible to;

b) Enable all fsck repairs automatic on boot

by running via:
 

# sed -i "s/FSCKFIX=no/FSCKFIX=yes/" /etc/default/rcS


c) Forcing fcsk check on for server attached Hard Drive Partitions with tune2fs

# tune2fs -c 1 /dev/sdXY

Note that:
tune2fs can force a fsck on each reboot for EXT4, EXT3 and EXT2 filesystems only.

tune2fs can trigger a forced fsck on every reboot using the -c (max-mount-counts) option.
This option sets the number of mounts after which the filesystem will be checked, so setting it to 1 will run fsck each time the computer boots.
Setting it to -1 or 0 resets this (the number of times the filesystem is mounted will be disregarded by e2fsck and the kernel).


 For example you could:

d) Set fsck to run a filesystem check every 30 boots, by using -c 30 
 

# tune2fs -c 30 /dev/sdXY


e) Checking whether a Hard Drive has been really checked on the boot

 

#  tune2fs -l /dev/sda1 | grep checked
Last checked:             Wed Apr 17 11:04:44 2019


e) Check when was the last time the file system /dev/sdX was checked:
 

# tune2fs -l /dev/sdX | grep Last\ c
Last checked:             Thu Jan 12 20:28:34 2017


f) Check how many times our /dev/sdX filesystem was mounted

# tune2fs -l /dev/sdX | grep Mount
Mount count:              157

g) Check how many mounts are allowed to pass before filesystem check is forced
 

# tune2fs -l /dev/sdX | grep Max
Maximum mount count:      -1


7. Repairing disk / partitions via GRUB fsck.mode and fsck.repair kernel module options

It is also possible to force a fsck.repair on boot via GRUB, but that usually is not an option someone would like as the machine might fail too boot if it hards to repair hardly, however in difficult situations with failing disks temporary enabling it is good idea.

This can be done by including for grub initial config

GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT="quiet splash fsck.mode=force fsck.repair=yes"

fsck.mode=force – will force a fsck each time a system boot and keeping that value enabled for a long time inside GRUB is stupid for servers as

sometimes booting could be severely prolonged because of the checks especially with servers with many or slow old hard drives.

fsck.repair=yes – will make the fsck try to repair if it finds bad blocks when checking (be absolutely sure you know, what you're doing if passing this options)

The options can be also set via editing the GRUB boot screen, if you have physical access to the server and don't want to reload the grub loader and possibly make the machine unbootable on next boot.
 

8. Few more details on how /etc/fstab disk fsck check parameters values for Systemd Linux machines works

The "proper" way on systemd (if we can talk about proper way on Linux) to runs fsck for each filesystem that has a fsck is to pass number greater than 0 set in
/etc/fstab (last column in /etc/fstab), so make sure you edit your /etc/fstab if that's not the case.

The root partition should be set to 1 (first to be checked), while other partitions you want to be checked should be set to 2.

Example /etc/fstab:
 

# /etc/fstab: static file system information.

/dev/sda1  /      ext4  errors=remount-ro  0  1
/dev/sda5  /home  ext4  defaults           0  2

The values you can put here as a second number meaning is as follows:
0 – disabled, that is do not check filesystem
1 – partition with this PASS value has a higher priority and is checked first. This value is usually set to the root / partition
2 – partitions with this PASS value will be checked last

a) Check the produced log out of fsck

Unfortunately on the older versions of Linux distros with SystemV fsck log output might be not generated except on the physical console so if you have a kind of duplicator device physical tty on the display port of the server, you might capture some bad block reports or fixed errors messages, but if you don't you might just cross the fingers and hope that anything found FS irregularities was recovered.

On systemd Linux machines the fsck log should be produced either in /run/initramfs/fsck.log or some other location depending on the Linux distro and you should be able to see something from fsck inside /var/log/* logs:

# grep -rli fsck /var/log/*


Close it up

Having a system with failing disk is a really one of the worst sysadmin nightmares to get. The good news is that most of the cases we're prepared with some working backup or some work around stuff like the few steps explained to mitigate the amount of Read / Writes to hard disks on the failing machine HDDs. If the failing disk is a primary Linux filesystem all becomes even worse as every next reboot, you have no guarantee, whether the kernel / initrd or some of the other system components required to run the Core Linux system won't break up the normal boot. Thus one side changes on the hard drives is a risky business on ther other side, if you're in a situation where you have a mirror system or the failing system is just a Linux server installed without a Cluster pair, then this is not a big deal as you can guarantee at least one of the nodes still up, unning and serving. Still doing too much of operations with HDD is always a danger so the steps described, though in most cases leading to improvement on how the system behaves, the system should be considered totally unreliable and closely monitored not only by some monitoring stuff like Zabbix / Prometheus whatever but regularly check the systems state via normal SSH logins. It is important if you have some important datas or logs on the system that are not synchronized to a system node to copy them before doing any of the described operations. After all minimal is backuped, proceed to clear up everything that might be cleared up and still the machine to continue providing most of its functionalities, trigger fsck automatic HDD check on next reboot, reboot, check what is going on and monitor the machine from there on.

Hopefully the few described steps, has helped some sysadmin. There is plenty of things which I've described that might go wrong, even following the described steps, might not help if the machines Storage Drives / SAS / SSD has too much of a damage. But as said in most cases following this few steps would improve the machine state.

Wish you the best of luck!

 

The Great Epiphany, appearance of God to Men and Manifestation of the Son of God by the Baptism in River Jordan. A short biography and history of the feast and its meaning

Friday, January 6th, 2023

Epiphany-Theophany-Bogojavlenie-icon-from-miniature-of-Tomichov_psaltir_16-century

Epiphany (Богоявление) icon minituature of Tomichev Psaltir (year circa 1380)

"And behold, the heavens were opened to Him, and He saw the Spirit of God descending like a dove and alighting on Him. And behold, a voice from heaven, which said: This is My beloved Son, in Whom I am well pleased." (Matt. 3:16-17)

Bogoyavlenie-Epiphany-the-Baptism-of-Christ-by-John-the-Forerunner

The Baptism of Christ Ravenna Basillica – Mosaic V century

There is clear evidence of the celebration of this most ancient feast of the Lord as early as the 2nd century, but by the 4th century it was combined with the Nativity of Christ.
The common holiday for both events was called “Epiphany”, because at His baptism in the waters of the Jordan, Jesus Christ appeared to the world for public service and his hypostasis as Son of God has been manifested by the Descendent of the Holy Spirit in the form of a Pure Dove.
Through His birth He appeared to the world in the flesh. In ancient times the celebration of Epiphany (Theophany) and Nativity (Christmas) according to many liturgists has been celebrated on a single date by the whole Worldly Church both in East in West, North and South.

The term Theophany was less used though as Theophany is distinguished by the word Epiphany as (Theophany) has been a word used to also mark celebrated by Greek paganistic false believes, whether Epiphany has a meaning of the Christian meaning of God’s revealing himself for the world by the Baptism of the Lord Jesus Christ Son of God.

Later, the Church for different reasons the decided to celebrate the two events separately – on December 25 the Nativity of Christ, and on January 6 – the Epiphany.

01.06_Epiphany-Theophany-Krashtenie-1290-Panselinos-Protata

Theophany (One of the best considered iconographers Panselinos Protata circa year 1290)

There are too few details about the earthly life of the Lord Jesus Christ before His baptism, which we can find in the pages of the Gospel narratives as God decided to keep his aspect of his earthly presence in the flesh a secret to be only revealed in the Life in Heaven, where those chosen and sanctified by his All Filling Grace through the mysterious of the Church and all those will receive salvation will see and understand why this was hidden by us while being in the flesh .

The Saviour, Who truly strove

“And Jesus answering said unto him,Suffer it to be so now: for thus it becometh us to fulfil all righteousness. Then he suffered him” (Matt. 3:15),

waited until he had reached the age of 30, required by Jewish custom for every priest or teacher, and before going out to preach publicly, he accepted the baptism of His Forerunner saint John the Baptist whose feast day is on 7th of January just a day after the day of Epiphany.

Shortly before that, John the Baptist, the son of priest Zacharias and Elizabeth, had begun his penitential preaching at God's command

Epiphany-Baptism-of-Christ-Daphni-mosaic-XI-century

Baptismal of Christ Daphni XI century mosaic

These things were done in Bethabara beyond Jordan, where John was baptizing.” (John 1:28). John was the Angel predicted by the prophet Malachi, who was supposed to prepare the way of the Lord (Matt. 3:1).

The great Old Testament Prophet Isaiah also spoke about him:
"The voice of one crying in the wilderness says: prepare the way of the Lord, make the paths of our God in the wilderness" (Is. 40:3). His call: "Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand!" (Matt. 3:2)

attracted the attention of even the Pharisees and Sadducees. (Matt. 3:7). People from all walks of life approached him with anxiety and trust. Priests and Levites from among the Pharisees were sent to him from Jerusalem to ask him:

"Why do you baptize, if you are not the Christ, nor Elijah, nor the Prophet?" (John 1:19, 25),

Kryshtenie-Gospodne-Theophany-praznuvame-krashtenie-Gospodne

and John answered them:
"I baptize with water, but one stands among you, whom you do not know. He is the one who is coming after me, who preceded me, and whom I am not worthy to unbind the thong of His shoe" (John 1:26-27).

And behold, this One came!

"from Galilee to the Jordan to John to be baptized by him. And John restrained him and said: I need to be baptized by You, and do You come to me? But Jesus answered him and said : Leave it now; for thus it behooves us to fulfill all righteousness. Then John admits Him" (Matt. 3:13-15).

Beautiful-orthodox-christian-icon-Theophany-Epipihany-Baptismal-of-Christ

"And when all the people were baptized, and when Jesus, after being baptized, was praying, the heavens were opened, and the Holy Spirit descended upon Him in bodily form, like a dove" (Luke 3:21).

"And behold, a voice from heaven, which said: This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased" (Matt. 3:17).

At the baptism of Jesus Christ, this great secret was announced to the world, about which the Old Testament only hinted and about which ancient Egypt and India only spoke in fables – the secret of the Divine Trinity.

The Father appeared to our hearing, the Spirit appeared to human sight, and the Son – to our touch in His many years of communication with men.

The (Heavenly) Father gave His testimony about the Son, the Son was baptized, and the Holy Spirit like a dove flew over the water.

Through the testimony of John: "Behold the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world" (John 1:29) and through the baptism of Jesus, Christ's mission was shown to the world and the way of our salvation was indicated.

Namely: by immersing in the waters of the Jordan, the Lord took upon Himself the sins of the human race and died under its burden, and coming out of the water shows His coming to life, His resurrection. And in us, through holy Baptism, the old sinful and cursed man must die and we come out of the holy (baptismal) font as revived, cleansed, renewed and reborn.

The Feast of the Epiphany is also called Enlightenment, because the Jordanian event enlightens us by showing us God manifested in the unfathomable mystery of the consubstantial and indivisible Trinity. Each of us through Holy Baptism is adopted by the Father of Light through the merit of the Son and through the power of the Holy Spirit. For this enlightenment, he also praised the Epiphany’s Kontaktion found in the Church service book of Menaion:

"You have appeared today to the universe, and Your light, Lord, has reflected upon us who wisely sing to You: you have come and appeared, Light unapproachable."

The feast of the Epiphany is connected with the great consecration of water, which should remind us that at the banks of the Jordan River, God has renewed through water and the Spirit our nature that has become stale from sin.

© Lives of the Saints. Synodal Publishing House, Sofia, 1991, edited by Parthenius, Bishop of Lefkada and Archimandrite Dr. Athanasius (Bonchev) with few minor inclusions and clearances by hip0 (Georgi D. Georgiev)

 

Holy righteous King Upravda Justinian (emperor Justinian I the Great) feast day 14th of November

Tuesday, November 15th, 2022

Mosaic_of_saint_Justinianus_I_-_Basilica_San_Vitale_Ravenna

Saint Justinian, emperor of Byzantium, was a Slav by geneology.

He was born in the village of Vedryani near the town of Sredets (today city of Sofia) in Bulgaria. His uncle Justin, born in the same village, went on foot to Constantinople, carrying nothing with him but a leather garment.

Here, thanks to his natural gifts, he quickly rose to the top, and then even became emperor. He brought to Constantinople his wife Lupkina and her sister Beglenitsa, Upravda's mother.
After the death of Justin Upravda occupied the Byzantine imperial throne under the name of Justinian. A note to make her is Upravda is an ancient Bulgarian name.

Emperor Justinian is known in history for his successful wars against the enemies of the Byzantine Empire and also for issuing the complete collection of Roman laws.

But in addition, he became famous for his services to the Christian Church and Orthodoxy.

He took great care of the spread of Christianity and the eradication of paganism.

He closed the pagan schools in Athens and ordered the sciences to be taught by monks.

He persecuted paganism most in the capital of his kingdom, Byzantium, and also in Asia Minor.
In order to convert the pagans to Christ, Justinian sent Bishop John of Ephesus to Asia Minor, who baptized about 70 thousand pagans !, and the emperor built more than 90 churches for the newly converted.

Saint_justinian_Ravena-basilica

Along with the spread of Christianity, the pious Justinian advocated for the purity of the Orthodox faith.

During his reign, the Orthodox Church continued to be disturbed by the Nestorians, who taught the heresy that Christ was not a God-man and that the Divinity only dwelt in Him as in an ordinary man.

But more than the Nestorians, the Monophysites shaked the Church, who taught other terrible heresy, telling that in Jesus Christ the Divine nature absorbed the human.

Against these arbitrary inventions of human reason, the pious king composed the song:

saint-emperor-Justinian-I-the-Bulgarian-only-begotten-son

"Only-begotten Son and Words of God", which he ordered to be sung at the Divine Liturgy Service
A liturgy song, that is being sung in every Holy Liturgy in the Church even today !

Through his efforts, in year 553 A.D., the Fifth Ecumenical Council was convened to condemn the Nestorian thoughts in the writings of Theodore of Mopsuestia, Theodoret of Cyrrhus and Iva of Edessus to end the dissensions in the Church.

Hagia-Saint-Sophia-Istanbul-Constantinople

As a zealot of Orthodoxy and piety, Justinian was very concerned about the worship in the Orthodox Church and the beauty of the temples as places of worship.

In his code of laws, he included, among other things, a law on the mandatory universal celebration of the feasts of the Nativity of Christ, the Baptism of the Lord and the Resurrection, the Annunciation of the Blessed Virgin Mary and others.

In addition, he built many beautiful temples to the glory of the Blessed Virgin Mary (Theotokos), the apostles and other saints. His most famous work is considered to be the church temple of Saint Sophia, God's Wisdom, in Constantinople.

Erected by the Equal-to-the-Apostles King Constantine, during a rebellion during the time of King Justinian, this temple was burned down.
The pious king gathered the best builders, spared no expense in gold and money, and built a temple, wondrous throughout the ages for its grandeur and beauty.

In his private life, Saint Justinian showed great piety.

Always devout, he spent Lent in strict abstinence and prayer, did not taste bread, but contented himself only with vegetables and water, and that he made every other day or two.

Thus, living in purity and piety, he reigned for 39 years and died peacefully in the Lord.

Because of his services to the Church and because of his piety, after his death he was canonized as a saint.
Together with him, his wife, Queen Theodora, who was a sinner at first, but later repented and spent the rest of her life in purity and piety, was included in the list of saints.

© Lives of the saints, translated into Bulgarian from the Church Slavonic text of Cheti-minei ("Chety-Minei") of Saint Demetrius of Rostov (with minor modifications from the publisher e.g.me hip0

P.S. The modern historians are disputing the saintship of Saint Justinian, however for the Bulgarian Orthodox Church for a long time he has been considering a saint for his great endeavor for Christianity and his zealous work for enlightnment of the empire and the nations in the then known world.

Saint martyr Angel of Lerina – a Bulgarian saint confessor and the Day of Saint Archangel Michael and of all Angels Archangels and Heavenly Powers

Wednesday, November 9th, 2022

saint_archangel_Michaill_Joanikij_papa_Vitanov_1820_Trjavna_Bulgaria

Saint Archangel Michael (Church of Saint  Archangel Michael Tryavna, Bulgaria) iconographer Yoanikij Papavitanov

On 8th of November in the Bulgarian Orthodox Church, we celebrate the day to remember the gathering of Archangel Michael with all the Angels Archangels, Cherubims and heavenly powers that have kept loyal to the Holy Trinity God – The Father, The Son, and The Holy Spirit.
The same arch-angels and powers who could do what they want and were created in the beginning of time after God as a helper Spirits to God and man.

The same angels are also supporting the whole universe with their deeds of love. They sustain the waters, make the wind blow, the clouds to move and give rain, the earth to give its fruits, possess and give wisdom or transfer secret messages from God to man when sent.

Others do protect all Christians and people from the evils of the fallen-agels who choose to misobey the True God Christ and follow the master of the evil spirits whose place is in the burning Gehenah and whose time is running out. 

They help the woman in birth-pain (like my sister Stanimira whose time to give birth is approaching), the make the organism of man to function properly. Or give the physics to make the stars shine on heaven, the Planet and heavenly bodies to move. Each and every place and Country and Church has its own guardian angels. And they're of a Big multitude the Church fathers says a lot about the Angels and many is still unknown and will be revealed in the that everyone will stand on the Judgement day in front of God and sees the Heaven and Hell realities and will stumble in fear seeing the gloriness of the archangels and cherubs (burning out of Love for God and man) made in a likeness of the Holy God.

The orthodox Church sticks clearly to the teaching of so called saint Dyonisious the Areopagites (often called in the Theology Pseudo Dyonisious), who was one of the important apostles of Christ, Athenian judge at the Areopagus Court in Athens, who lived in the first century. A convert to Christianity, he is venerated as a saint by multiple denominations.

 

The writings of Saint Dionysius the Areopagite hold great significance for the Orthodox Church. Four books of his have survived to the present day:

 

On the Celestial Hierarchy, On the Ecclesiastical Hierarchy, On the Names of God, On Mystical Theology

In additional, there are ten letters to various people.

The book On the Celestial Hierarchies was written actually in one of the countries of Western Europe, where Saint Dionysius was preaching. In it he speaks of the Christian teaching about the angelic world. The angelic (or Celestial-Heavenly) hierarchy comprises the nine angelic Ranks:

  • Seraphim
  • Cherubim
  • Thrones
  • Dominions
  • Powers
  • Authorities
  • Principalities
  • Archangels
  • Angels

 

The account of the Synaxis of the Bodiless Powers of Heaven is located under November 8.

saint-Agatangel-Bitolski-Bulgarian-saint-icon

The purpose of the divinely-established Angelic Hierarchy is the ascent towards godliness through purification, enlightenment and perfection. The highest ranks are bearers of divine light and divine life for the lower ranks. And not only are the sentient, bodiless angelic hosts included in the spiritual light-bearing hierarchy, but also the human race, created anew and sanctified in the Church of Christ.

There is too much to be said about Angels, Archangels, through the years from ancient times, they can heal and help, and grant special powers to man and many, many more. There were innumerable heresies who have over-deified heavenly powers, especially gnostics and that is a well known fact. For those who want to read about Angels, and their hierarchy there is a lot ot read and learn, angels has helped the saints in their hardship in fight with evilness, there is really a lot about this for those who want to further learn. 

But what is less known is here in today's relatively small country of Bulgaria, we have a local saint Angel of Lerina who is born in Bulgarian family and stems from a Bulgarian village. As his endeveour and confession of his love for Christ and the Church was enormous he has suffered martyrdom for Christ in the 17th century during the times Bulgaria was enslaved by the Ottoman Turks. Thus as there is not much written about saint Angel Lerinski (Lerina), I dedicated this small article in glory of his memory. The article is also in memoriam of my grand-grand-grand Father who was also named Angel himself, perhaps in glory of Saint Angel of Lerina.

The Life of Saint Angel of Lerina


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Saint New Martyr Angel of Lerina (Bitolski) – picture source Wikipedia

All the sources about the holy martyr Angel of Lerinsky that we have reached cite the story of Saint Paisius of Hilendar as the main source for the life of the new martyr, called Angel or Agathangel. This is what St. Paisius writes about him in the History of Slavonic Bulgaria":
           "In 1750, in Bitol, where the Turkish and Macedonian Pasha sits, the Turks tortured and beheaded a young man, handsome in face and stature, for the Christian faith. Many forced and tormented him to renounce Christ, but he wisely and courageously denounced their godless faith. The Bishop of Bitola recorded many of his answers, described his sufferings in Greek. And God showed a great sign over his powers. His name was Angel from the village of Lerin. This holy martyr Angel shone in our time in the Bulgarian land."
          The Bulgarian Orthodox Church honors the holy new martyr on November 8, the feast of the holy Archangels. Probably the veneration of the saint in our church dates from the time when he was martyred, because his martyrdom was described by Saint Paisius of Hilendar immediately after it happened, since Saint Paisius was his contemporary.

          Greek information about the new martyr Angel Lerinski appeared only in recent years.

In the electronic version of "Οι Νεομάρτυρες της Булгариас" (New Martyrs Bulgarian) Αρχιμανδρίτου του Οικουμενικού Θρόνου Θωμά Ανδρέου Ιεροκήρυκος Ιεράς Μητροπόλεως Ελευθερουπόλεως (Archimandrite of the Ecumenical See Thomas Andreu, Preacher of the Eleftheroupolis Holy Metropolis), Kavala, 2011, p.88, we read :

         "Another case of a new martyr of Greek origin is that of Angel (or Agatangel) from today's Florina (in Bulgarian Lerin). The 2009 calendar of the Holy Metropolis of Florin, Prespa and Eordei honors this new martyr, who was martyred in the monastery of Pelagonia (now Bitola, Macedonia) on February 17, 1727*. The book "History of Slavonic Bulgaria" by Paisiy Hilendarski talks about the martyrdom of the new martyr ("his name was Angel or Agatangel and he was from the village of Florina")

Saint-Agatangel_Bitolski-Greek-icon

…..
          Little is known about the new martyr. We know that he was born in 1732 in Florina, in the sanjak (prefecture) of Bitola (Monastery). When he grew up, he became a tall and handsome young man. At the age of 18, the Turks tried to convert him to Islam, but Angel – although very young – did not succumb to the temptations and then bravely accepted martyrdom. In his book Paisius Hilendarski mentions that: "In 1750 in the monastery… the Turks tortured and slaughtered a handsome young man because of his Christian faith… His name was Angel and he was from the village of Florina" His testimony in the monastery was attended by the local Greek metropolitan, who described his courage and the intelligent and logical answers he gave in court. Due to the fact that he condemned the Muslim faith with particular wisdom and courage, he was beheaded when he was only 18 years old in 1750. The Bulgarian Orthodox Church honors his memory on November 8, during the Feast of the Archangels…."

          Additional information about the holy new martyr Angel Lerinsky can be found on one of Florina's sites (http://agiospanteleimonas-florina.blogspot.com/2010/06/blog-post_8186.html.)


          The Metropolitan of Florini, Prespa and Eordaia, Theoclitus, addresses the citizens on the occasion of the decision to start the veneration of the holy martyr Agathangel of Florina (June, 2010):

          "With special feelings of joy, emotion, holy contentment and reverence, I turn to you, the blessed children of the Greek Macedonian land, to become participants in the great spiritual joy experienced by our local Church for the first official celebration of the memory of the holy new martyr Agathangel in the seat of our metropolis Florina. It is already known to all of you. that the holy new martyr Agathangel, martyred in the Pelagonian monastery, originated from Florina, is our fellow citizen. At an early age he left Florina and went to Vutelion of Byzantium, to the monastery, seeking better living conditions. There, exercising the profession of shoemaker, he soon distinguished himself by his honesty and his diligence. …. But what distinguished him from the young people of his time was the pure and firm faith he had in Christ and in His "orthodox church". He loved Christ more than anything else in his life. No other love could "steal" the love that Agathangel had in his heart for Christ, he loved Him simply, purely, with all his heart, with all his strength, he loved Him as his poor parents and his blessed ancestors loved Him.
         

Along with the love for Christ, the saint had love for his homeland, conquered Macedonia. Almost four hundred years of slavery count the long-suffering "Greek Macedonians".
The Turkish conquerors treated them with cruelty. Sometimes with flattery, sometimes with threats, sometimes with violence, they try to make them change their faith. To deny Christ. To renounce the Orthodox faith and become Muslims.
And whoever renounces his faith renounces his homeland.

          Agathangel's heart was troubled by the fact that several of his fellow Roman Christians did not withstand the temptations or the violence, denying Christ and the country. His brave heart rebelled. He could not bear the Orthodox faith to be dishonored. For this, when during the three-day Bairam, which is celebrated after Ramadan, the forced conversion of the Orthodox increased, this young boy, not yet twenty years old, went to Constantinople, where he received a Sultan's firman, which forbade the forced conversion in the area of ​​Pelagonia.

On his return to the Monastery, the saint was arrested by those outraged by the Turkish Sultan's decision, and after cruel torture, he was beheaded on February 17, 1727.

           In a meeting we held in the Holy Metropolis, in which, in addition to the Metropolitan, the Honorable Prefect of Florini Mr. Ioannis Voskopoulas, the Mayor of Florini Mr. Stefanos Papanastasiou, the President of TEDC of N. Florinis, Mr. Dimitrios Iliadis, and the President of the monasteries of N. Florinis, Mr. Theodoros Vosdou, decided to jointly hold events in honor of the holy new martyr Agathangel…”

* 1727 is mentioned as the year of the martyrdom of St. Angel Lerinski in some sources, and sometimes it is mentioned together with 1750, in the same source. This discrepancy in the years of the martyrdom leaves the doubt that different martyrs are being talked about.


For this reason, we cannot say exactly whether the reliquary with the relics – the holy head of the new martyr Agathangel in the Kykkos monastery in Cyprus, which contains the same description of his life, but the date February 17, 1727 is indicated, refers to the same martyr, for which speaks Saint Paisius of Hilendar.

Saint Reverend Dimitar Basarbovski, humble and great Bulgarian saint with incorruptable miracle making holy relics now kept in Bucharest

Thursday, October 27th, 2022

saint_Dimitri-Basarbovski-Besarbovski-saint-Demitrios-of-Besarabov

Brief biography of Saint Dimitar (Dimitrii) of Basarbov

Reverend Dimitrii Basarbovski lived near the village of Basarbovo, Rusensko (nearby today's Bulgarian city of Ruse).
He performed spiritual feats regularly.
According to instructions from Reverend Paisiy Hilendarski's "Bulgarian Slavonic History" / Istoriya Slavyanobolgarskaya , he must have lived in the 17th century.
His holy relics rest  in Bucharest.

† Bishop Hilarion of Trajanopol, Extensive Orthodox Monthly, ed. Tabor.

 

Life of Saint Dimitrii (Demetrius) Basarbovsky (extract from the Book Livings of the Saints of the Bulgarian Orthodox Church)

Venerable Dimitrii Basarbovski was born in the village of Basarbovo, which is located 8-9 kilometers from the city of Ruse. Venerable Paisiy Hilendarski in his "Slavonic-Bulgarian History" which was a key book to bring back the memory of the 5 century enslaved Bulgarians under the Ottoman Turks about their long and glorious history and holiness the Bulgarian Empire and the Bulgarian Church possesed. Slavonic-Bulgarian History points to 1685 as the most probabe year of his death.

According to St. Paisius, he was an ordinary civilian.
He lived simply. He had several sheeps.
He planted a small vineyard by a river. Saint Dimitrij made a little hut there.
Spent his whole life alone. He pleased God with his holy life.
When time came for God to take out his rightous soul, died in the same place, where he spent his whole life and was buried there.

Saint-Dimityr-Besarabovski-of-Bulgaria-holy-relics-in-Bucharest-Church

Saint Demetrios of Basarabia Raque in Bucharest in Saint Constantine and Helena Church

Later God revealed his incorruptable holy relics to some men. The latter were transferred to the village of Basarbovo, Rusensko. Healings took place near them.

Thus, with his simple life, Saint Demetrius shone among the Bulgarian people.
God glorified him posthumously with many miracles and glory as great intercessor of man in heaven.

According to the Romanian synaxar (The Church service book), he was a village herdsman. He had a sensitive conscience.Possessed a great fear of God.

Once, while driving the animals to the field, he inadvertently stepped on a bird's nest with the baby birds in.
This incident affected him so much and, he did not put on a shoe on the guilty foot for three years, during winter and summer, as a punishment.

Another tradition says that he was married but childless. After the death of his wife, he entered the cave monastery near his native village.

There he was ordained as a monk. He worked diligently.
Cultivated in himself all the sublime virtues of a true monk in the same fashion as the desert fathers. Foresawing his death, left the monastery, lay down between two stones on the bank of the nearby Lom river, and there he surrendered his soul to the Lord.

After a while a torrential rain fell. The water swept these two stones along with the holy relics of the reverend into the river.

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Saint Demitrij of Basarbovo holy relics currently preseved in Bucharest, Romania

The relics lay in the water for some time. Venerable Dimitriy appeared to a raving (possessed) virgin from the village of Basarbovo and told her that he would cure her of her illness as soon as he took his relics out of the river.

The relics were taken out and placed in the village church. The frenzied virgin was cured.
Many other patients from various diseases also received such a gracious healing.

Two God-loving sisters from the nearby village of Chervena Voda reverently worshiped the reverend.

They secretly asked to steal a piece from his relics for their newly built temple.
But their car could not start until they repented and returned the stolen particle.

Nicephorus, Metropolitan of Tarnovo, came to worship the relics with a group of clergy.
Monk Lavrentiy was also in this group.
He tried to bite off a piece by kissing the relics, but his mouth remained open until he repented with tears in his eyes.

Another of the many miracles happened like that:

Preslav bishop Ioanikiy (Joachim) fell seriously ill. He asked to be taken to Venerable Demetrius of Basarabia.
They laid him by his coffin. After the Divine Liturgy was celebrated, he recovered completely.

A Turk decided one night to rob the reverend's church.
He touched the silver lamps.
His legs stiffened immediately.
In the morning worshipers carried him around the church in their arms.
This man until the end of his life crawled through the streets of the city of Ruse and begged for alms.

The Ugro-Wallachian voivode wished to have the relics of Venerable Demetrius in his home church. With such a mission he sent boyars and priests to Basarbovo.

Saint-Dimitrij-of-Basarbovo-Monastery-his-monastery-near-Ruse-wall-painting

Saint Dimitri Basarbovski wall painting in his monastery "Basarbovski Monastery", currently situated near Ruse Bulgaria

But the saint did not allow his relics to be transported across the Danube.
Amazed, the messengers decided to find out the will of the God-pleaser. They placed the relics in a cart with previously unharnessed bullocks.
They let the animals loose.
The youths drove the car straight to Basarbovo and stopped in front of the church.

In 1774, when one of the Russo-Turkish wars was raging, the Russian general Peter Saltykov ordered the relics of Venerable Dimitriy to be taken to Russia. Dimitar Poklonnik, a Bulgarian from Bucharest, who served as a translator for the general, asked him to leave them in Bucharest as compensation for the losses of the Romanian people in the war. The general agreed. Since then, these holy relics rest in Bucharest, in the Church of the Three Saints.

© Lives of the Saints. Synodal Publishing House, Sofia, 1991, edited by Parthenius, Bishop of Levkia and Archimandrite Dr. Athanasius (Bonchev).

The Rock Monastery of Saint Dimitrii of Basarbovo in Bulgaria near Lom River Ruse
 

The monastery dates back to the period of the Second Bulgarian Kingdom (XII-XIV centuries), but the earliest data date from the Ottoman tax registers of 1431.

There it is marked as "Besaraba" – a property with 14 households.

At the same time, the monastery was marked as "the timar of the great voivode" – meaning Ivanko Besarab – father-in-law of Tsar (King) Ivan Alexander.

According to another legend, the Basarbov monastery was dedicated to St. Theodore Tiron and St. Theodore Stratilates.
The founder of the monastery was Queen Teodora Basarab – the first wife of Tsar Ivan Alexander and daughter of the Wallachian Duke Ivanko Basarab.

The nearby village of Basarbovo is also named after the voivode.

The most famous inhabitant and eternal abbot is Saint Dimitar Basarbovski, who spent a large part of his life in the monastery.

Paisius Hilendarski also mentions this holy abode in his "Slavic Bulgarian History".

During the Russian-Turkish war (1768 – 1774), the relics of the saint were transferred by the Russian General Ivan P. Saltikov in Bucharest and placed in the Metropolitan and now Patriarchal Church "Saints Saints Constantine and Helena" on July 13, 1774, with the idea to later move them to Russia, saint Demitrios of Basarabia's desire was to remain in Bucharest where they are still laying today.

In 1937, monk Chrysant lived in the monastery and began to renovate it.
The  feast day of the monastery is on October 26, the day of St. Dimitar The Myrrh-bearer.

Basarbovski-monastery-near-Ruse-Bulgaria-dedicated-to-Saint-Dimitrij-of-Basarbov

As Saint Dimitri Holy relics are currently away from the Bulgarian home land, obviosuly as the saint's memory was more more remembered and venerated in Romania. Today the monastery who was started by his prayers and veneration of his Holy relics "Basarbovski Monastery" near the Danube river Ruse, did not possess any more his holy relics.

Basarbovski-monastery-near-Ruse-Bulgaria-dedicated-to-Saint-Dimitrij-of-Basarbov1

In 2005, at the request of the Bulgarian Patriarch Maxim, an icon with the image of St. Dimitar of Basarbov, in which a part of his holy relics is embedded was presented by the Romanian Patriarch Teoktist to the Basarbov Monastery.

Sveti_Dimitrii-Basarbovski-rock-monastery-Bulgaria-church

It is notable, to mention that according to the monk and one of most notable Ascetics and Saints of our times Saint Porphyrios of Kafsokalyvia († 1991), the prayer of the hermit monk works miracles and his contribution is greater than that of the most worthy preacher.

Sveti-Dimitrij-Basarbovski-rock-monastery-skalen-manastir-church-entry
 

Christ is Risen ! Truly He is Risen ! The origin of the tradition Paschal Greeting and Coloring of Eggs on Easter Holidays in the Church

Wednesday, April 27th, 2022

 

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Christ is Risen ! Truly He is Risen !

Христос воскресе ! Воистину воскресе ! (Khristos voskrese! Voistinu voskrese!) – Church Slavonic Paschal Greeting

Χριστὸς ἀνέστη!  Ἀληθῶς ἀνέστη ! (Khristós anésti! – Alithós anésti!) – Greek Paschal Greeting

Christus Resurrexit ! Resurrexit Vere ! – Latin Paschal Greeting

The Easter Eggs are so famous today for the kids worldwide, even though the world does not put much accent on the feast of Pascha (Easter). All kind of colored eggs are to be find in stores, many christian countries both Western and Eastern all throughout the world have the tradition of coloring eggs for Easter. 
The tradition is also the same here in Orthodox Bulgaria, as we have the tradition to boil and color eggs in various colors. 
Usually the first egg is colored in Dark Red and once sanctified in the Church is put on the iconostasis (the prayer corner in the house) in front of Christ, Virgin Mary and saints icons and kept their until next year.

Miraculously this Egg usually does not start decaying or smelling as an ordinary egg will do if left out of the fridge for a month or so. This first egg in dedication and memory of Christ's resurrection is kept on the iconostasis until the next year's Pascha and then buried somewhere in a green clean place for sanctification of the land.

This is a good and well followed tradition for those strict about religion, but even those who did not strictly follow Christianity or orthodoxy do color eggs for the fun of kids and as an expression for joy of the Paschal feast. Both grown and kids then try out their forces whose egg is more powerful by knocking each other's eggs to test whose egg shell is more solid and can stand up the break. The egg that is "victorious" once people test their power that is stronger and withstand the "egg fight" is kept for another egg duel with another person.

According to old superstitious belief if you win over in an eggs fight this is interpteted as you will have a good health and well being for the upcoming period till next year's Pascha.
 

How and from wherein this Boiled Eggs coloring originated ?


The short answer is it is connected to one of Church's traditions about the poor apostle Equal Saint Mary ( Maria ) Magdalene, who have given as a gift to Roman emperor Tiberius an Egg with the All Famous Greeting dialog in the Orthodox Churches among people with person A saying:   Christ is Risen ! person B responding: Truly he is Risen! (Христос Воскресе Войстину Воскресе !)

From the time of the many appearances of the Savior Christ in flesh after his Glorious Resurrection described by the Holy Evangelists in the Gospels and the fervent sermon of St. Mary Magdalene (one of the of the so called Myrrh- Bearing Woman who were the first who have visited the tomb where Dead body of Christ was led and become witnesses of  the Resurrection). The surviving Bible's New Testament 4 Gospel books do not provide further details about the activities of St. Mary Magdalene and her life. The Church mouth-by -mouth tradition of her later life in several local Christian churches differ slightlyhowever everywhere they essentially report on the zealous co-apostolic activity of St. Mary Magdalene. And the differences between these traditions depend on which of the evangelical women these churches understand by the name of St. Mary Magdalene.

Some Western Christian churches, as well as the Church Fathers and learned theologians, unite in one or two personalities three evangelical women: the sinner who repented in the house of Simon the Pharisee, shed tears at the Savior Christ's feet, wiped them with her hair. and she anointed them with precious ointment, and Mary of Bithynia, sister of Lazarus of Bythynia ( resurrected in the fourth day after death by Chrsit and commemorated one day before Palm Sunday )' and Mary Magdalene, who was delivered from the Savior Christ by seven demons. But the Orthodox Church now, as before, recognizes those mentioned in the Gospels with different signs, three persons as different separate ones, and does not want to base historical information on arbitrary, plausible interpretations. Therefore, the tradition of the Orthodox Church states that after the Gospel appearances of the Risen Christ before His Ascension and after, St. Mary Magdalene resided with the Blessed Virgin and the Apostles and was an active helper of the first successes of spreading the Christian faith first in Jerusalem. But full of zeal, fervent faith, and zealous love for God's gospel, she then preached in other lands, proclaiming everywhere the heavenly grace, joy, and salvation of all who believed in the Savior of the world, the Risen Christ.

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While visiting Italy to preach, St. Mary Magdalene found an opportunity to appear before the then-reigning Emperor Tiberius I, and presented him, according to generally accepted Eastern custom, with an egg painted red and greated him with "Christ is risen!"

The modesty of the gift of Mary Magdalene did not surprise the emperor, because he knew the ancient custom of the East, also among the Jews, going for the first time to superiors, or on solemn occasions to acquaintances or patrons, to offer a gift of honor, with some known or special, symbolic meaning. Examples of this can be found in Jewish Old Testament history, as are the gifts presented by the rich Wise men (magis – today their relics are kept for veneration in Cathedral of Cologne Germany) to the born Jesus Christ in Bethlehem of Judea. Even the poor in such cases offered as a gift various fruits from their locality or eggs from birds. Thus, partly following this ancient custom and with the red color of the egg laid and with the hitherto unheard words "Christ is risen!" to arouse the curiosity of the suspicious Emperor Tiberius. The holy co-apostle Mary Magdalene, by explaining the significance of this gift, began her fervent sermon on the Resurrection truth and the teachings of the Savior Christ for salvation. With great inspiration and conviction she told the emperor about the life, miracles, crucifixion and resurrection of Jesus Christ according to his own prophecy. She gave a direct, simple-minded account of the extremely unjust, biased judgment of Jesus Christ by the embittered members of the Jerusalem Sanhedrin. governor of Judea Pilate of Pontus, in condemning Jesus Christ to crucifixion. She explained how all this incurred the wrath of the Roman emperor then and how Tiberius handed them over to a court in which Pilate was deprived of power and exiled to Gaul, in the city of Vienna, where, according to legend, tormented by remorse and despair, he killed himself. According to another legend, Pilate repented, turned to Christ in prayer, as a sign of which his head was accepted by an angel after being cut off.

According to Church tradition, the sisters of Lazarus Martha and Mary went to Italy with St. Mary Magdalene; and Pilate, learning of this and fearing the denunciation of his unlawful actions by the Christians, himself sent a message to the Emperor Tiberius about Jesus Christ, in which he testified to the virtuous life of Christ, the healing of all diseases and infirmities from Him, even for the resurrection of the dead and for His other great miracles. Pilate asserted that in examining the accusations of the Jews, he found no fault in Jesus Christ; he made great efforts to deliver Him from the hands of the troubled Jews, but failed to deliver Him and betrayed Jesus to their will because of the cries of the people and the rebellious accusation of the Jews against Pilate himself …

 

... as a witness, overwhelmed with fear, he told the emperor about everything that had happened to Jesus Christ, who became an object of faith as God …

After such testimonies from the Roman governor of Judea and the worshipers of the Savior Christ, Emperor Tiberius, according to legend, himself believed in the Savior Christ, proposed to include Jesus Christ in the image of the Roman gods, and even when the Roman Senate rejected this proposal, Tiberius by royal decree threatened to punish anyone who dared to grieve believers in Jesus Christ.

In this way, with the zealous, fearless sermon on the Savior Christ, St. Mary Magdalene, along with other devout Christians, persuaded the pagan governor of Judea to testify in writing about the universal event of Christ's Resurrection before the pagan world and persuaded the then Roman emperor of the Savior Christ, thus facilitating the spread of Christianity.

Anastasis-Hristos-Voskrese-beautiful-orthodox-Mosaic
Anastasis (Resurrection) Church Fresco


And the Christians of that time, learning about the significance and strength of the impression caused by the offering of a red egg by Mary Magdalene to Emperor Tiberius with the words: "Christ is risen!" then began to imitate her in this and as a remembrance of Christ's Resurrection they began to give each other red eggs and say: "Christ is risen! … He is risen indeed! …"

Thus, this custom gradually spread everywhere and became universal for Christians around the world. In it, the egg serves as a symbol of Christ's resurrection and the resurrection of the dead, and of our expected new-birth for eternal bliss in the future life, the pledge for which is Christ's Resurrection.

Just as a bird is born from an egg and begins to live an independent life after its release from the shell, and the vast circle of life is revealed to it, so we, at the second coming of Christ to earth , rejected from ourselves together with the earthly body all that is mortal on earth.

By the power of Christ's Resurrection we will be resurrected and resurrected to another, higher, eternal, immortal life.

And the red color of the Easter egg reminds us that the redemption of mankind and our future new life have been acquired through the shedding of the cross on the pure blood of the Savior Christ.

Thus, the red egg serves to remind us of one of the most important dogmas of the Divine revealed Christian faith.

 

After the crucifixion of Jesus by the Jews in terrible miracles took place in nature, many dead righteous people rose, with His resurrection on the third day.Pilate, as a witness overwhelmed with great fear, informed the Caesar of all things that had happened to Jesus Christ.

In Eastern Orthodox Tradition Christ is Risen ! Truly he is Risen Greeting is used to joyfully great each other all around the Orthodox countries in the first 3 days of easter, and can be used instead of normal Hello greeting ! for the upcoming week The Holy Easter Weak which is a week of great joy and even by a hello greating in the Church could be used for 40 days as a normal greeting.

It is worthy to close this article with the praisal words, read on the first day of Pascha  authored by one of the most important Church fathers and
compiler of most served Liturgy service throughout the yearly service calendar:

"Christ is risen, and you are overthrown!
Christ is risen, and the demons are fallen!
Christ is risen, and the angels rejoice!
Christ is risen, and life reigns!
Christ is risen, and not one dead remains in a tomb!
For Christ, being raised from the dead, has become the first-fruits of them that have slept."

Saint John Chrysostom

Saint Prophor Pchinski Saint Jochichim of Osogovo and Saint Gabriel of Lesnovo the three little known Bulgarian spritual followers of Saint John of Rila

Saturday, January 15th, 2022

Biography of St. Prohor Pshinski

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St. Prohor Pshinski. Mural from the 15th century in the church "St. Archangel Michael" in Saparevo near Kyustendil. Source: bartol, bartol.blog.bg

 St. Prohor Pshinski. Mural from the 15th century in the church "St. Archangel Michael" in Saparevo near Kyustendil. Source: bartol, bartol.blog.bg The Rev.

Prohor Pshinski was a Bulgarian by birth from pious parents in the Ovce Pole region of northern Macedonia. It was given by God to childless parents for their prayers and sucked in along with his mother's milk and her high piety. When he grew up, his parents insisted on marrying him. But he once heard in the temple the words of the Savior: "He that loveth father or mother more than me is not worthy of me," (Matt. 10:37). the town of Vranje in Yugoslavia. He lived in a cave where water springs for 32 years. Once a frightened deer ran to him, chased by a hunter who soon appeared.

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Prophor Pchinski (Pshinksi) Byzantine Empire Icon

At his first meeting, the monk called the hunter by name and predicted that he would soon become a Byzantine emperor. At that time Bulgaria was under Byzantine slavery (1018 – 1186). And indeed, after some time this man reigned under the name of Roman Diogenes (1067-1071). Astonished by the fulfillment of this prophecy, he discovered the incorruptible relics of the late Prohor Pshinski and built a large temple in the name of the saint on the site of his asceticism. His holy relics were laid there and a monastic fraternity gathered.

This monastery still exists. The Venerable Prohor Pshinski died on September 14, but due to the great feast of the Exaltation of the Holy Cross, the celebration of his memory was postponed to January 15. His monastery celebrates his memory on September 19.

© Lives of the Saints. Synodal Publishing House, Sofia, 1991, edited by Parthenius, Bishop of Lefkada (Levkijski) and Archimandrite Dr. Athanasius (Bonchev).

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Saint Prohor Pchinski (Pshinski) Wall Painting icon XV century Kyustendil Bulgaria

The prologue biography of St. Prohor Pshinski is an original ancient Bulgarian writting, known in a single transcript in the New Prologue from the beginning of the 14th century (GIM, Uvar. 70). Under the date of October 19, the Venerable Hermit Saint is mentioned next to St. Ivan Rilski. Both texts are published by Kl. Ivanova (1977). D. Chesmedjiev (2009) points out that the cult of St. Prohor Pshinski is poorly fixed in the written tradition. All the details about the saint are known from his prologue. St. Prohor lived in the 11th century, working in the Kozyak mountain (near the village of Staro Nagorichino). After his death, his relics were transferred to the church he founded, called Pshinya, where he was healed.

Saint Prophor Pchinski in Modern Theology

His cult probably originated during the Byzantine rule. His memory is celebrated on September 13 and October 19. In the New Prologue, in addition to biographies of St. Ivan Rilski and St. Prohor Pshinski, there are also biographies of St. Achilles of Larissa, St. Simeon of Serbia and others. 30 years ago Kl. Ivanova (Ivanova 1977: 59) has suggested that the manuscript was compiled in the Pshin Monastery itself, but the spelling and language features of the collection are Serbian. According to the latest research by the same researcher, Nora's prologue originates from Jerusalem and was created in the Serbian monastery "St. Archangel Michael ”(Ivanova 2008: 68–70).

 

Biography of Saint Joachim of Osogovo

Images of St. Ivan Rilski and St. Joachim of Sarandapor from the Poganovo Monastery, end of the 15th century. It is not known where he came from, from his life it is known that he came from the west, according to Ivan Snegarov, perhaps from Zeta, in the Osogovo Mountains, where he sought monastic asylum.

An unknown boyar from the village of Gradets, not far from Kriva Palanka, today in northern Macedonia, shows him the place he was looking for monastic solitude – a cave by the Sarandapor River, today's Kriva River. Here St. Joachim spends his life as a hermit, in fasting and prayer, and the local Bulgarians revere him as a holy man. 

Osogovo Monastery.

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Osogovo Monastery Saint Joachim Icon

Joachim Osogowski died on August 16, 1105.On this date the Bulgarian Orthodox Church commemorates him.

Years later, the widowed priest Theodore of the Sheep Field settled in the place of Joachim's hermitage, adopting the monastic name Theophanes. After his saint appears, he discovers his miraculous relics, which are laid in the church built in his memory. In the 12th century, the cult of St. Joachim became so popular in northwestern Macedonia that a monastery of the same name was built around the temple. 

Joachim-of-Osogovo-known-also-as-Sarandopolski-Poganovo_Ivan_Rilski

Images of St. Ivan Rilski and St. Joachim of Sarandapor from the Poganovo Monastery, end of the XV-th century ( the three most famous spiritual pupils of Saint John of Rila )

In the monastery, similar to the life of St. Ivan Rilski, a life of St. Joachim was created, known from later transcripts, as well as a service of the saint. Around the middle of the 14th century the cult of St. Joachim spread to the eastern Bulgarian lands, and at the end of the 14th century it was transferred to Russia.

Biography of Saint Gavriil (Gabriel) Lesnovski

Saint-Gabriel-of-Lesnovo-320px-Archangels_Chapel_in_Rila_Monastery_Gabriel_of_Lesnovo_-_year-1845

Saint Gabriel of Lesnovo fresco from Archangels Chapel Rila Monastery, Bulgaria

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St. Gavriil Lesnowski.
Detail of a mosaic on one of the doors of the Patriarchal Cathedral "St. Alexander Nevsky" in Sofia St. Gavriil Lesnowski. Detail of a mosaic on one of the doors of the Patriarchal Cathedral "St. Alexander Nevsky" in Sofia

Reverend Gavriil Lesnovski is one of the three great followers of the Rila desert dweller St. Ivan Rilski. He lived in the XI – XII century. He was born in the village of Osiche, Palaneshko (Macedonia). He came from rich Bulgarian parents and received a good education. When he was old, his parents betrothed him to a good-looking bride. Soon, however, his fiancée died. Then he entered a monastery and became a monk. With the inheritance he received from his parents, Gabriel built a monastery with a church named after St. Archangel Michael in the Lesnovo Mountains, northern Macedonia, near the present town of Kratovo.

The Venerable Father gathered monks, appointed an abbot, and he himself secluded himself in the mountains of desert life and silence, doing so for 30 years. He then returned to his monastery and died on January 15. Thirty years after the death of the Venerable Gabriel, a Russian monk named Joseph in the town of Sredets (Sofia) – at the suggestion of the saint – went to the place where the Venerable struggled, found his grave, found his incorruptible relics, laid them in a coffin and provided for prayer worship to believers.

For many years the holy relics of the Reverend Gabriel rested in the Lesnovo Monastery and performed many miracles. Probably in the thirteenth century one of the Bulgarian kings of the Assen dynasty brought them to his capital Tarnovo and laid them in the church "Holy Apostles" in Trapezitsa. According to the Reverend's prologue of 1330, "they have lain there until now and give healing." After the Ottoman invasion of Bulgaria, traces of the holy relics of the Venerable Gavriil Lesnovski are lost. The monastery he founded was later named after him and became an important literary center. © Lives of the Saints. Synodal Publishing House, Sofia, 1991, edited by Parthenius, Bishop of Lefkada (Levkijski) and Archimandrite Dr. Athanasius (Bonchev).

Saint-Gabriel_Lesnovski-Saint-_Joachom_Osogovski_and-saint_Prohor-Pchinski-Saint_Alexander_Cathedral_SofiaSaint Gabriel of Lesnovo, Saint Joachim of Osogovo and Saint Prohor Pchinski mosaic saint Alexander Nevski Cathedral Church, Sofia, Bulgaria

The Saints Prohor Pchinski, Joachim of Osogovo together with Saint Gabriel of Lesnovo according to Bulgarian Orthodox Church tradition are considered to be 3 of the many pupil monks of Saint John of Rila who spread the light of Holy Eastern Orthodox Christian faith in whole Bulgarian lands and from there towards Russia and far west Serbia, Croatia, Hungary who historically has been orthodox and later converted to Roman Catholicism.

The Dormition of Virgin Mary the Mother of the Lord Jesus Christ, the Eastern Orthodox Church view and few words on feast origin

Tuesday, August 17th, 2021

Dormition-of-Mother-of-God-Koimesis_Greek_Mosaic_at_Chora_Church_Constantinople

Dormition of the Mother of God is a feast highly venerated in both Eastern Orthodox Churches as well as Oriental Orthodox Churches (The Coptic Church and the Armenian Apostolic Church which venerated the feast not on a fixed date), whether the rest of Orthodox world do celebrate on 15 of August the Dormition of the Mother of God. The so called old calendar Churches do celebrate the feast on 28 of August as the old church calendar coincides with this date on the public national calendar the countries use nowadays, whether some of the Churches such as our Bulgarian Orthodox Church, the Romanian Orthodox Church as well the Greek orthodox Church do celebarete on 15 of August.

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The feast is one of the major Church feasts also in Western Roman Cathic church world known as the Assumption of Mary. The way the feast is venerated varyies, but it is important to say this feast is "The Summer Easter of the Church". In the ancient times the feast has been preceded in the Church by two fastings one for the Transfiguration of God Lord Jesus Christ that was venerated on 6th of August and one week fast preceding the Dormition or the Sleeping like death called in Church Slavonic Uspenie (falling asleep) that the Mother of God experineced before her righteous Soul passed to the Lord Jesus Christ. The painless death of the Mother of God has occured according to the Byzantine author Hypollitos of Thebes who lived in VIII centuryin 41 A.D., 11 years after Jesus's Crucifix and Glorious Resurrection.

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Bulgarian icon from year 1893

The Dormition term expresses the Church belief that Virgin Mary on her death bed has been in a completely peaceful state of the Soul that and did not suffered the terrible pains of death and division of soul and body that each of us the sinners faces because of her extraordinary righteousness and as a blessing of Christ for the ever Virgin, because of her humility and life lived in service of God, and poor and every of her near sides and for her unceasing prayer for the world that she attained even during her earthly life time. The belief of Dormition is not a Bible found doctrine but a Church tradiiton and due to that protestant do not consider it as of a high value but we orthodox firmly believe this was not mention in the bible, because the Mother of God herself unwillingness for glory because she found unworthy compared to the great miracles life, suffering and salvationory plan Jesus completed. The dormition of Mother of God is found in many of Apocryphal writtings which never become official part of the Church canon.

In the language of the scripture, death is often called a "sleeping" or "falling asleep" (Greek κοίμησις; whence κοιμητήριον > coemetērium > cemetery, "a place of sleeping"). A prominent example of this is the name of this feast; another is the Dormition of Anna, Mary's mother.

The first Christian centuries may be silent, but "The Dormition/Assumption of Mary" appears in a Greek document (attributed to John the Theologian) edited by Tischendorf published in The Ante-Nicene Fathers, dated by Tischendorf as no later than the 4th century. Then there is the apocryphal literature such as the Protoevangelium of James, regarding the end of the Virgin Mary's life, though it is asserted, without surviving documentation, that the feast of the Dormition was being observed in Jerusalem shortly after the Council of Ephesus.

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Dormition of the Mother of God, fresco from Gračanica, c. 1321. (See also:Palaiologian Renaissance)

Before the 4th-5th century Dormition was not celebrated among the Christians as a holy day and earlier it was perhaps not celebrated because the Church did not have time to celebrate too much of special feasts, as there was the era of heretics and gnostics from 1st –  2nd centuries which give birth to multiple heresies and the era of persecution that ended just about the 4th century. Only then the Church posessing freedom in the world could review its belief and clearly define the faith as earlier both Bishops (the apostle successors as the layman) was mostly busy with each one keeping their own faith instead of clearly documenting or giving separate feasts, until the 4th century many of the Church feasts of the martyr saints were still not recognized and known in the "Universal" Church around the world, because travelling was not so common as nowadays and each local established church by apostles strives to keep their faith in Christ and not clear up Church dogmas (this gave raise of course to the VII ecumenical councels who followed from 3rd to 8 centuries.).
 

Epiphanius of Salamis who become bishop of Salamis toda's Cypros (circa 310/20 – 403), a Jew by birth, born in Phoenicia, converted to Christianity in adulthood and lived as a monk for over 20 years in Palestine from 335–340 to 362, writes in "Panarion" (his book on Herisology) in "Contra antidicomarianitas" about the death of the Virgin Mary the following:

 

"If any think am mistaken, moreover, let them search through the scriptures any neither find Mary's death, nor whether or not she died, nor whether or not she was buried—even though John surely travelled throughout Asia. And yet, nowhere does he say that he took the holy Virgin with him. Scripture simply kept silence because of the overwhelming wonder, not to throw men's minds into consternation. For I dare not say—though I have my suspicions, I keep silent. Perhaps, just as her death is not to be found, so I may have found some traces of the holy and blessed Virgin. …The holy virgin may have died and been buried—her falling asleep was with honour, her death in purity, her crown in virginity. Or she may have been put to death—as the scripture says, 'And a sword shall pierce through her soul'—her fame is among the martyrs and her holy body, by which light rose on the world, [rests] amid blessings. Or she may have remained alive, for God is not incapable of doing whatever he wills. No one knows her end. But we must not honour the saints to excess; we must honour their Master. It is time for the error of those who have gone astray to cease."


Saint Ambrosius of Milan ( Mediolan ) in 4th century says:

"Neither the letter of Scripture nor Tradition does not teach us that Mary had left this life as a consequence of suffering from bodily ulcers." pointing to her sufferless sleep like death.

Holy_Mother-of-God-Arbanasi-Monastery-three-handed-Troeruchica-Miracle-Making-icon-Bulgaria-Great_Tarnovo

The famous icon Holy Mother of God Three-handed (Troeruchica) Arbanasi Monastery of the Dormition of Mother of God near medieval capital of Bulgaria Veliko Tarnovo

Our Orthodox Church specifically holds,teaching that Mary died a natural death, like any human being; that her soul was received by Christ upon death; and that her body was resurrect on the third day after her repose, at which time she was taken up, bodily only, into heaven when the apostles, miraculously transported from the ends of the earth, found her tomb to be empty. The specific belief of us Orthodox is expressed in their liturgical texts used at the feast of the Dormition.

Mount-Olives-Marys-burial-tomb-entrane-to-tombThe rock-cut Tomb of Virgin Mary and its entrance, its front side covered in icons; eastern apse of the crypt


The holy body that was taken in Heaven after the Virgin's resurrection 3 days after her Dormition has been originally placed after the burial procession in 41 A.D. in the Church of the Sepulchre of Saint Mary, also known as the Tomb of the Virgin Mary (Hebrew: קבר מרים‎; Greek: Τάφος της Παναγίας) it is located (identified) by historians in the Kidron Valley – at the foot of Mount of Olives, in Jerusalem.

The-stone-bench-on-which-Virgin-Marys-most-pure-body-was-laid-out-Jerusalem-mary-sarcophagusThe stone bench on which the most pure body of the Virgin Mary (Theotokos) has been laid out

 

Let by the Holy Prayers of The Virgin Mary Theotokos, we find grace and God grants mercy upon anyone in torture, in fear in bitterness and sorrows, in weakness and sickness, to all broken-hearted, to all the leppers and mind sick and who lay on the death beds be granted with a painless death similar to hers.

Let the Mother of God keep and protect the Holy Land of Bulgaria and All The Orthodox Lands and the rest of lands, villages, cities and all inhabitants on earth !!! AMEN