A saint's day
St Sergius of Radonezh
The boy Bartholomew could not learn to read until a holy elder he met under an oak prayed over him and gave him a piece of prosphora, and from that day he read with ease. With his brother Stephen he went into the forest and built a small church to the Holy Trinity, and there, as the monk Sergius, he founded the monastery that became the Holy Trinity-St Sergius Lavra. Humble and laboring with his own hands, he became the spiritual father of Russian monasticism; he reposed in 1392, and his incorrupt relics rest at the Lavra.
The dates
- Kept on
- 25 September (8 October on the Old Calendar)
- Next, New Calendar
- Next, Old Calendar
The New Calendar (the Greek, Antiochian, Romanian and Bulgarian churches, the OCA and most converts) keeps fixed feasts on the church date; the Old Calendar (the Russian, Serbian and Georgian churches, Jerusalem and Mount Athos) keeps them 13 days later. Pascha and the feasts that follow it are kept on the same day by both.
How the day is kept
Russian students pray to him before exams, and parents for children who find study hard; in Greek usage the Three Holy Hierarchs are the patrons of learning.
Pilgrims from the whole Orthodox world come to his relics in the Trinity Cathedral of the Lavra.
St Andrei Rublev's icon of the Holy Trinity was painted in his honor.
Name days
These names keep their name day on this feast: