A saint's day
St Spyridon the Wonderworker
St Spyridon was a shepherd on Cyprus, a married man with children, who spent everything he had on his neighbors and the homeless, and he became Bishop of Trimythous while remaining a shepherd at heart. At the First Ecumenical Council he squeezed a brick so that fire shot up, water dripped and dust remained, showing how three can be one in the Holy Trinity. His incorrupt relics rest on Corfu, in his own church.
The dates
- Kept on
- 12 December (25 December 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
On Corfu he is the “walking saint”: the silk slippers on his relics wear out from his travels to help people and are replaced, and the old slippers are given to churches.
Greeks honor him as the “Keeper of the City” of Corfu, while Russian piety asks him above all for a home, for help with money and for work; many read an akathist to him in hard times.
In the Russian folk calendar his day is called Spiridon Solntsevorot, Spiridon of the Solstice.
Name days
These names keep their name day on this feast: