Saints with Funny Names

Remember the 1990s when Ashley, Ashleigh, and Ashlee all ended up in the same kindergarten? That’s what it was like to research St. Hippolytus. I found two different Hippolytuses who claim the feast day, Aug. 13 and a third thrown in on…

July’s saint may have a funny name but let me tell you, Olha (890 – 969) was no joke. Just ask the Drevlians. They murdered her husband so she murdered them — 5,000 of them. Mafia style. That was before her conversion to Christianity. Olha,…

Finally, a woman! Have you noticed that most of our saints with funny names are men? It’s not my fault. There just aren’t that many women on the Eastern calendar. In June alone the ratio of females to males is 3:22. It’s really nobody’s…

We interrupt this Eastern Rite calendar to bring you St. Joseph. Why? Because St. Joseph (feast day March 19 on the Western calendar, patron of the universal Church) does not have a separate feast day on the Eastern calendar. This may lead…

After having the benefit of 2,000 years of Christianity, we sometimes take the teachings of the Gospel for granted. There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free person, there is not male and female; for you are all one in…

Now I am going to tell you about something that until I did this article I knew next to nothing about — Advent fasting customs of the Eastern Rite. All I knew is that the period of Advent starts way sooner than Advent in the West. Instead…

When you read about the Eastern Rite saints who lived under Roman persecution, you might wonder if they were really as heroic as their biographers say they were. It was so long ago. Maybe people are exaggerating. Then you look at their…

St. Callinicus (feast day July 29) may be the perfect saint for our times, even though he lived in Asia Minor and died in the year 250. You see, he was born into a Christian home at a time when most of his neighbors were pagan. Imagine an…

St. Zacchaeus has one of the greatest conversion stories of all time, so much so that the Eastern Church gives him his own Sunday. Falling this year on Feb. 3, it is the first harbinger of a new pascal cycle. Remember how I told you last…

St. Matrona (fifth century) Feast day: Nov. 9 Here we have a saint who left her husband and daughter to become a monk. Nope. Not a typo. Matrona is complicated. So much so that you might reasonably wonder: Why is this person a saint? Let us…