Feasts

The Great Feasts and other fixtures of the Church's year — their history, meaning, hymnography and iconography.

• "Joy of All Who Sorrow" Icon of the Mother of God

  The "Joy of All Who Sorrow" (Vsekh Skorbyashchikh Radost) is one of the most beloved Russian icons of the Mother of God, its very name a confession of the Theotokos as the consolat...

• "Seven Arrows" Icon of the Mother of God

  The "Seven Arrows" (Russian Semistrelnaya) is the great image of the Vologda land, and one of the very few Orthodox icons of the Mother of God that shows her without the Child. She...

• "The Sign" Icon of the Mother of God

  "The Sign" (Slavonic Znamenie) is one of the oldest and most widely reproduced iconographic types of the Mother of God in the Russian Church, showing the Theotokos with hands raise...

• Akhtyrka Icon of the Mother of God

  The Akhtyrka (Akhtyr) Icon of the Mother of God is a Ukrainian wonderworking icon found on 2 July 1739 by a priest of the town of Akhtyrka in the Kharkov region, who came upon it s...

• Ascension of the Lord

  The Holy Ascension of our Lord and God and Saviour Jesus Christ, kept on the fortieth day after Pascha and therefore always on a Thursday, is the Great Feast on which the Church ce...

• Balykino Icon of the Mother of God

  The Balykino (Balykinskaya) icon is a wonderworking image of the Mother of God of the Starodub country in the old province of Chernigov, on the border of what are now Russia and Uk...

• Beginning of the Indiction

  The Beginning of the Indiction, kept on September 1, is the Orthodox Church's new year: the first day of the annual cycle of feasts and fasts. Inherited from the fiscal calendar of...

• Beheading of the Forerunner

  On August 29 the Church keeps the Beheading of the Precious Head of the Holy and Glorious Prophet, Forerunner and Baptist John — the killing of the greatest of the prophets in the...

• Bogolyubskaya Icon of the Mother of God

  The Bogolyubskaya ("of Bogolyubovo," or "of the God-loving one") is among the oldest surviving Russian icons and the only one painted to record a vision at the moment of the vision...

• Circumcision of Christ

  On January 1, the eighth day after the Nativity, the Church keeps the Circumcision according to the Flesh of our Lord Jesus Christ — the day on which, as the Law of Moses appointed...

• Commemoration of the Fifth Ecumenical Council

  On July 25 the Church keeps the memory of the one hundred and sixty-five God-bearing Fathers who assembled at Constantinople from 5 May to 2 June of the year 553, under the Emperor...

• Commemoration of the Fourth Ecumenical Council

  On July 16 the Church keeps the memory of the six hundred and thirty God-bearing Fathers who assembled at Chalcedon, across the water from Constantinople, in October and November o...

• Commemoration of the Great Earthquake of 740

  On 26 October, joined to the feast of the Great-martyr Demetrius, the Church of Constantinople keeps the memory of a great and destructive earthquake that shook the city in the yea...

• Commemoration of the Second Ecumenical Council

  On May 22 the Church keeps the memory of the one hundred and fifty God-bearing Fathers who assembled at Constantinople from May to July of the year 381, under the Emperor Theodosiu...

• Conception of the Theotokos

  The Conception of the Most Holy Theotokos by the Righteous Anna (December 9), popularly the "Conception of Saint Anne," commemorates the conceiving of the Virgin Mary in the womb o...

• Cyprus Icon of the Mother of God

  The Cyprus Icon shows the Mother of God enthroned, the divine Infant on her arm, with an angel standing on either side — a composition of the Panachranta ("All-Pure") family, and o...

• Dedication of the Church of the Great-Martyr George at Lydda

  On November 3 the Church commemorates the dedication (consecration) of the church raised over the relics of the Great-Martyr George at Lydda — the ancient Diospolis (Lod) in Palest...

• Dedication of the Church of the Resurrection (Anastasis) in Jerusalem

  On September 13 the Church commemorates the dedication (Encaenia) of the Church of the Resurrection in Jerusalem — the great basilica complex raised by the emperor Constantine over...

• Dedication of the Church of the Theotokos at Blachernae

  A fixed commemoration of the Church of Constantinople, entered in the synaxarion on July 31: ἡ ἀνάμνησις τῶν Ἐγκαινίων τοῦ σεβασμίου οἴκου τῆς ὑπεραγίας Δεσποίνης ἡμῶν Θεοτόκου τοῦ...

• Dedication of the Church of the Theotokos at the Pege

  A fixed commemoration of the Church of Constantinople, kept on July 9: the anniversary of the consecration of the great church of the Mother of God at the Pege — "the Spring" — whi...

• Deposition of the Robe of the Theotokos at Blachernae

  On July 2 the Church keeps the laying-up of the precious Robe of the Most Holy Theotokos in the Holy Reliquary (Hagia Soros) of the shrine at Blachernae, in the north-western corne...

• Donskaya Icon of the Mother of God

  The Donskaya is a small double-sided panel of the 1390s, attributed to Theophanes the Greek or to a painter of his circle, and it is one of the three or four most venerated images...

• Dormition of the Theotokos

  The Dormition of our Most Holy Lady the Theotokos and Ever-Virgin Mary (August 15) is the last of the Twelve Great Feasts in the order of the church year and the crown of the fixed...

• Elevation of the Precious and Life-giving Cross

  The Universal Elevation (Exaltation) of the Precious and Life-giving Cross, September 14, is the Great Feast of the Lord on which the Church lifts up the Cross of Christ before the...

• Entry of the Lord into Jerusalem

  The Entry of our Lord into Jerusalem — Palm Sunday, in Greek Ἡ Κυριακὴ τῶν Βαΐων, the Sunday of the Palm-Fronds — is the Great Feast of the Lord on which the Church keeps the one p...

• Entry of the Theotokos

  The Entry of the Most Holy Theotokos into the Temple (November 21) is one of the Twelve Great Feasts, and the last of the festal cycle to arise. It keeps a tradition drawn from the...

• Feast of the Holy Chief Apostles Peter and Paul

  On June 29 the Church keeps in a single office the memory of the two apostles she calls prōtokoryphaioi, "chief and first-throned" — Peter, the fisherman of Galilee who confessed t...

• Finding of the Relics of the Holy Martyrs at the Gate of Eugenius

  On February 22 the Church of Constantinople keeps the finding of a great cache of martyrs' relics uncovered near the gate and tower of Eugenius, in the quarter of that name on the...

• First and Second Finding of the Head of the Forerunner

  On February 24 the Church keeps together the first and second discoveries of the Precious Head of John the Baptist — the severed head of the greatest of the prophets, hidden after...

• Founding of Constantinople

  On May 11 the Church keeps the anniversary of the dedication of Constantinople — the "birthday of the City" — when in the year 330 the Emperor Constantine the Great solemnly inaugu...

• Galaktotrophousa Icon of the Mother of God

  The Galaktotrophousa (Greek Γαλακτοτροφοῦσα, "she who nourishes with milk"; Slavonic Mlekopitatelnitsa) is the icon in which the Mother of God is shown nursing the Christ Child at...

• Gorbanevka Icon of the Mother of God

  The Gorbanevka (Gorbanevskaya) icon is the chief wonderworking image of the Poltava country. It is reckoned a copy of the Korsun icon — the image which the tradition ascribes to th...

• Iveron Icon of the Mother of God

  The Iveron Icon — in Greek the Portaitissa, "the Keeper of the Gate" — is the great wonderworking icon of the Iviron Monastery on Mount Athos, and among the most celebrated icons o...

• Kasperov Icon of the Mother of God

  The Kasperov icon is the chief wonderworking image of the Mother of God in the southern Ukrainian lands — of Kherson and above all of Odessa, where it has been kept in the Dormitio...

• Kazan Icon of the Mother of God

  The Kazan Icon of the Mother of God is among the most beloved and most widely copied of Russian icons. It was found in the ashes of Kazan in 1579, a little girl having been shown i...

• Kolochsk Icon of the Mother of God

  The Kolochsk Icon appeared in the year 1413, in the reign of the Grand Prince Basil I, some fifteen versts from the town of Mozhaisk in the western marches of Muscovy, near the vil...

• Meeting of the Lord

  The Meeting (Presentation) of our Lord and God and Saviour Jesus Christ (February 2) is one of the Twelve Great Feasts and a feast of the Lord, kept on the fortieth day after the N...

• Minsk Icon of the Mother of God

  The Minsk Icon is the chief wonderworking image of Belarus and the one whose history joins the beginning and the end of the medieval Rus': by tradition it is one of the icons broug...

• Miracle of the Archangel Michael at Chonae

  On September 6 the Church commemorates the miracle wrought by the Archangel Michael at Chonae, near the ancient Colossae in Phrygia. Beside a wonderworking spring of the Archangel...

• Nativity of Christ

  The Nativity according to the Flesh of our Lord and God and Saviour Jesus Christ (December 25) is the Great Feast of the Lord that celebrates the birth of the Son of God at Bethleh...

• Nativity of the Forerunner

  On June 24 the Church keeps the Nativity of the Honourable and Glorious Prophet, Forerunner and Baptist John — the birth of the child promised to the aged priest Zachariah by the a...

• Nativity of the Theotokos

  The Nativity of the Most Holy Theotokos (September 8) is the first Great Feast of the church year: the birth of the Virgin Mary at Jerusalem to the righteous Joachim and Anna, aged...

• Nicaea Icon of the Mother of God

  The Nicaea Icon is commemorated on May 28 for a single incident: in the year 304, while the city of Nicaea in Bithynia was under siege, a soldier named Constantine found an icon of...

• Pascha

  Pascha — the Holy and Great Sunday of the Resurrection — is not one of the Twelve Great Feasts. It stands above and outside them, and the Church's own name for it, sung in the eigh...

• Passion Icon of the Mother of God

  The Passion Icon (Russian Strastnaya) is an image of the Hodegetria type in which two angels hover on either side of the Mother of God bearing the instruments of the Passion — the...

• Pentecost

  The Holy Pentecost — the Descent of the Holy Spirit upon the Apostles — is the Great Feast kept on the fiftieth day from Pascha, always a Sunday, and the crown and close of the who...

• Placing of the Precious Cincture of the Theotokos

  On August 31, the last day of the church year, the Church keeps the laying-up of the precious Cincture — the Zone, Girdle, Sash or Belt — of the Most Holy Theotokos in the Holy Rel...

• Pochaev Icon of the Mother of God

  The Pochaev Icon is the great wonderworking image of the Orthodox West — of Volhynia, Galicia and the borderlands where Orthodoxy, Rome and Islam met and contended — and one of the...

• Procession of the Precious and Life-giving Cross

  August 1 keeps the memory of the procession of the relic of the True Cross through Constantinople: on the last day of July the wood was taken from the treasury of the Great Palace...

• Protection of the Theotokos

  The Protection (Pokrov) of the Most Holy Theotokos (October 1) commemorates a vision granted at the church of Blachernae in Constantinople: during an all-night vigil, Andrew the Fo...

• Prousiotissa Icon of the Mother of God

  The Prousiotissa is the wonderworking icon of the Monastery of Prousos, high in the mountains of Eurytania in south-western Greece above Karpenisi — the greatest Marian shrine of t...

• Restoration of the Church of the Theotokos at Neorion

  The Greek synaxarion for August 31 closes the church year with three notices: the deposition of the Cincture of the Theotokos at the Chalkoprateia, the miracle wrought by the Cinct...

• Sign of the Cross which appeared over Jerusalem

  On 7 May in the year 351, in the first months of the episcopate of Saint Cyril of Jerusalem, a great cross of light stood in the sky above the Holy City, reaching from Golgotha to...

• Synaxis of the Archangel Gabriel

  On the day after the Annunciation the Church gathers (Greek synaxis) to honour the archangel Gabriel, the minister of the good tidings — the "strength of God," whose name the whole...

• Synaxis of the Archangel Michael and the Other Bodiless Powers

  On November 8 the Church keeps the chief of her feasts of the holy angels: the Synaxis (assembly) of the Archangel Michael and all the Bodiless Powers of heaven. The feast gathers...

• Synaxis of the Forerunner

  On January 7, the day after the Theophany, the Church keeps the Synaxis of the Holy and Glorious Prophet, Forerunner and Baptist John — the assembly of the faithful in honour of th...

• Synaxis of the Most Holy Theotokos

  On December 26, the second day of the Nativity of Christ, the Church keeps the Synaxis of the Most Holy Theotokos — the assembly of the faithful to honour the Virgin Mary, the Moth...

• Synaxis of the Theotokos of Miasena

  The synaxis of the Theotokos of Miasena, kept on September 1, commemorates the wonderworking icon of the Mother of God of the monastery of Miasena, near Melitene in eastern Asia Mi...

• Synaxis of the Three Holy Hierarchs

  On January 30 the Church keeps the common feast of the three great hierarchs and ecumenical teachers — Basil the Great, Archbishop of Caesarea; Gregory the Theologian, Archbishop o...

• The "Paramythia" (Consolation) Icon of the Mother of God

  The Paramythia — "Consolation" or "Comfort" (Greek Παραμυθία) — is a wonderworking icon of the Mother of God kept at the Monastery of Vatopedi on Mount Athos. The tradition relates...

• The Annunciation of the Most Holy Theotokos

  The Annunciation (Greek Evangelismos, "the good tidings") commemorates the day on which the archangel Gabriel was sent from God to the Virgin Mary at Nazareth to announce that she...

• The Life-Giving Fountain

  The one feast of the Mother of God that the Church keeps inside Bright Week, on the Friday of the Renewal — the only proper commemoration the Pentecostarion admits into a week that...

• Theophany

  The Holy Theophany of our Lord and God and Saviour Jesus Christ (January 6) is the Great Feast of the Lord that celebrates his Baptism by John in the river Jordan — and, at that ba...

• Third Finding of the Head of the Forerunner

  On May 25 the Church keeps the third and last of the discoveries of the Precious Head of John the Baptist: not a finding in Palestine or Syria, as the first two were, but a finding...

• Three-Handed Icon of the Mother of God

  The Trikheirousa — in Slavonic the Troeruchitsa, "she of the three hands" — is the wonderworking icon of the Serbian monastery of Hilandar on Mount Athos, and one of the most immed...

• Tikhvin Icon of the Mother of God

  The Tikhvin Icon is one of the four or five most venerated icons of the Mother of God in Russia and, with the Vladimir and Kazan images, one of the national protectresses. Traditio...

• Tolga Icon of the Mother of God

  The Tolga Icon is the great wonderworking image of the Upper Volga, and the only one whose feast records not a deliverance or a translation but a night's vision: on August 8, 1314,...

• Transfiguration of the Lord

  The Holy Transfiguration of our Lord and God and Saviour Jesus Christ (August 6) is the Great Feast of the Lord on which the Church celebrates what happened upon the mountain when...

• Translation of the Image Not-Made-by-Hands from Edessa to Constantinople

  On August 16 the Church keeps the reception into Constantinople, in the year 944, of the Holy Mandylion — the linen cloth of Edessa on which, the tradition holds, the Lord himself...

• Translation of the Relics of Ignatius the God-bearer

  On January 29 the Church keeps the translation of the relics of the Hieromartyr Ignatius the God-bearer, Bishop of Antioch, who was devoured by beasts in the amphitheatre at Rome a...

• Translation of the Relics of John Chrysostom

  On January 27 the Church keeps the translation of the relics of John Chrysostom, Archbishop of Constantinople, from Comana in Pontus — where the exiled hierarch had died on the for...

• Veneration of the Precious Chains of the Apostle Peter

  On January 16 the Church venerates the precious chains (fetters) with which Herod Agrippa bound the Apostle Peter when he cast him into prison at Jerusalem, from which an angel of...

• Vladimir Icon of the Mother of God

  The Vladimir Icon is the most venerated icon of the Russian Church and, in the judgement of art historians, one of the supreme surviving works of Byzantine painting. A Constantinop...