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Kshots
Fan or Flabellum



The liturgical fan that we call the “kshots” in Armenian is also known as the flabellum or rhipidion. It is a round, ornately-embossed plate of silver, bronze or other metal, about twelve or more inches in diameter, with small bells coupled around the perimeter. The disk is attached to the top of a rod five or six feet long. As an accompaniment to certain chants of the Divine Liturgy, an altar server grasps the pole with the one hand and shakes it left and right at the wrist so that the bells jingle in rhythm to the music. The kshots is also commonly carried in liturgical processions. So the kshots is essentially a musical instrument.


In the early church, however, the kshots was used by the deacons to protect the altar, and especially the Eucharistic bread and wine, from dust and flies. Very early the liturgical fan came to be associated with the wings of the angels. In the Bible the Prophet Isaiah saw a vision of God surrounded by six-winged angels called Seraphim [Isaiah 6:2]. Images of angels are often embossed into the faces of the kshots. The oscillation of the kshots at the altar likewise reminds us that during the Divine Liturgy we stand in the presence of almighty God.
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Mary and Jesus


The image of Mother Mary and Baby Jesus are common on the Armenian Altar.


The image displayed in St George is different from many of the other Armenian Churches. Our canvas features Mary and the Baby Jesus as they are dipicted in Raphael's Sistine Modonna.


More often on Armenian altars, Mary is seated on a throne with Child Jesus on her knees or in her arms on her left, holding a sceptre in her right hand. There is often a globe on the knee of the Child Jesus with a cross on it, and the right hand of Jesus is in a blessing position.
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Processional Cross


The Processional Cross is used in special services and to lead spiritual processions in the Armenian Church.


Early in The Badarak when the altar and the Eucharistic gifts have been prepared, the curtain opens and the deacons lead the priest around the altar and down into the nave. The priest offers incense to the main and side altars, the baptismal font, the sacred icons, and all the people.


The Procesional Cross then leads as the priest makes his way around the church, the faithful come up to him, kiss the hand cross and say, Heeshescheer yev zees arachee anmah kareenun Asdoodzo [Remember me, too, before the immortal Lamb of God]. This is an acknowledgment that during the Divine Liturgy we encounter "the Lamb of God," Jesus Christ himself. The people ask that the priest pray for them in the presence of Jesus.


The procession marks the beginning of the Liturgy of the Word. Everything until this point has been a preparation for the Liturgy of the Word and the Eucharist, the two components of the Badarak. The Liturgy of the Word concerns the Word of God, Jesus Christ. He comes to his people in the public reading of the Bible, and especially when the deacon solemnly chants a passage from one of the four gospels (Matthew, Mark, Luke, John). Every prayer, psalm, hymn and ritual during this part of the Divine Liturgy is related to Jesus Christ as the Word, the supreme expression of God. This idea is inspired by the Gospel according to John: "In the beginning was the Word and the Word was with God and the Word was God" [John 1:1].
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The Aghavnee


The aghavnee is a dove-shaped vessel containing the holy Myron (chrism). Its normal place is near the baptismal font, but sometimes it is placed on a gradine of the main altar.
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The Chalice


The normal place for the chalice is in the niche in the north wall of the khoran (apse). It is only brought out to the main altar during the celebration of the Divine Liturgy, at the service of Washing the Feet on Holy Thursday, and on the vigil of high feasts.
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The Gospels


The book of the Gospels, ornately bound, is placed in the center of the altar. During the Divine Liturgy it is placed on the altar’s right side (the left side as you face the altar) to make room for the holy chalice.
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The Khorhrtadedr
Book of the Mystery


On the right side as you face the altar is a small table-top bookstand on which the Khorhrtadedr is placed open. This book contains all the prayers offered audibly and inaudibly by the priest celebrating the Divine Liturgy.
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The Pastoral Staff


An Armenian bishop or priest who holds the degree of doctor of theology carries a pastoral staff. It is formed with either a single or double serpent to signify the wisdom of the office. A full-length staff would be approximately 5 feet long and end with a tau cross, like the letter T.
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The Srpadoop


The srpadoop is a small, ornamented metal box that contains a few particles of Holy Communion reserved from a previous celebration of the Badarak. The priest takes the srpadoop with him to administer Holy Communion to the sick and shut-ins. The srpadoop may be placed on the main altar or in the niche in the north wall of the apse.
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Baptismal Font
Our Spiritual Life Begins



Baptism is the first of the seven sacraments of the Christian Church, the others being: Confirmation (Chrismation), Marriage (Holy Matrimony), Holy Communion (Eucharist), Penance (Confession), Holy Orders (Ordination of Clergy), and Extreme Unction (last blessing given to a dying person).



Sacraments are outward or visible signs and ceremonies to give us God’s invisible graces. They are channels by which the Christian graces enter into our souls to feed, to nourish and to strengthen our spiritual life.



Baptism is the first sacrament which a Christian receives. Unless we are baptized, we are forbidden to receive any other sacrament. Any other sacrament received before receiving Baptism, will be invalid. That is why Baptism is called “the door of the Church.”



By Baptism we are made Christians, and are incorporated into the Church. Baptism gives new life to our souls. Through Baptism we become children of God, and co-heirs of Christ.



This sacrament, as well as each one of the others, was instituted by our Lord Himself. He gave us the first example by being Himself baptized by John the Baptist. On leaving this world the last order which He gave His disciples was: “Go and make disciples of all nations. Baptize them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.”



How was Baptism administered in ancient times?



In the early ages of Christianity Baptism was administered without special baptismal fonts. It was administered in rivers and pools. Jesus Himself was baptized in the River Jordan. St. Gregory, the Enlightener of Armenia, baptized King Tiridat, the first Christian King of Armenia, and thousands of others in the River Euphrates.



Indoor baptisms were, however, not uncommon even in the Apostolic age. St. Paul, for example, was baptized indoors. For the sake of privacy and solemnity indoor baptism came to be the rule.



Reverence for the rite itself, and for the water, which came in time to receive a special consecration, gave rise to the use of a special font for the sacrament of Baptism. This font became one of the most important parts of the Christian Church everywhere. The ancient practice was to have it hewn out of a solid piece of rock.



In the Armenian Church, according to ancient custom, the first part of the ceremony was performed outside the door of the church. This symbolic practice, however, is no longer kept. At present, the infant is brought to the church. While the godfather is holding the infant in his arms, the priest recites, in the name of the infant, some penitential psalms, makes a triple renunciation of Satan, and then recites the Creed.



Then the priest, together with the godfather and those attending, goes to the baptismal font. Water is poured into the font. The priest says a blessing over the water. In the meantime the child is taken to be undressed and brought back. The priest then asks the godfather, “What does this child request?” The godfather replies, “Faith, hope, and love; to be baptized and to be justified, to be cleansed from sins, to be delivered from evil, and to serve God.”



The priest then asks the name of the infant, holds him up, and then immersing him in the water says: “(name), Servant of God, has come as a catechumen to be baptized; he is now baptized in the name of the Father, of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit; being saved by the blood of Christ from the servitude of sin, receives the sonship of the heavenly Father, to be co-heir with Christ and a temple of the Holy Spirit.” While saying this the priest immerses the infant three times in the water. In this act of immersion in consecrated water consists the essence of Baptism.



Baptism by “dipping” or “immersion” was the universally accepted custom in the Church from the beginning. This is testified even by the Fathers of the Western Church, where at present it is a general practice to baptize by “sprinkling” or “pouring.” Immersion means dipping the whole body of the baptized in the water.



Since the grace of Baptism is absolutely necessary for all men, therefore this Sacrament must be denied to none, not even to infants. On this principle Infant Baptism became normal in the Church as soon as circumstances allowed. One of the aims of the Baptism is the forgiveness of all sins, including the original sin, in which we are born to this world. As original sin is universal, and the need for release from it is universal, therefore the Church wisely and justly allows infants to receive the Grace which cleanses them from the stains of the original sin and gives them, in their innocency, the equipment to fight victoriously against sin. Whole households, which included infants, were baptized by the Apostles (Cf. 1 Cor. 1: 16, Acts 10: 47, 16: 33).



“Just as parents provide the necessary physical cleansings of the child, supply it with food, guide it and educate it without regard to the will of the child, so, having in view the spiritual progress and wellbeing of their child, they provide for its spiritual regeneration and oversee its spiritual needs.”



From the earliest times a new name was given to the catechumen at Baptism, even if the receiver of this sacrament already had a name. Unusual and pagan names should be avoided when giving a new name to a child. It is always recommended that the name of a saint should be given because the name given at Baptism is the child’s “Christian” name.


At the Baptism someone should assist at the ceremony to make the profession of the faith on behalf of the child. Such a person is called godfather (in Armenian, “Gunka-hayr” which rhymes with hire). The duty of the godfather is to see that the child is brought up as a good Christian, if this is not done by the parents. In the Armenian Church there is only one godfather, of the male sex. The wife of a godfather may be considered as godmother but she never assists at the ceremony in any formal capacity. The godfather should be over 12 years old. He must be a member of the Armenian Church. One who is not a member of the Armenian Church cannot be a godfather at an Armenian Baptism. Also, those who neither know nor practice their faith should not be chosen as godfathers. Too many people choose godfathers for their children for reasons other than spiritual.



Baptism is necessary for salvation. The parents must not take the risk of depriving their children of the benefits of this sacrament. Parents who put off Baptism for a long time, or entirely neglect it, are endangering the eternal salvation of their children. Responsible people always should remember the warning of the Gospel, “Unless a man be born again of water and spirit he cannot enter the Kingdom of God.” This is what our Lord said.



The priest is the usual minister of Baptism; therefore, administration of the Sacrament, under all normal conditions, must be at the hands of the priest. If there is a danger to the life of an unbaptized baby, any one else may and should christen the baby. In such emergency cases it is sufficient to sprinkle or apply some water on the forehead or any part of the body, giving a name and using the proper formula: “(name) is now baptized in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.” Should the person so baptized recover, he must be brought to the church and his baptism must be normalized and validated by receiving the remaining parts of the ritual, at the hands of a regular priest. Such extraordinary Baptism is lawful only in the event of absolute and dire necessity.



After Baptism and Confirmation a certificate is given. It should be very carefully kept. Parents should tell their children when and where they were baptized, so that even if the certificate is lost the registration may be traced.



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Candle Lighting
a personal conversation



One of many pious Christian customs is the lighting of candles. This custom is usually performed before a consecrated painting of a saint or saints. The faithful light candles and offer a prayer either for the living or the dead, and in certain instances when making a vow. A person may ask for the intercession of the saint represented in the painting, or of any saint close to his/her heart.
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Khachkar
Armenian Stone Cross



The Armenians, who recognized Christianity as their state religion at the beginning of the fourth century, have long maintained an independent Christian tradition. Living on the eastern border of Byzantium, they frequently installed imposing stone crosses called Khatchkars as memorials to the dead and to mark the location of significant events during the medieval period. The elaborate interlace frame on this Khatchkar contains a monumental cross resting on the heads of the four evangelists, the authors of the Gospels. The large head of Saint Matthew’s angel presides over the smaller heads of Saint Mark’s lion, Saint Luke’s ox (on its side), and Saint John’s eagle (in profile). The Khatchkar is from northern Armenia,a region that fell to the Mongols in the early thirteenth century, soon after the Khatchkar was carved.
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Kshots
Fan or Flabellum



The liturgical fan that we call the “kshots” in Armenian is also known as the flabellum or rhipidion. It is a round, ornately-embossed plate of silver, bronze or other metal, about twelve or more inches in diameter, with small bells coupled around the perimeter. The disk is attached to the top of a rod five or six feet long. As an accompaniment to certain chants of the Divine Liturgy, an altar server grasps the pole with the one hand and shakes it left and right at the wrist so that the bells jingle in rhythm to the music. The kshots is also commonly carried in liturgical processions. So the kshots is essentially a musical instrument.


In the early church, however, the kshots was used by the deacons to protect the altar, and especially the Eucharistic bread and wine, from dust and flies. Very early the liturgical fan came to be associated with the wings of the angels. In the Bible the Prophet Isaiah saw a vision of God surrounded by six-winged angels called Seraphim [Isaiah 6:2]. Images of angels are often embossed into the faces of the kshots. The oscillation of the kshots at the altar likewise reminds us that during the Divine Liturgy we stand in the presence of almighty God.
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Mary and Jesus




The image of Mother Mary and Baby Jesus are common on the Altar of an Armenian Church.


The image displayed in St George is different from many of the other Armenian Churches. Our canvas features Mary and the Baby Jesus as they are dipicted in Raphael's Sistine Modonna.


More often on Armenian altars, Mary is seated on a throne with Child Jesus on her knees or in her arms on her left, holding a sceptre in her right hand. There is often a globe on the knee of the Child Jesus with a cross on it, and the right hand of Jesus is in a blessing position.
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Mesrob the Vartabed
known as Mashdotz - 438 A.D.



St. Mesrob was born in the village of Hatzegatz in the province of Daron. In his early years, he learned both Greek and Persian and served in the Armenian royal court. Later, he decided to enter the ranks of the clergy, and with some other young men he went to preach in the province of Koghtn around 395 A.D. During this period, he felt the great need of the Armenian people for an alphabet of their own, so he petitioned Catholicos Sahag, and together they requested the aid of King Vramshabouh.


After much research and travel, Mesrob was able to come up with the skeleton of an alphabet. However, it did not meet the needs of the Armenian language. According to tradition, while meditating in a cave near the village of Palu, the saint had a vision, in which “the hand of God wrote the alphabet in letters of fire.” Upon his return to the Catholicos and king, the saint was received with great honors and much joy.


Immediately after the discovery of the alphabet, the Holy Translators worked to translate the Bible; the first words written in the Armenian language were from the Book of Proverbs: “To know wisdom and instruction; to perceive the words of understanding” (Proverbs 1:2). They also opened schools to teach the newly-discovered alphabet, among whose students were the famous translators Yeghisheh, Movses, Tavit, and Vartan.


After the discovery of the alphabet, St. Mesrob spent many years translating and writing literary and ecclesiastical works. He went to many provinces where paganism still existed and preached the word of God in the people’s own language, with the light of the Holy Gospels. During this period, he was invited to Georgia and Caucasian Albania, where he likewise invented alphabets to suit the respective local languages. His life’s works have been recorded by one of his famous students, Goriun, in his book, The Life of Mashdots. St. Mesrob was buried in Oshagan in the province of Vaspouragan, where a beautiful cathedral has been built in his honor, and where one may go and pay homage at the saint’s tomb to the present day.


The Book of Ritual used in the Armenian Church bears the name “Mashdots” and is dedicated to this great saint. Although compiled at a later date, it is based on an earlier sacramental anthology attributed to Mashdots.


St. Mesrob gave the Armenian people the most precious of gifts and continues to serve as an inspiration to all generations. Beloved by all, St. Mesrob is a special inspiration to Armenian writers and poets.
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Pastoral Staff




An Armenian bishop or priest who holds the degree of doctor of theology carries a pastoral staff. It is formed with either a single or double serpent to signify the wisdom of the office. A full-length staff would be approximately 5 feet long and end with a tau cross, like the letter T.
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Pastoral Staff




An Armenian bishop or priest who holds the degree of doctor of theology carries a pastoral staff. It is formed with either a single or double serpent to signify the wisdom of the office. A full-length staff would be approximately 5 feet long and end with a tau cross, like the letter T.
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Pastoral Staff




An Armenian bishop or priest who holds the degree of doctor of theology carries a pastoral staff. It is formed with either a single or double serpent to signify the wisdom of the office. A full-length staff would be approximately 5 feet long and end with a tau cross, like the letter T.
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Pastoral Staff




An Armenian bishop or priest who holds the degree of doctor of theology carries a pastoral staff. It is formed with either a single or double serpent to signify the wisdom of the office. A full-length staff would be approximately 5 feet long and end with a tau cross, like the letter T.
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Pastoral Staff




An Armenian bishop or priest who holds the degree of doctor of theology carries a pastoral staff. It is formed with either a single or double serpent to signify the wisdom of the office. A full-length staff would be approximately 5 feet long and end with a tau cross, like the letter T.
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Pastoral Staff




An Armenian bishop or priest who holds the degree of doctor of theology carries a pastoral staff. It is formed with either a single or double serpent to signify the wisdom of the office. A full-length staff would be approximately 5 feet long and end with a tau cross, like the letter T.
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Pastoral Staff




An Armenian bishop or priest who holds the degree of doctor of theology carries a pastoral staff. It is formed with either a single or double serpent to signify the wisdom of the office. A full-length staff would be approximately 5 feet long and end with a tau cross, like the letter T.
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Pastoral Staff




An Armenian bishop or priest who holds the degree of doctor of theology carries a pastoral staff. It is formed with either a single or double serpent to signify the wisdom of the office. A full-length staff would be approximately 5 feet long and end with a tau cross, like the letter T.
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St Bartholomew
known as Nathaniel in the Gospel of John



Bartholomew (with St Thaddeus) brought Christianity to Armenia in the first century. Thus, both saints are considered the patron saints of the Armenian Apostolic Church.


The new faith spread throughout the land, and in 301 A.D., St. Gregory the Illuminator baptized the king of Armenia, Dertad the Great, along with many of his followers. Since Dertad was probably the first ruler to embrace Christianity for his nation, the Armenians proudly claim they were the first Christian state.


St. Bartholomew was a doctor in Jewish law and a dear friend of St. Philip the Apostle. He went willingly with Philip to see Christ and recognized the Savior immediately as the Son of God. On that initial meeting, Jesus uttered the glorious compliment, "Behold, an Israelite indeed in whom there is no guile!"


After having received the gifts of the Holy Spirit as one of seventy chosen by Jesus, Bartholomew evangelized Asia Minor, northwestern India, and Greater Armenia. In the latter country, while preaching to idolaters, he was arrested and condemned to death.



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St George
the namesake of our Parish



St. George has been classed from the beginning among the greatest saints and martyrs of the Christian Church. In spite of his popularity both in the East and in the West, we do not know much about his life, except that he was a high ranking military officer in the Roman Army towards the end of the third century. He was a brave soldier, as well as a virtuous Christian. He openly protested against the persecutions of Christians ordered by the Emperor Diocletian. He was bold enough to tear down the imperial order of persecution which was posted in the streets of Antioch. He was summoned before the imperial court for this crime. He bravely defended his religion and showed the falsehood of paganism, as well as the injustice of the order of persecutions. For his outspoken courage, he was beheaded after terrible tortures in the year 303.


St. George is always represented in pictures as a horseman killing a monster or dragon. This is symbolic, representing St. George fighting against the powers of evil, against injustice, and for the liberty of human conscience. However, Christian imagination has invented stories about St. George fighting with a real dragon. According to one of the most widely spread stories, a terrible monster had overrun the countryside around a certain city. The monster inhabited a cave nearby. Its breath alone caused pestilence whenever the monster approached the town. The inhabitants finding themselves helpless against this monster had no other means to keep it away from their town except by giving two lambs every day to satisfy its hunger and to keep it in its cave. But eventually there was no lamp or sheep or goat left in the town or in the vicinity and they were obliged to offer human beings to the dragon. Lots were cast to determine the victim.


On one occasion when the lot was cast, as usual, it fell on a daughter of the Governor of the city. The Governor offered all his wealth to purchase a substitute, but the people had pledged themselves that no substitutes should be allowed. Therefore, the poor maiden dressed as a bridge, was led to the cave of the monster. It happened that as they were taking the daughter of the governor out of town, St. George was passing by and seeing the poor girl crying so helplessly, ask the reason. Learning the cause, he decided to fight and kill the dragon. So he alone followed the maiden to the entrance of the cave. The maiden earnestly request him to leave, lest he also might perish. St. George, however, prepared himself to meet the monster. When the dragon appeared, St. George making the sign of the cross, attacked the monster and nailed it to the ground with his lance, then dragged it to the city like a wooden log. When the townsfolk saw the dragon, they were so terrified that everybody ran away. But St. George ordered them to have no fear, but believe in the true God, and in Jesus Christ, “through whose power,” he said, “I have killed this dragon.” Then he cut off the head of the dragon to make everybody realize that it was no longer a dangerous monster. The townsfolk, seeing the supernatural power of St. George, were converted to Christianity and were baptized.



The Governor and his wife were so happy at the miraculous rescue of their daughter, that they offered half of their possessions and wealth to St. George. But the saint, thanking them for the offer, replied that his mission was to go from place to place and to save helpless people like their daughter. “Only I would ask of you,” he said, “to protect all Christians under your rule, honor their clergy, and have pity on and take good care of all poor people.” He then went off to carry on his God-given mission.



Commonly when we think about Saints, we are apt to think of pale, quiet persons, who think about nothing else but their salvation and heavenly bliss. This is not always a true picture of a saint. A true saint is a person of strong convictions. He is a man of action, a real fighter. St. George is the best example of this kind of active saintliness. His example and courage should inspire us to become better fighting member of the Church, fighting against falsehood and evil.
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St Ghevont
the patron saint of the Armenian clergy



At the dawn of the 5th century, Armenia was an independent nation. Its people had invented an alphabet, translated the Holy Bible and established their first university. lt was during this era, known as the Golden Age of Literature, that a promising young man was ordained a priest. His name was Father Ghevont. He emerged as the most enlightened leader after the deaths of the great illuminators, St. Sahag and St. Mesrob.


In 432 AD, King Ardashes was deposed, exiled and jailed in Persia. The Persians were determined to destroy the Christianity of Armenia and establish their religion of fire-worship. The Persians delivered an official ultimatum. Father Ghevont, chief spokesman, drafted a firm and dignified refusal. The Persians were enraged. Battle was inevitable. The eloquence of Father Ghevont inspired General Vartan Mamigonian to take command to defend the Armenian Christian religion and homeland.


The Battle of Avarair in 451 AD represents the first military battle fought in the defense of Christendom in the history of the world.


On the eve of the battle, Father Ghevont stressed the supreme sacrifice of Jesus, before offering the sacrament of Holy Communion. During the ensuing battle, General Vartan was killed and the Armenian forces collapsed. Father Ghevont walked through the battlefield, administering last rites to the dying. He and other surviving clergy were captured, subjected to unbearable tortures and finally put to death by the sword.


St. Ghevont's courageous spirit, patriotism and devotion to the Armenian Church have been a source of pride and inspiration for fifteen centuries.


St. Ghevont is the patron saint of the Armenian clergy and is remembered two days before Vartanantz Day when St. Vartan and the spiritual victory of the Battle of Avarair are commemorated.
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St Ghevont
the patron saint of the Armenian clergy



At the dawn of the 5th century, Armenia was an independent nation. Its people had invented an alphabet, translated the Holy Bible and established their first university. lt was during this era, known as the Golden Age of Literature, that a promising young man was ordained a priest. His name was Father Ghevont. He emerged as the most enlightened leader after the deaths of the great illuminators, St. Sahag and St. Mesrob.


In 432 AD, King Ardashes was deposed, exiled and jailed in Persia. The Persians were determined to destroy the Christianity of Armenia and establish their religion of fire-worship. The Persians delivered an official ultimatum. Father Ghevont, chief spokesman, drafted a firm and dignified refusal. The Persians were enraged. Battle was inevitable. The eloquence of Father Ghevont inspired General Vartan Mamigonian to take command to defend the Armenian Christian religion and homeland.


The Battle of Avarair in 451 AD represents the first military battle fought in the defense of Christendom in the history of the world.


On the eve of the battle, Father Ghevont stressed the supreme sacrifice of Jesus, before offering the sacrament of Holy Communion. During the ensuing battle, General Vartan was killed and the Armenian forces collapsed. Father Ghevont walked through the battlefield, administering last rites to the dying. He and other surviving clergy were captured, subjected to unbearable tortures and finally put to death by the sword.


St. Ghevont's courageous spirit, patriotism and devotion to the Armenian Church have been a source of pride and inspiration for fifteen centuries.


St. Ghevont is the patron saint of the Armenian clergy and is remembered two days before Vartanantz Day when St. Vartan and the spiritual victory of the Battle of Avarair are commemorated.
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St Gregory of Narek
Our Greatest Poet



St. Gregory was born in the city of Narek about 950 A.D. He was a monk, poet, mystical philosopher, and theologian, born into a family of writers. St. Gregory received his education under the guidance of his father, Bishop Khosrov, author of the earliest commentary on the Divine Liturgy, and from Anania Vartabed, Abbot of Nareg Monastery. He and his two brothers entered monastic life at an early age.


He became a priest at the age of 25 and dedicated himself to God completely, always searching for the truth. Most of his life he lived in the monasteries of Narek where he taught at the monastic school. He launched his writings with a commentary on the “Song of Songs,” which was commissioned by an Armenian prince. Despite his reservations that he was too young for the task, he wrote the commentary, which is famous for its clarity of thought and language, and its excellence of theological presentation.


He also wrote a number of famous letters, sharagans, treasures, odes, melodies, and church writings. However, his masterpiece is considered to be his Book of Lamentations, commonly called “Narek,” in which his genius is displayed. (This work, published in 1673 in Marseille, has been translated into at least 30 languages.) Also known as The Prayer Book, it is described by St. Gregory as his last testament: “Its letters like my body, its message like my soul.” He called his book an “encyclopedia of prayer for all nations.” It was his hope that it would serve as a guide to prayer by people of all stations around the world.


St. Gregory of Narek is considered the greatest poet of the Armenian nation and its first and greatest mystic. His writing style and command of the Armenian language are unparalleled, and his saintly person has been an inspiration to the Armenian faithful for centuries. St. Gregory’s poetry is deeply biblical and is filled with images and themes of sacred history, while also distinguished with an intimate and personal character. Numerous miracles and traditions have been attributed to him and he is referred to as “the watchful angel in human form.” St. Gregory died in 1003 A.D.
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St Gregory
The Enlightener 240-332



St. Gregory, whose birth name was Suren, was the son of Prince Anag, who was sent to Armenia by the Sasanian, King of Kings of Iran, to assassi­nate King Khosrov of Armenia and facilitate the Iranian occupation of that country. Our ancestors were convinced that St. Gregory had received the grace of the Apostle because he was conceived near the grave of the Holy Apostle Thaddeus, the first enlightener of Armenia.


Anag and his brother succeeded in murdering King Khosrov in the city of Vagharshabad in about A.D. 240. They fled in haste, but the Armenian con­tingents stopped them near the city of Ardashad and slew Anag’s entire fam­ily. Only two infants, Gregory and his brother, were saved from the massacre. Their Christian nurse Sophia took the boys to Caesarea to Eski Shehir, southwest of modern Kayseri in Anatolian Turkey.


In Caesarea, Gregory was christened and brought up as a Christian. When Gregory was of age, he married a Christian girl named Mariam, daughter of David. Gregory and Mariam had two sons, Vrtanes and Arisdages. Three years after Arisdages’ birth, the couple willingly decided to part from each other. The elder child, Vrtanes, was placed in the care of his nurse and Mariam took the younger Arisdages with her as she withdrew to a convent. The custom of Christian couples dissolving their marriage ties to seek monastic life was common in the 4th century.


Gregory himself headed for Armenia to serve as King Drtad’s secretary. At the time of King Khosrov’s assassination, Drtad, the king’s son and heir to the throne, was still an infant. Drtad was saved and taken to Roman territory. Also saved was Drtad’s sister Khosrovitukhd. Drtad was raised under Roman protection and later joined the Roman legions. He achieved fame as a valiant soldier and the Romans recognized Drtad as king of Armenia and helped him to reclaim his ancestral throne in 274. While eastern Armenia was still under Iranian sovereignty, Drtad ruled for two years before he was ousted from his kingdom.


It was at that time (between 274 and 276) that Gregory, who had found out about his father’s vile deed, decided entered the service of Drtad under a false identity to make amends. He pursued his duties faithfully over a period of several years. Drtad, once again with Roman help, was permanently established on the throne of western (Roman) Armenia in 287. Soon after, the relationship between him and Gregory deteriorated. The ceremony of thanksgiving and sacrifice to the pagan goddess Anahid in the village of Yeres (province of Yegeghik in western Armenia), following Drtad’s great victory over the Persians. When Gregory refused to offer wreaths and thick branches of trees to the altar of the goddess at the king’s request, he was incarcerated.


King Drtad ordered him to be subjected to twelve different kinds of torture at a site located to the imme­diate south of Erez, the present-day city of Erzinjan in Turkey. A monastery dedicated to the passion of St. Gregory was erected at this site.


After withstanding numerous incidents of torture, St. Gregory was transferred to the city of Ardashad and thrown into a bottomless pit reserved for notorious criminals condemned to death and located in the citadel of that town.


It is reported that Gregory survived in the pit for thirteen years. Gregory’s survival was made possible through the charity of a widow who lived in the fortress where the dungeon was located. She had received a command in a dream to prepare a loaf of bread every day and throw it down into the pit. That served as the source of Gregory’s sustenance for thirteen years. At the site of the bottomless pit, there is now a monastery called Khor Virabi vank (Monastery of Khor Virab, a place of pilgrimage facing Mount Ararat and almost on the border of present-day Armenia and Turkey).


His Sons and Grandsons
The Feast of St. Gregory the Illuminator’s Sons & Grandsons


The calendar of the Armenian Church singles out four members of St. Gregory’s family—his two sons, Sts. Arisdagés and Vrtanés, and his grandsons, Sts. Krikoris and Husig—and assigns them a special day of commemoration called “The Feast of the Sons and Grandsons of St. Gregory.”


The day of commemoration (according to the present calendar in force since 1774-75) falls on the Saturday before the Third Sunday of Transfiguration. Originally it was observed on the Tuesday following the Fifth Sunday after Pentecost. The feast of the discovery of the relics of St. Krikoris, however, is observed separately on the Monday following the Fifth Sunday of the Exaltation. Excluded from this group of saints are the rest of the members of the Gregorid family, namely Sts. Nersés the Great, Sahag the Parthian, Vartan and his daughter Shushanig. The latter are commemorated on different days during the year.
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St Sahag
played a fundamental role in creating Armenian Alphabet



St. Sahag Bartev was born on September 29, 348 and was son of Nerses the Great while his mother belonged to the Mamigonian family as a part of the descendents of St. Gregory the Illuminator. Sahag was the 10th catholicos of the armenian church for a period of about 50 years and was elected in 387.


He worked alongside King Khosrov IV to restore the unity of Greater Armenia and after the exile of Khosrov III, he had a fundamental role with the next king Vramshabouh - who was Khosrovs brother - and made it possible to restore the catholicos.


Sahag supported St. Mesrob’s work leading to the creation of the Armenian alphabet along with the school network to teach the new alphabet in the beginning of the 5th century. Whenever Mesrob and other translators needed to make phonetic comparisons between Armenian and Greek they would ask their questions to Sahag because he received a good education and had stupendous knowledge of phonetics, rhetorical commentary and was well versed in philosophy.


Sahag worked to arrange the Armenian calendar of religious festivities and wrote many rules related to the ecclesiastic and secular classes and other issues. He also composed many liturgical hymns and prayers as well as played an important role in the translation of the Bible which was later completed in 435.


St. Sahag sadly passed away on September 7, 439 in the village Pelrots and province of Pagrevant. He was buried in the city of Ashtishat and region of Daron and his death ended the line of St. Gregory the Illuminator.


The Armenian Church remembers St. Sahag Bartevs memory twice a year, the first being 8 days before Paregentan and the second on the Thursday following the 4th Sunday of Pentecost and he is remembered with Mesrob as the Holy Translators.
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St Santookhd The Virgin
The First Martyr



The story of St. Santoukhd, the first Armenian saint, is inextricably bound to that of Saint Thaddeus. Thaddeus, one of Christ’s holy disciples, was charged by Peter, leader of the disciples, to spread Christianity in Armenia in the 1st century A.D.


In his travels to Urfa, St. Thaddeus healed King Abgar, king of the Armenians and Assyrians. This miracle, witnessed by others, led to the king’s conversion as well as the baptism and conversion of all the people of Edessa. Here St. Thaddeus built a church and ordained priests and deacons.


After leaving Urfa, the apostle traveled to northern Armenia, bearing the spear given him by Peter and a letter from King Abgar. He finally arrived at the town of Shavarshan, where King Sanadroug lived in the province of Arda. He preached the Word of Life, performed many astonishing miracles there, and baptized many believers.


One night the young and beautiful Princes Santoukhd, the king’s daughter, went to see Thaddeus and find out about the new religion herself. According to accounts, she changed her royal garments and dressed in ordinary clothes and was led by a servant to a house where these early Christian meetings were held. Santoukhd received instruction from Thaddeus, and when she declared her belief in Christ and was baptized, a sign from heaven designated her as a holy virgin.


Those who witnessed this event immediately believed. The news enraged her father, King Sanadroug, who ordered all believers to be slain. As the soldiers were about to kill Thaddeus, a tremor and bright light streaked across the sky, frightening the unbelievers and sparing the apostle. Some time after this, however, the king’s soldiers came and arrested Thaddeus as well as Princess Santoukhd.


Despite the king’s punitive actions, the number of Christians increased. Even some of the king’s soldiers who witnessed the miracles of Thaddeus became believers and converted. Further enraged, yet feeling some pity for his daughter, the king summoned Santoukhd from prison to give her a last chance to renounce her new faith and to claim allegiance to her father and his pagan gods.


Santoukhd was forced to choose between the crown and the sword. Because of her decision to stand firm in her Christian faith and reject her father’s false gods, she was subjected to torture and ultimately ordered to be executed. During these times when she was weak and at her lowest, she drew strength from St. Thaddeus who encouraged her to hold fast, reminding her that she was a holy virgin and would soon see Christ face to face.


One account of her death states that immediately after one of the soldiers thrust his sword into the holy virgin’s heart “a sweet fragrance filled the air and a light shone from heaven in the form of a fiery pillar that hovered over Santoukhd’s body for three days and three nights.” The more than 2,000 people that witnessed these events, it is said, all converted and were baptized that night. St. Santoukhd’s body was buried and entombed by St. Thaddeus at the same site.


St. Santoukhd was martyred on the 15th of December, and the apostle St. Thaddeus, eight days later.
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St Thaddeus
brought Christianity to Armenia



Saint Thaddeus was born in the Syrian city of Edessa in the first century. In the Gospel of Luke he was identified at Nathaniel. When Thaddeus first came to the city of Jerusalem for a feast day, he heard the preachings of John the Baptist.


After being baptised by John in the river Jordan, he stayed in Palestine. Once he was baptised he was chosen by Jesus to be one of the seventy disciples who were gifted with the power to cast out demons and perform miracles. They were sent out in pairs to every town and place Jesus himself intended to go.


After Jesus ascended to heaven, saint Thaddeus preached the wonderful news in places like Syria and Mesopotamia. He came preaching the lord to the city of Edessa and even converted King Abgar and his people to christianity. After preaching to King Abgar and his loyal Pagan followers and converting them to Christianity, he went out to other cities to convert loyal Pagans to Christ and the Gospel.


At the end of his life he went to the city of Beirut and founded a christian church there in order to spread christianity even more, and peacefully died in the year 44. (The place of his death is indicated as Beirut in the Slavonic MENAION, but according to other sources he died in Edessa. According to an ancient Armenian tradition, Saint Thaddeus, after various tortures, was beheaded by the sword on December 21 in the Artaz region in the year 50).
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St Vartan
invented the secret handshake



St. Vartan is considered one of the most famous heroes of the Armenian people. He, along with a brave band of Armenian soldiers, clergy, and companions, resisted the more powerful and larger Persian army and sacrificed their lives in order to defend their Christian faith. The famous battle took place on May 26, 451 A.D. on the plains of Avarayr, in the province of Artaz in Armenia.


Very few biographical details exist about St. Vartan’s early life. However, various sources confirm his noble lineage. He was the grandson of St. Sahag, who, in turn, descended from St. Nerses, and ultimately his lineage is traceable to St. Gregory the Illuminator. His father, Hamazasp, was the sparapet, or commander-in-chief, of Armenia at that time.


St. Vartan was well educated, most likely, by his grandfather, Catholicos Sahag. Instead of entering the priesthood as others in his family had done, he became a soldier. St. Vartan was considered the worthy representative and head of the Mamigonian clan, which in the royal succession of Armenian kings, held the fifth position. He was respected by the King of Persia as the commander-in-chief of the Armenian armies. Equally important as St. Vartan’s dedication to being a good soldier was St. Vartan’s dedication to being a faithful Christian. He believed that one cannot serve one’s people without serving Christ at the same time.


However, the political situation in Armenia during the mid-5th century made it increasingly difficult for Christian-Armenians to practice their faith. The Persians, who occupied the various Armenian regions, initially allowed the Armenians to retain their own rules and practices. However, because of the Armenians’ growing zeal for their religion and the consequent loss of Persian influence, the Persians retaliated.


The Persian ruler, King Yazdigerd II, was a ruthless, evil person, who was fanatically opposed to Christianity. He was particularly cruel to the Armenians. He imposed unfair taxes and demanded that the Armenians abandon their religion and submit to the precepts of the pagan Persian religion (Zoroastrianism) and its worship of fire.


It was during this time a decree was sent out demanding that Armenians convert to Zoarastrianism. In response, Armenian bishops, led by St. Leontius as well as St. Vartan, called a council at Ardashad and unanimously agreed to defend their faith at all costs. They sent their declaration of faith to the king, who became more enraged and issued further threats.


Ultimately the brave Christians led by St. Vartan were forced to fight against the Persians. Numerous accounts exist describing the undying faith of these Christian warriors as they prepared for battle. They prayed, recited the Twenty-Third Psalm, shared their food, and took communion together as they waited to face the powerful Persian army, which outnumbered them.


The battle has been described as bloody and horrendous. Although St. Vartan, along with many of his comrades, suffered defeat and died, their fight to defend their faith was not in vain. The Persians eventually stopped their efforts to convert Armenia to Zoroastrianism.


The Feast of Vartanantz, commemorated on the Thursday preceding Great Lent, is both a religious and nationalistic one. It is a symbol of the conscience, the faith, and the general rebellion of Armenians against tyranny, and their effort to preserve their identity and freedom. Although St. Vartan, as leader and patriot emerged as the most revered figure, the many other commanders, priests, and companions who numbered over 1,036 are also remembered on this feast day for their martyrdom. Many churches throughout the Diaspora have been named after the Vartanian saints, including St. Vartan Armenian Cathedral in New York City.
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The Aghavnee




The aghavnee is a dove-shaped vessel containing the holy Myron (chrism). Its normal place is near the baptismal font, but sometimes it is placed on a gradine of the main altar.
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The Ascension
40th day after his Resurrection



Luke chapter 24 tells how Jesus leads the eleven disciples to Bethany, a village on the Mount of Olives, where he instructs them to remain in Jerusalem until the coming of the Holy Spirit: "And it came to pass, while he blessed them, he parted from them, and was carried up into heaven.
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The Baptism
The Start of His Ministry



Jesus came to John the Baptist while he was baptising people in the River Jordan. ... As soon as Jesus was baptised, he came up out of the water. Heaven was opened and he saw the spirit of God descending like a dove and alighting on him. Then a voice said from heaven, “This is my own dear son with whom I am pleased.”
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The Baptism
The Start of His Ministry



Jesus came to John the Baptist while he was baptising people in the River Jordan. ... As soon as Jesus was baptised, he came up out of the water. Heaven was opened and he saw the spirit of God descending like a dove and alighting on him. Then a voice said from heaven, “This is my own dear son with whom I am pleased.”
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The Chalice




The normal place for the chalice is in the niche in the north wall of the khoran (apse). It is only brought out to the main altar during the celebration of the Divine Liturgy, at the service of Washing the Feet on Holy Thursday, and on the vigil of high feasts.
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The Gospels




The book of the Gospels, ornately bound, is placed in the center of the altar. During the Divine Liturgy it is placed on the altar’s right side (the left side as you face the altar) to make room for the holy chalice.
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The Gospels




The book of the Gospels, ornately bound, is placed in the center of the altar. During the Divine Liturgy it is placed on the altar’s right side (the left side as you face the altar) to make room for the holy chalice.
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The Gospels




The book of the Gospels, ornately bound, is placed in the center of the altar. During the Divine Liturgy it is placed on the altar’s right side (the left side as you face the altar) to make room for the holy chalice.
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The Khorhrtadedr




On the right side as you face the altar is a small table-top bookstand on which the Khorhrtadedr is placed open. This book contains all the prayers offered audibly and inaudibly by the priest celebrating the Divine Liturgy.
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The Martyrs
Ordinary Saints



It is a unique work of iconography, depicting the first “new” saints to be recognised by the Armenian Church in several centuries: the martyrs who (in the words of the official prayer of intercession) “gave their lives during the Armenian Genocide for faith and for the homeland.” The Holy Martyrs are portrayed in the dress typical of the Ottoman empire in 1915, and represent all ranks of Western Armenian society: men, women, children, and the elderly; merchants, intellectuals, artists, clergymen, farmers—all of whom perished in the brutal crime of 1915.


Although the icon directly depicts God the Father and the Holy Spirit, the figure of Christ is not explicitly shown. However, the artist’s intention is that the multitude of figures represents the mystical Body of Christ: his holy Church. In this way, all three Persons of the Holy Trinity are present in the icon.


In the manner of our Lord at his resurrection, the martyrs travel from Death to Life, emerging upon the precincts of God’s heavenly kingdom as the Church Victorious. Their path is bordered by desecrated khatchkars and the shattered remains of Armenian monuments, suggesting the centuries of sacred and material culture lost to the Armenians when they were driven from their historic land.


His Holiness Karekin II and a special council of bishops approved the icon for display as a sacred image. The original is on view at the museum of the Mother See of Holy Etchmiadzin, in the Republic of Armenia.


The consecration took place at the Mother See of Holy Etchmiadzin on 23 April, 2015 .
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The Martyrs
Ordinary Saints



Saints and martyrs loom large in Armenian Christian spirituality. We look up to them; but could we ever be like them? Is saintliness an unattainable ideal? Or something more ordinary?


* * *


Peter was sitting in the outdoor courtyard when a maid came up to him and said, “You too were with Jesus the Galilean.” But he denied it before everyone, saying, “I don’t know what you mean.” … After a little while the bystanders came up and said to Peter, “Certainly you are also one of them: your accent betrays you.” Then he began to invoke a curse on himself and to swear, “I do not know the man!” Immediately the cock crowed—and Peter remembered the saying of Jesus: “Before the cock crows, you will deny me three times.” He went outside, and wept bitterly. (Matthew 26:69-75)


Christ’s resurrection is our great story of victory, our assurance of triumph. God’s love for mankind won the contest against man’s age-old enemies, Sin and Death. The faithful declare their share in that victory when they announce: Christ was raised from the dead.


But to read the gospels, one is struck by the aura of failure that overhangs the figures in the resurrection story. Consider the situation of the disciple Peter. In a supreme moment of decision, he denies even knowing Jesus, the teacher he has followed for three years. It’s a revealing failure of discipleship—and worse, of friendship.


Yet Peter is clearly not a venal or evil man; in many ways he merely does what anyone else would do in the same situation. Peter’s failure merely proves how ordinary he is.


The all-too-ordinary disciple has plenty of company in the Easter story. Along with Peter’s denial, we witness the tearful despair of Mary Magdalene outside the tomb; the discouragement of the disciples on the road to Emmaus; the skepticism of Thomas; the terror of the main body of disciples hiding out in the upper room. We are tempted to ask: What are these stories doing in the Gospel at all?


Scripture offers no direct answer to this question; but it does lead us to an observation. The great Easter message of hope, redemption, and new life was Christ’s gift to the world. But to carry it forward into the world, Jesus entrusted his gift to messengers like these: the flawed and fearful, the discouraged and doubtful. Ordinary people, whose only distinction was that they had borne witness to something beyond understanding.


How remarkable it is to realize that these were the earliest Christian saints! For eventually, Peter and the rest became martyrs for Christ. They were individuals of no special distinction. But in light of our Lord’s resurrection they found the inner strength to stand with him, and not to deny him, in the end. “Saint” is the name we give to such people.


Sainthood has become a subject of renewed interest in the Armenian Church. In the coming week, we will mark the fifth anniversary of the canonization of the Holy Martyrs of the Armenian Genocide: the first Armenian saints to have been acknowledged as such in hundreds of years. The canonization in 2015 was a great milestone for our nation; but like all weighty moral undertakings, it did not occur without questions. Good and serious people questioned whether it was possible to acknowledge such a large company of people as saints of the church. Indeed, one can say with certainty that the vast majority of Genocide martyrs—people we now regard as saints—were flawed or otherwise unremarkable in their lives, apart from the circumstances of their sainthood.


But now, after five years of living in the consciousness of these “new” saints, perhaps we can find guidance in the Gospel account of those who witnessed the resurrection.


Who could live a saintly life?
The saints are indeed ordinary people. But far from being an obstacle to our understanding, the very ordinariness of the saints is what makes them examples—permits them to be aspirational figures for us. If they were superhuman beings with seamlessly virtuous lives, we might admire them; but we would have a ready excuse, an alibi, for failing to live up to their example. Realizing that they were ordinary people—men and women just like us—places the responsibility to live saintly lives directly on our shoulders.


This is surely one of the great moral revolutions Christianity brought into the world. To the imperial pagan world of Christ’s time, heroes were the offspring of gods—an unattainable distinction. The spectacle of heroic suffering—tragedy—was meant to make ordinary men tremble, while encouraging them to rest satisfied that, as mortals, they were beneath the notice of the careless pagan divinities.


Contrast this with the Christian saints, who have arisen from every station of life, and often are not even recognized as special until some moment of crisis. Their stories are meant to expose the deceit and injustice underlying the world around them—and to disrupt our own self-satisfied appraisal of the world around us. Their suffering is heroic not because it defies unfeeling gods, but because it imitates the experience of God’s Son—who lived, felt and suffered alongside his children, out of love for them.


This miraculous reality is the gift that all the saints embraced. However ordinary their lives may have been, carrying Christ’s resurrection in their hearts magnified them. When their moment of decision came—whether in the Apostolic Age, in 1915, or even today—they refused to deny their Lord.


It falls to us to accept our own role in this drama. As the Gospel shows, Christ entrusted his message of faith, love, and redemption to people no different from us. Carrying it forward has been the work of dozens, hundreds, millions of faithful individuals—our own ancestors among them. That gift now rests in our hands, and whether it continues to be carried forward through another century is largely up to us.


Let that thought guide us, as we experience the season of Christ’s resurrection in the company of our sainted Genocide Martyrs, and affirm with them the everlasting truth that Christ was raised from the dead.


By Christopher H. Zakian
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The Martyrs
Ordinary Saints



Saints and martyrs loom large in Armenian Christian spirituality. We look up to them; but could we ever be like them? Is saintliness an unattainable ideal? Or something more ordinary?


* * *


Peter was sitting in the outdoor courtyard when a maid came up to him and said, “You too were with Jesus the Galilean.” But he denied it before everyone, saying, “I don’t know what you mean.” … After a little while the bystanders came up and said to Peter, “Certainly you are also one of them: your accent betrays you.” Then he began to invoke a curse on himself and to swear, “I do not know the man!” Immediately the cock crowed—and Peter remembered the saying of Jesus: “Before the cock crows, you will deny me three times.” He went outside, and wept bitterly. (Matthew 26:69-75)


Christ’s resurrection is our great story of victory, our assurance of triumph. God’s love for mankind won the contest against man’s age-old enemies, Sin and Death. The faithful declare their share in that victory when they announce: Christ was raised from the dead.


But to read the gospels, one is struck by the aura of failure that overhangs the figures in the resurrection story. Consider the situation of the disciple Peter. In a supreme moment of decision, he denies even knowing Jesus, the teacher he has followed for three years. It’s a revealing failure of discipleship—and worse, of friendship.


Yet Peter is clearly not a venal or evil man; in many ways he merely does what anyone else would do in the same situation. Peter’s failure merely proves how ordinary he is.


The all-too-ordinary disciple has plenty of company in the Easter story. Along with Peter’s denial, we witness the tearful despair of Mary Magdalene outside the tomb; the discouragement of the disciples on the road to Emmaus; the skepticism of Thomas; the terror of the main body of disciples hiding out in the upper room. We are tempted to ask: What are these stories doing in the Gospel at all?


Scripture offers no direct answer to this question; but it does lead us to an observation. The great Easter message of hope, redemption, and new life was Christ’s gift to the world. But to carry it forward into the world, Jesus entrusted his gift to messengers like these: the flawed and fearful, the discouraged and doubtful. Ordinary people, whose only distinction was that they had borne witness to something beyond understanding.


How remarkable it is to realize that these were the earliest Christian saints! For eventually, Peter and the rest became martyrs for Christ. They were individuals of no special distinction. But in light of our Lord’s resurrection they found the inner strength to stand with him, and not to deny him, in the end. “Saint” is the name we give to such people.


Sainthood has become a subject of renewed interest in the Armenian Church. In the coming week, we will mark the fifth anniversary of the canonization of the Holy Martyrs of the Armenian Genocide: the first Armenian saints to have been acknowledged as such in hundreds of years. The canonization in 2015 was a great milestone for our nation; but like all weighty moral undertakings, it did not occur without questions. Good and serious people questioned whether it was possible to acknowledge such a large company of people as saints of the church. Indeed, one can say with certainty that the vast majority of Genocide martyrs—people we now regard as saints—were flawed or otherwise unremarkable in their lives, apart from the circumstances of their sainthood.


But now, after five years of living in the consciousness of these “new” saints, perhaps we can find guidance in the Gospel account of those who witnessed the resurrection.


Who could live a saintly life?
The saints are indeed ordinary people. But far from being an obstacle to our understanding, the very ordinariness of the saints is what makes them examples—permits them to be aspirational figures for us. If they were superhuman beings with seamlessly virtuous lives, we might admire them; but we would have a ready excuse, an alibi, for failing to live up to their example. Realizing that they were ordinary people—men and women just like us—places the responsibility to live saintly lives directly on our shoulders.


This is surely one of the great moral revolutions Christianity brought into the world. To the imperial pagan world of Christ’s time, heroes were the offspring of gods—an unattainable distinction. The spectacle of heroic suffering—tragedy—was meant to make ordinary men tremble, while encouraging them to rest satisfied that, as mortals, they were beneath the notice of the careless pagan divinities.


Contrast this with the Christian saints, who have arisen from every station of life, and often are not even recognized as special until some moment of crisis. Their stories are meant to expose the deceit and injustice underlying the world around them—and to disrupt our own self-satisfied appraisal of the world around us. Their suffering is heroic not because it defies unfeeling gods, but because it imitates the experience of God’s Son—who lived, felt and suffered alongside his children, out of love for them.


This miraculous reality is the gift that all the saints embraced. However ordinary their lives may have been, carrying Christ’s resurrection in their hearts magnified them. When their moment of decision came—whether in the Apostolic Age, in 1915, or even today—they refused to deny their Lord.


It falls to us to accept our own role in this drama. As the Gospel shows, Christ entrusted his message of faith, love, and redemption to people no different from us. Carrying it forward has been the work of dozens, hundreds, millions of faithful individuals—our own ancestors among them. That gift now rests in our hands, and whether it continues to be carried forward through another century is largely up to us.


Let that thought guide us, as we experience the season of Christ’s resurrection in the company of our sainted Genocide Martyrs, and affirm with them the everlasting truth that Christ was raised from the dead.


By Christopher H. Zakian
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The Martyrs
Ordinary Saints



Saints and martyrs loom large in Armenian Christian spirituality. We look up to them; but could we ever be like them? Is saintliness an unattainable ideal? Or something more ordinary?


* * *


Peter was sitting in the outdoor courtyard when a maid came up to him and said, “You too were with Jesus the Galilean.” But he denied it before everyone, saying, “I don’t know what you mean.” … After a little while the bystanders came up and said to Peter, “Certainly you are also one of them: your accent betrays you.” Then he began to invoke a curse on himself and to swear, “I do not know the man!” Immediately the cock crowed—and Peter remembered the saying of Jesus: “Before the cock crows, you will deny me three times.” He went outside, and wept bitterly. (Matthew 26:69-75)


Christ’s resurrection is our great story of victory, our assurance of triumph. God’s love for mankind won the contest against man’s age-old enemies, Sin and Death. The faithful declare their share in that victory when they announce: Christ was raised from the dead.


But to read the gospels, one is struck by the aura of failure that overhangs the figures in the resurrection story. Consider the situation of the disciple Peter. In a supreme moment of decision, he denies even knowing Jesus, the teacher he has followed for three years. It’s a revealing failure of discipleship—and worse, of friendship.


Yet Peter is clearly not a venal or evil man; in many ways he merely does what anyone else would do in the same situation. Peter’s failure merely proves how ordinary he is.


The all-too-ordinary disciple has plenty of company in the Easter story. Along with Peter’s denial, we witness the tearful despair of Mary Magdalene outside the tomb; the discouragement of the disciples on the road to Emmaus; the skepticism of Thomas; the terror of the main body of disciples hiding out in the upper room. We are tempted to ask: What are these stories doing in the Gospel at all?


Scripture offers no direct answer to this question; but it does lead us to an observation. The great Easter message of hope, redemption, and new life was Christ’s gift to the world. But to carry it forward into the world, Jesus entrusted his gift to messengers like these: the flawed and fearful, the discouraged and doubtful. Ordinary people, whose only distinction was that they had borne witness to something beyond understanding.


How remarkable it is to realize that these were the earliest Christian saints! For eventually, Peter and the rest became martyrs for Christ. They were individuals of no special distinction. But in light of our Lord’s resurrection they found the inner strength to stand with him, and not to deny him, in the end. “Saint” is the name we give to such people.


Sainthood has become a subject of renewed interest in the Armenian Church. In the coming week, we will mark the fifth anniversary of the canonization of the Holy Martyrs of the Armenian Genocide: the first Armenian saints to have been acknowledged as such in hundreds of years. The canonization in 2015 was a great milestone for our nation; but like all weighty moral undertakings, it did not occur without questions. Good and serious people questioned whether it was possible to acknowledge such a large company of people as saints of the church. Indeed, one can say with certainty that the vast majority of Genocide martyrs—people we now regard as saints—were flawed or otherwise unremarkable in their lives, apart from the circumstances of their sainthood.


But now, after five years of living in the consciousness of these “new” saints, perhaps we can find guidance in the Gospel account of those who witnessed the resurrection.


Who could live a saintly life?
The saints are indeed ordinary people. But far from being an obstacle to our understanding, the very ordinariness of the saints is what makes them examples—permits them to be aspirational figures for us. If they were superhuman beings with seamlessly virtuous lives, we might admire them; but we would have a ready excuse, an alibi, for failing to live up to their example. Realizing that they were ordinary people—men and women just like us—places the responsibility to live saintly lives directly on our shoulders.


This is surely one of the great moral revolutions Christianity brought into the world. To the imperial pagan world of Christ’s time, heroes were the offspring of gods—an unattainable distinction. The spectacle of heroic suffering—tragedy—was meant to make ordinary men tremble, while encouraging them to rest satisfied that, as mortals, they were beneath the notice of the careless pagan divinities.


Contrast this with the Christian saints, who have arisen from every station of life, and often are not even recognized as special until some moment of crisis. Their stories are meant to expose the deceit and injustice underlying the world around them—and to disrupt our own self-satisfied appraisal of the world around us. Their suffering is heroic not because it defies unfeeling gods, but because it imitates the experience of God’s Son—who lived, felt and suffered alongside his children, out of love for them.


This miraculous reality is the gift that all the saints embraced. However ordinary their lives may have been, carrying Christ’s resurrection in their hearts magnified them. When their moment of decision came—whether in the Apostolic Age, in 1915, or even today—they refused to deny their Lord.


It falls to us to accept our own role in this drama. As the Gospel shows, Christ entrusted his message of faith, love, and redemption to people no different from us. Carrying it forward has been the work of dozens, hundreds, millions of faithful individuals—our own ancestors among them. That gift now rests in our hands, and whether it continues to be carried forward through another century is largely up to us.


Let that thought guide us, as we experience the season of Christ’s resurrection in the company of our sainted Genocide Martyrs, and affirm with them the everlasting truth that Christ was raised from the dead.


By Christopher H. Zakian
HTMLText_963B547A_B601_4DDF_41E2_093DAD415CD6.html =
The Martyrs
Ordinary Saints



Saints and martyrs loom large in Armenian Christian spirituality. We look up to them; but could we ever be like them? Is saintliness an unattainable ideal? Or something more ordinary?


* * *


Peter was sitting in the outdoor courtyard when a maid came up to him and said, “You too were with Jesus the Galilean.” But he denied it before everyone, saying, “I don’t know what you mean.” … After a little while the bystanders came up and said to Peter, “Certainly you are also one of them: your accent betrays you.” Then he began to invoke a curse on himself and to swear, “I do not know the man!” Immediately the cock crowed—and Peter remembered the saying of Jesus: “Before the cock crows, you will deny me three times.” He went outside, and wept bitterly. (Matthew 26:69-75)


Christ’s resurrection is our great story of victory, our assurance of triumph. God’s love for mankind won the contest against man’s age-old enemies, Sin and Death. The faithful declare their share in that victory when they announce: Christ was raised from the dead.


But to read the gospels, one is struck by the aura of failure that overhangs the figures in the resurrection story. Consider the situation of the disciple Peter. In a supreme moment of decision, he denies even knowing Jesus, the teacher he has followed for three years. It’s a revealing failure of discipleship—and worse, of friendship.


Yet Peter is clearly not a venal or evil man; in many ways he merely does what anyone else would do in the same situation. Peter’s failure merely proves how ordinary he is.


The all-too-ordinary disciple has plenty of company in the Easter story. Along with Peter’s denial, we witness the tearful despair of Mary Magdalene outside the tomb; the discouragement of the disciples on the road to Emmaus; the skepticism of Thomas; the terror of the main body of disciples hiding out in the upper room. We are tempted to ask: What are these stories doing in the Gospel at all?


Scripture offers no direct answer to this question; but it does lead us to an observation. The great Easter message of hope, redemption, and new life was Christ’s gift to the world. But to carry it forward into the world, Jesus entrusted his gift to messengers like these: the flawed and fearful, the discouraged and doubtful. Ordinary people, whose only distinction was that they had borne witness to something beyond understanding.


How remarkable it is to realize that these were the earliest Christian saints! For eventually, Peter and the rest became martyrs for Christ. They were individuals of no special distinction. But in light of our Lord’s resurrection they found the inner strength to stand with him, and not to deny him, in the end. “Saint” is the name we give to such people.


Sainthood has become a subject of renewed interest in the Armenian Church. In the coming week, we will mark the fifth anniversary of the canonization of the Holy Martyrs of the Armenian Genocide: the first Armenian saints to have been acknowledged as such in hundreds of years. The canonization in 2015 was a great milestone for our nation; but like all weighty moral undertakings, it did not occur without questions. Good and serious people questioned whether it was possible to acknowledge such a large company of people as saints of the church. Indeed, one can say with certainty that the vast majority of Genocide martyrs—people we now regard as saints—were flawed or otherwise unremarkable in their lives, apart from the circumstances of their sainthood.


But now, after five years of living in the consciousness of these “new” saints, perhaps we can find guidance in the Gospel account of those who witnessed the resurrection.


Who could live a saintly life?
The saints are indeed ordinary people. But far from being an obstacle to our understanding, the very ordinariness of the saints is what makes them examples—permits them to be aspirational figures for us. If they were superhuman beings with seamlessly virtuous lives, we might admire them; but we would have a ready excuse, an alibi, for failing to live up to their example. Realizing that they were ordinary people—men and women just like us—places the responsibility to live saintly lives directly on our shoulders.


This is surely one of the great moral revolutions Christianity brought into the world. To the imperial pagan world of Christ’s time, heroes were the offspring of gods—an unattainable distinction. The spectacle of heroic suffering—tragedy—was meant to make ordinary men tremble, while encouraging them to rest satisfied that, as mortals, they were beneath the notice of the careless pagan divinities.


Contrast this with the Christian saints, who have arisen from every station of life, and often are not even recognized as special until some moment of crisis. Their stories are meant to expose the deceit and injustice underlying the world around them—and to disrupt our own self-satisfied appraisal of the world around us. Their suffering is heroic not because it defies unfeeling gods, but because it imitates the experience of God’s Son—who lived, felt and suffered alongside his children, out of love for them.


This miraculous reality is the gift that all the saints embraced. However ordinary their lives may have been, carrying Christ’s resurrection in their hearts magnified them. When their moment of decision came—whether in the Apostolic Age, in 1915, or even today—they refused to deny their Lord.


It falls to us to accept our own role in this drama. As the Gospel shows, Christ entrusted his message of faith, love, and redemption to people no different from us. Carrying it forward has been the work of dozens, hundreds, millions of faithful individuals—our own ancestors among them. That gift now rests in our hands, and whether it continues to be carried forward through another century is largely up to us.


Let that thought guide us, as we experience the season of Christ’s resurrection in the company of our sainted Genocide Martyrs, and affirm with them the everlasting truth that Christ was raised from the dead.


By Christopher H. Zakian
HTMLText_96330462_B601_4DEF_41DC_5A3426D058DB.html =
The Martyrs
Ordinary Saints



Saints and martyrs loom large in Armenian Christian spirituality. We look up to them; but could we ever be like them? Is saintliness an unattainable ideal? Or something more ordinary?


* * *


Peter was sitting in the outdoor courtyard when a maid came up to him and said, “You too were with Jesus the Galilean.” But he denied it before everyone, saying, “I don’t know what you mean.” … After a little while the bystanders came up and said to Peter, “Certainly you are also one of them: your accent betrays you.” Then he began to invoke a curse on himself and to swear, “I do not know the man!” Immediately the cock crowed—and Peter remembered the saying of Jesus: “Before the cock crows, you will deny me three times.” He went outside, and wept bitterly. (Matthew 26:69-75)


Christ’s resurrection is our great story of victory, our assurance of triumph. God’s love for mankind won the contest against man’s age-old enemies, Sin and Death. The faithful declare their share in that victory when they announce: Christ was raised from the dead.


But to read the gospels, one is struck by the aura of failure that overhangs the figures in the resurrection story. Consider the situation of the disciple Peter. In a supreme moment of decision, he denies even knowing Jesus, the teacher he has followed for three years. It’s a revealing failure of discipleship—and worse, of friendship.


Yet Peter is clearly not a venal or evil man; in many ways he merely does what anyone else would do in the same situation. Peter’s failure merely proves how ordinary he is.


The all-too-ordinary disciple has plenty of company in the Easter story. Along with Peter’s denial, we witness the tearful despair of Mary Magdalene outside the tomb; the discouragement of the disciples on the road to Emmaus; the skepticism of Thomas; the terror of the main body of disciples hiding out in the upper room. We are tempted to ask: What are these stories doing in the Gospel at all?


Scripture offers no direct answer to this question; but it does lead us to an observation. The great Easter message of hope, redemption, and new life was Christ’s gift to the world. But to carry it forward into the world, Jesus entrusted his gift to messengers like these: the flawed and fearful, the discouraged and doubtful. Ordinary people, whose only distinction was that they had borne witness to something beyond understanding.


How remarkable it is to realize that these were the earliest Christian saints! For eventually, Peter and the rest became martyrs for Christ. They were individuals of no special distinction. But in light of our Lord’s resurrection they found the inner strength to stand with him, and not to deny him, in the end. “Saint” is the name we give to such people.


Sainthood has become a subject of renewed interest in the Armenian Church. In the coming week, we will mark the fifth anniversary of the canonization of the Holy Martyrs of the Armenian Genocide: the first Armenian saints to have been acknowledged as such in hundreds of years. The canonization in 2015 was a great milestone for our nation; but like all weighty moral undertakings, it did not occur without questions. Good and serious people questioned whether it was possible to acknowledge such a large company of people as saints of the church. Indeed, one can say with certainty that the vast majority of Genocide martyrs—people we now regard as saints—were flawed or otherwise unremarkable in their lives, apart from the circumstances of their sainthood.


But now, after five years of living in the consciousness of these “new” saints, perhaps we can find guidance in the Gospel account of those who witnessed the resurrection.


Who could live a saintly life?
The saints are indeed ordinary people. But far from being an obstacle to our understanding, the very ordinariness of the saints is what makes them examples—permits them to be aspirational figures for us. If they were superhuman beings with seamlessly virtuous lives, we might admire them; but we would have a ready excuse, an alibi, for failing to live up to their example. Realizing that they were ordinary people—men and women just like us—places the responsibility to live saintly lives directly on our shoulders.


This is surely one of the great moral revolutions Christianity brought into the world. To the imperial pagan world of Christ’s time, heroes were the offspring of gods—an unattainable distinction. The spectacle of heroic suffering—tragedy—was meant to make ordinary men tremble, while encouraging them to rest satisfied that, as mortals, they were beneath the notice of the careless pagan divinities.


Contrast this with the Christian saints, who have arisen from every station of life, and often are not even recognized as special until some moment of crisis. Their stories are meant to expose the deceit and injustice underlying the world around them—and to disrupt our own self-satisfied appraisal of the world around us. Their suffering is heroic not because it defies unfeeling gods, but because it imitates the experience of God’s Son—who lived, felt and suffered alongside his children, out of love for them.


This miraculous reality is the gift that all the saints embraced. However ordinary their lives may have been, carrying Christ’s resurrection in their hearts magnified them. When their moment of decision came—whether in the Apostolic Age, in 1915, or even today—they refused to deny their Lord.


It falls to us to accept our own role in this drama. As the Gospel shows, Christ entrusted his message of faith, love, and redemption to people no different from us. Carrying it forward has been the work of dozens, hundreds, millions of faithful individuals—our own ancestors among them. That gift now rests in our hands, and whether it continues to be carried forward through another century is largely up to us.


Let that thought guide us, as we experience the season of Christ’s resurrection in the company of our sainted Genocide Martyrs, and affirm with them the everlasting truth that Christ was raised from the dead.


By Christopher H. Zakian
HTMLText_A867F26A_B261_41AD_41C1_3E7B9BCF9E71.html =
The Martyrs
Ordinary Saints



Saints and martyrs loom large in Armenian Christian spirituality. We look up to them; but could we ever be like them? Is saintliness an unattainable ideal? Or something more ordinary?


* * *


Peter was sitting in the outdoor courtyard when a maid came up to him and said, “You too were with Jesus the Galilean.” But he denied it before everyone, saying, “I don’t know what you mean.” … After a little while the bystanders came up and said to Peter, “Certainly you are also one of them: your accent betrays you.” Then he began to invoke a curse on himself and to swear, “I do not know the man!” Immediately the cock crowed—and Peter remembered the saying of Jesus: “Before the cock crows, you will deny me three times.” He went outside, and wept bitterly. (Matthew 26:69-75)


Christ’s resurrection is our great story of victory, our assurance of triumph. God’s love for mankind won the contest against man’s age-old enemies, Sin and Death. The faithful declare their share in that victory when they announce: Christ was raised from the dead.


But to read the gospels, one is struck by the aura of failure that overhangs the figures in the resurrection story. Consider the situation of the disciple Peter. In a supreme moment of decision, he denies even knowing Jesus, the teacher he has followed for three years. It’s a revealing failure of discipleship—and worse, of friendship.


Yet Peter is clearly not a venal or evil man; in many ways he merely does what anyone else would do in the same situation. Peter’s failure merely proves how ordinary he is.


The all-too-ordinary disciple has plenty of company in the Easter story. Along with Peter’s denial, we witness the tearful despair of Mary Magdalene outside the tomb; the discouragement of the disciples on the road to Emmaus; the skepticism of Thomas; the terror of the main body of disciples hiding out in the upper room. We are tempted to ask: What are these stories doing in the Gospel at all?


Scripture offers no direct answer to this question; but it does lead us to an observation. The great Easter message of hope, redemption, and new life was Christ’s gift to the world. But to carry it forward into the world, Jesus entrusted his gift to messengers like these: the flawed and fearful, the discouraged and doubtful. Ordinary people, whose only distinction was that they had borne witness to something beyond understanding.


How remarkable it is to realize that these were the earliest Christian saints! For eventually, Peter and the rest became martyrs for Christ. They were individuals of no special distinction. But in light of our Lord’s resurrection they found the inner strength to stand with him, and not to deny him, in the end. “Saint” is the name we give to such people.


Sainthood has become a subject of renewed interest in the Armenian Church. In the coming week, we will mark the fifth anniversary of the canonization of the Holy Martyrs of the Armenian Genocide: the first Armenian saints to have been acknowledged as such in hundreds of years. The canonization in 2015 was a great milestone for our nation; but like all weighty moral undertakings, it did not occur without questions. Good and serious people questioned whether it was possible to acknowledge such a large company of people as saints of the church. Indeed, one can say with certainty that the vast majority of Genocide martyrs—people we now regard as saints—were flawed or otherwise unremarkable in their lives, apart from the circumstances of their sainthood.


But now, after five years of living in the consciousness of these “new” saints, perhaps we can find guidance in the Gospel account of those who witnessed the resurrection.


Who could live a saintly life?
The saints are indeed ordinary people. But far from being an obstacle to our understanding, the very ordinariness of the saints is what makes them examples—permits them to be aspirational figures for us. If they were superhuman beings with seamlessly virtuous lives, we might admire them; but we would have a ready excuse, an alibi, for failing to live up to their example. Realizing that they were ordinary people—men and women just like us—places the responsibility to live saintly lives directly on our shoulders.


This is surely one of the great moral revolutions Christianity brought into the world. To the imperial pagan world of Christ’s time, heroes were the offspring of gods—an unattainable distinction. The spectacle of heroic suffering—tragedy—was meant to make ordinary men tremble, while encouraging them to rest satisfied that, as mortals, they were beneath the notice of the careless pagan divinities.


Contrast this with the Christian saints, who have arisen from every station of life, and often are not even recognized as special until some moment of crisis. Their stories are meant to expose the deceit and injustice underlying the world around them—and to disrupt our own self-satisfied appraisal of the world around us. Their suffering is heroic not because it defies unfeeling gods, but because it imitates the experience of God’s Son—who lived, felt and suffered alongside his children, out of love for them.


This miraculous reality is the gift that all the saints embraced. However ordinary their lives may have been, carrying Christ’s resurrection in their hearts magnified them. When their moment of decision came—whether in the Apostolic Age, in 1915, or even today—they refused to deny their Lord.


It falls to us to accept our own role in this drama. As the Gospel shows, Christ entrusted his message of faith, love, and redemption to people no different from us. Carrying it forward has been the work of dozens, hundreds, millions of faithful individuals—our own ancestors among them. That gift now rests in our hands, and whether it continues to be carried forward through another century is largely up to us.


Let that thought guide us, as we experience the season of Christ’s resurrection in the company of our sainted Genocide Martyrs, and affirm with them the everlasting truth that Christ was raised from the dead.


By Christopher H. Zakian
HTMLText_ABEE4A3E_B263_41A5_41E0_61327DC28AE9.html =
The Martyrs
Ordinary Saints



Saints and martyrs loom large in Armenian Christian spirituality. We look up to them; but could we ever be like them? Is saintliness an unattainable ideal? Or something more ordinary?


* * *


Peter was sitting in the outdoor courtyard when a maid came up to him and said, “You too were with Jesus the Galilean.” But he denied it before everyone, saying, “I don’t know what you mean.” … After a little while the bystanders came up and said to Peter, “Certainly you are also one of them: your accent betrays you.” Then he began to invoke a curse on himself and to swear, “I do not know the man!” Immediately the cock crowed—and Peter remembered the saying of Jesus: “Before the cock crows, you will deny me three times.” He went outside, and wept bitterly. (Matthew 26:69-75)


Christ’s resurrection is our great story of victory, our assurance of triumph. God’s love for mankind won the contest against man’s age-old enemies, Sin and Death. The faithful declare their share in that victory when they announce: Christ was raised from the dead.


But to read the gospels, one is struck by the aura of failure that overhangs the figures in the resurrection story. Consider the situation of the disciple Peter. In a supreme moment of decision, he denies even knowing Jesus, the teacher he has followed for three years. It’s a revealing failure of discipleship—and worse, of friendship.


Yet Peter is clearly not a venal or evil man; in many ways he merely does what anyone else would do in the same situation. Peter’s failure merely proves how ordinary he is.


The all-too-ordinary disciple has plenty of company in the Easter story. Along with Peter’s denial, we witness the tearful despair of Mary Magdalene outside the tomb; the discouragement of the disciples on the road to Emmaus; the skepticism of Thomas; the terror of the main body of disciples hiding out in the upper room. We are tempted to ask: What are these stories doing in the Gospel at all?


Scripture offers no direct answer to this question; but it does lead us to an observation. The great Easter message of hope, redemption, and new life was Christ’s gift to the world. But to carry it forward into the world, Jesus entrusted his gift to messengers like these: the flawed and fearful, the discouraged and doubtful. Ordinary people, whose only distinction was that they had borne witness to something beyond understanding.


How remarkable it is to realize that these were the earliest Christian saints! For eventually, Peter and the rest became martyrs for Christ. They were individuals of no special distinction. But in light of our Lord’s resurrection they found the inner strength to stand with him, and not to deny him, in the end. “Saint” is the name we give to such people.


Sainthood has become a subject of renewed interest in the Armenian Church. In the coming week, we will mark the fifth anniversary of the canonization of the Holy Martyrs of the Armenian Genocide: the first Armenian saints to have been acknowledged as such in hundreds of years. The canonization in 2015 was a great milestone for our nation; but like all weighty moral undertakings, it did not occur without questions. Good and serious people questioned whether it was possible to acknowledge such a large company of people as saints of the church. Indeed, one can say with certainty that the vast majority of Genocide martyrs—people we now regard as saints—were flawed or otherwise unremarkable in their lives, apart from the circumstances of their sainthood.


But now, after five years of living in the consciousness of these “new” saints, perhaps we can find guidance in the Gospel account of those who witnessed the resurrection.


Who could live a saintly life?
The saints are indeed ordinary people. But far from being an obstacle to our understanding, the very ordinariness of the saints is what makes them examples—permits them to be aspirational figures for us. If they were superhuman beings with seamlessly virtuous lives, we might admire them; but we would have a ready excuse, an alibi, for failing to live up to their example. Realizing that they were ordinary people—men and women just like us—places the responsibility to live saintly lives directly on our shoulders.


This is surely one of the great moral revolutions Christianity brought into the world. To the imperial pagan world of Christ’s time, heroes were the offspring of gods—an unattainable distinction. The spectacle of heroic suffering—tragedy—was meant to make ordinary men tremble, while encouraging them to rest satisfied that, as mortals, they were beneath the notice of the careless pagan divinities.


Contrast this with the Christian saints, who have arisen from every station of life, and often are not even recognized as special until some moment of crisis. Their stories are meant to expose the deceit and injustice underlying the world around them—and to disrupt our own self-satisfied appraisal of the world around us. Their suffering is heroic not because it defies unfeeling gods, but because it imitates the experience of God’s Son—who lived, felt and suffered alongside his children, out of love for them.


This miraculous reality is the gift that all the saints embraced. However ordinary their lives may have been, carrying Christ’s resurrection in their hearts magnified them. When their moment of decision came—whether in the Apostolic Age, in 1915, or even today—they refused to deny their Lord.


It falls to us to accept our own role in this drama. As the Gospel shows, Christ entrusted his message of faith, love, and redemption to people no different from us. Carrying it forward has been the work of dozens, hundreds, millions of faithful individuals—our own ancestors among them. That gift now rests in our hands, and whether it continues to be carried forward through another century is largely up to us.


Let that thought guide us, as we experience the season of Christ’s resurrection in the company of our sainted Genocide Martyrs, and affirm with them the everlasting truth that Christ was raised from the dead.


By Christopher H. Zakian
HTMLText_A903563C_B601_4D54_41E1_38BE84A505B1.html =
The Martyrs
Ordinary Saints



Saints and martyrs loom large in Armenian Christian spirituality. We look up to them; but could we ever be like them? Is saintliness an unattainable ideal? Or something more ordinary?


* * *


Peter was sitting in the outdoor courtyard when a maid came up to him and said, “You too were with Jesus the Galilean.” But he denied it before everyone, saying, “I don’t know what you mean.” … After a little while the bystanders came up and said to Peter, “Certainly you are also one of them: your accent betrays you.” Then he began to invoke a curse on himself and to swear, “I do not know the man!” Immediately the cock crowed—and Peter remembered the saying of Jesus: “Before the cock crows, you will deny me three times.” He went outside, and wept bitterly. (Matthew 26:69-75)


Christ’s resurrection is our great story of victory, our assurance of triumph. God’s love for mankind won the contest against man’s age-old enemies, Sin and Death. The faithful declare their share in that victory when they announce: Christ was raised from the dead.


But to read the gospels, one is struck by the aura of failure that overhangs the figures in the resurrection story. Consider the situation of the disciple Peter. In a supreme moment of decision, he denies even knowing Jesus, the teacher he has followed for three years. It’s a revealing failure of discipleship—and worse, of friendship.


Yet Peter is clearly not a venal or evil man; in many ways he merely does what anyone else would do in the same situation. Peter’s failure merely proves how ordinary he is.


The all-too-ordinary disciple has plenty of company in the Easter story. Along with Peter’s denial, we witness the tearful despair of Mary Magdalene outside the tomb; the discouragement of the disciples on the road to Emmaus; the skepticism of Thomas; the terror of the main body of disciples hiding out in the upper room. We are tempted to ask: What are these stories doing in the Gospel at all?


Scripture offers no direct answer to this question; but it does lead us to an observation. The great Easter message of hope, redemption, and new life was Christ’s gift to the world. But to carry it forward into the world, Jesus entrusted his gift to messengers like these: the flawed and fearful, the discouraged and doubtful. Ordinary people, whose only distinction was that they had borne witness to something beyond understanding.


How remarkable it is to realize that these were the earliest Christian saints! For eventually, Peter and the rest became martyrs for Christ. They were individuals of no special distinction. But in light of our Lord’s resurrection they found the inner strength to stand with him, and not to deny him, in the end. “Saint” is the name we give to such people.


Sainthood has become a subject of renewed interest in the Armenian Church. In the coming week, we will mark the fifth anniversary of the canonization of the Holy Martyrs of the Armenian Genocide: the first Armenian saints to have been acknowledged as such in hundreds of years. The canonization in 2015 was a great milestone for our nation; but like all weighty moral undertakings, it did not occur without questions. Good and serious people questioned whether it was possible to acknowledge such a large company of people as saints of the church. Indeed, one can say with certainty that the vast majority of Genocide martyrs—people we now regard as saints—were flawed or otherwise unremarkable in their lives, apart from the circumstances of their sainthood.


But now, after five years of living in the consciousness of these “new” saints, perhaps we can find guidance in the Gospel account of those who witnessed the resurrection.


Who could live a saintly life?
The saints are indeed ordinary people. But far from being an obstacle to our understanding, the very ordinariness of the saints is what makes them examples—permits them to be aspirational figures for us. If they were superhuman beings with seamlessly virtuous lives, we might admire them; but we would have a ready excuse, an alibi, for failing to live up to their example. Realizing that they were ordinary people—men and women just like us—places the responsibility to live saintly lives directly on our shoulders.


This is surely one of the great moral revolutions Christianity brought into the world. To the imperial pagan world of Christ’s time, heroes were the offspring of gods—an unattainable distinction. The spectacle of heroic suffering—tragedy—was meant to make ordinary men tremble, while encouraging them to rest satisfied that, as mortals, they were beneath the notice of the careless pagan divinities.


Contrast this with the Christian saints, who have arisen from every station of life, and often are not even recognized as special until some moment of crisis. Their stories are meant to expose the deceit and injustice underlying the world around them—and to disrupt our own self-satisfied appraisal of the world around us. Their suffering is heroic not because it defies unfeeling gods, but because it imitates the experience of God’s Son—who lived, felt and suffered alongside his children, out of love for them.


This miraculous reality is the gift that all the saints embraced. However ordinary their lives may have been, carrying Christ’s resurrection in their hearts magnified them. When their moment of decision came—whether in the Apostolic Age, in 1915, or even today—they refused to deny their Lord.


It falls to us to accept our own role in this drama. As the Gospel shows, Christ entrusted his message of faith, love, and redemption to people no different from us. Carrying it forward has been the work of dozens, hundreds, millions of faithful individuals—our own ancestors among them. That gift now rests in our hands, and whether it continues to be carried forward through another century is largely up to us.


Let that thought guide us, as we experience the season of Christ’s resurrection in the company of our sainted Genocide Martyrs, and affirm with them the everlasting truth that Christ was raised from the dead.


By Christopher H. Zakian
HTMLText_BF9A490D_ACEC_4FAF_41BA_70D98BDB2AEC.html =
The Martyrs
Ordinary Saints



Saints and martyrs loom large in Armenian Christian spirituality. We look up to them; but could we ever be like them? Is saintliness an unattainable ideal? Or something more ordinary?


* * *


Peter was sitting in the outdoor courtyard when a maid came up to him and said, “You too were with Jesus the Galilean.” But he denied it before everyone, saying, “I don’t know what you mean.” … After a little while the bystanders came up and said to Peter, “Certainly you are also one of them: your accent betrays you.” Then he began to invoke a curse on himself and to swear, “I do not know the man!” Immediately the cock crowed—and Peter remembered the saying of Jesus: “Before the cock crows, you will deny me three times.” He went outside, and wept bitterly. (Matthew 26:69-75)


Christ’s resurrection is our great story of victory, our assurance of triumph. God’s love for mankind won the contest against man’s age-old enemies, Sin and Death. The faithful declare their share in that victory when they announce: Christ was raised from the dead.


But to read the gospels, one is struck by the aura of failure that overhangs the figures in the resurrection story. Consider the situation of the disciple Peter. In a supreme moment of decision, he denies even knowing Jesus, the teacher he has followed for three years. It’s a revealing failure of discipleship—and worse, of friendship.


Yet Peter is clearly not a venal or evil man; in many ways he merely does what anyone else would do in the same situation. Peter’s failure merely proves how ordinary he is.


The all-too-ordinary disciple has plenty of company in the Easter story. Along with Peter’s denial, we witness the tearful despair of Mary Magdalene outside the tomb; the discouragement of the disciples on the road to Emmaus; the skepticism of Thomas; the terror of the main body of disciples hiding out in the upper room. We are tempted to ask: What are these stories doing in the Gospel at all?


Scripture offers no direct answer to this question; but it does lead us to an observation. The great Easter message of hope, redemption, and new life was Christ’s gift to the world. But to carry it forward into the world, Jesus entrusted his gift to messengers like these: the flawed and fearful, the discouraged and doubtful. Ordinary people, whose only distinction was that they had borne witness to something beyond understanding.


How remarkable it is to realize that these were the earliest Christian saints! For eventually, Peter and the rest became martyrs for Christ. They were individuals of no special distinction. But in light of our Lord’s resurrection they found the inner strength to stand with him, and not to deny him, in the end. “Saint” is the name we give to such people.


Sainthood has become a subject of renewed interest in the Armenian Church. In the coming week, we will mark the fifth anniversary of the canonization of the Holy Martyrs of the Armenian Genocide: the first Armenian saints to have been acknowledged as such in hundreds of years. The canonization in 2015 was a great milestone for our nation; but like all weighty moral undertakings, it did not occur without questions. Good and serious people questioned whether it was possible to acknowledge such a large company of people as saints of the church. Indeed, one can say with certainty that the vast majority of Genocide martyrs—people we now regard as saints—were flawed or otherwise unremarkable in their lives, apart from the circumstances of their sainthood.


But now, after five years of living in the consciousness of these “new” saints, perhaps we can find guidance in the Gospel account of those who witnessed the resurrection.


Who could live a saintly life?
The saints are indeed ordinary people. But far from being an obstacle to our understanding, the very ordinariness of the saints is what makes them examples—permits them to be aspirational figures for us. If they were superhuman beings with seamlessly virtuous lives, we might admire them; but we would have a ready excuse, an alibi, for failing to live up to their example. Realizing that they were ordinary people—men and women just like us—places the responsibility to live saintly lives directly on our shoulders.


This is surely one of the great moral revolutions Christianity brought into the world. To the imperial pagan world of Christ’s time, heroes were the offspring of gods—an unattainable distinction. The spectacle of heroic suffering—tragedy—was meant to make ordinary men tremble, while encouraging them to rest satisfied that, as mortals, they were beneath the notice of the careless pagan divinities.


Contrast this with the Christian saints, who have arisen from every station of life, and often are not even recognized as special until some moment of crisis. Their stories are meant to expose the deceit and injustice underlying the world around them—and to disrupt our own self-satisfied appraisal of the world around us. Their suffering is heroic not because it defies unfeeling gods, but because it imitates the experience of God’s Son—who lived, felt and suffered alongside his children, out of love for them.


This miraculous reality is the gift that all the saints embraced. However ordinary their lives may have been, carrying Christ’s resurrection in their hearts magnified them. When their moment of decision came—whether in the Apostolic Age, in 1915, or even today—they refused to deny their Lord.


It falls to us to accept our own role in this drama. As the Gospel shows, Christ entrusted his message of faith, love, and redemption to people no different from us. Carrying it forward has been the work of dozens, hundreds, millions of faithful individuals—our own ancestors among them. That gift now rests in our hands, and whether it continues to be carried forward through another century is largely up to us.


Let that thought guide us, as we experience the season of Christ’s resurrection in the company of our sainted Genocide Martyrs, and affirm with them the everlasting truth that Christ was raised from the dead.


By Christopher H. Zakian
HTMLText_A8C78936_B601_4757_41D2_6C65AD111DCD.html =
The Martyrs
Ordinary Saints



Saints and martyrs loom large in Armenian Christian spirituality. We look up to them; but could we ever be like them? Is saintliness an unattainable ideal? Or something more ordinary?


* * *


Peter was sitting in the outdoor courtyard when a maid came up to him and said, “You too were with Jesus the Galilean.” But he denied it before everyone, saying, “I don’t know what you mean.” … After a little while the bystanders came up and said to Peter, “Certainly you are also one of them: your accent betrays you.” Then he began to invoke a curse on himself and to swear, “I do not know the man!” Immediately the cock crowed—and Peter remembered the saying of Jesus: “Before the cock crows, you will deny me three times.” He went outside, and wept bitterly. (Matthew 26:69-75)


Christ’s resurrection is our great story of victory, our assurance of triumph. God’s love for mankind won the contest against man’s age-old enemies, Sin and Death. The faithful declare their share in that victory when they announce: Christ was raised from the dead.


But to read the gospels, one is struck by the aura of failure that overhangs the figures in the resurrection story. Consider the situation of the disciple Peter. In a supreme moment of decision, he denies even knowing Jesus, the teacher he has followed for three years. It’s a revealing failure of discipleship—and worse, of friendship.


Yet Peter is clearly not a venal or evil man; in many ways he merely does what anyone else would do in the same situation. Peter’s failure merely proves how ordinary he is.


The all-too-ordinary disciple has plenty of company in the Easter story. Along with Peter’s denial, we witness the tearful despair of Mary Magdalene outside the tomb; the discouragement of the disciples on the road to Emmaus; the skepticism of Thomas; the terror of the main body of disciples hiding out in the upper room. We are tempted to ask: What are these stories doing in the Gospel at all?


Scripture offers no direct answer to this question; but it does lead us to an observation. The great Easter message of hope, redemption, and new life was Christ’s gift to the world. But to carry it forward into the world, Jesus entrusted his gift to messengers like these: the flawed and fearful, the discouraged and doubtful. Ordinary people, whose only distinction was that they had borne witness to something beyond understanding.


How remarkable it is to realize that these were the earliest Christian saints! For eventually, Peter and the rest became martyrs for Christ. They were individuals of no special distinction. But in light of our Lord’s resurrection they found the inner strength to stand with him, and not to deny him, in the end. “Saint” is the name we give to such people.


Sainthood has become a subject of renewed interest in the Armenian Church. In the coming week, we will mark the fifth anniversary of the canonization of the Holy Martyrs of the Armenian Genocide: the first Armenian saints to have been acknowledged as such in hundreds of years. The canonization in 2015 was a great milestone for our nation; but like all weighty moral undertakings, it did not occur without questions. Good and serious people questioned whether it was possible to acknowledge such a large company of people as saints of the church. Indeed, one can say with certainty that the vast majority of Genocide martyrs—people we now regard as saints—were flawed or otherwise unremarkable in their lives, apart from the circumstances of their sainthood.


But now, after five years of living in the consciousness of these “new” saints, perhaps we can find guidance in the Gospel account of those who witnessed the resurrection.


Who could live a saintly life?
The saints are indeed ordinary people. But far from being an obstacle to our understanding, the very ordinariness of the saints is what makes them examples—permits them to be aspirational figures for us. If they were superhuman beings with seamlessly virtuous lives, we might admire them; but we would have a ready excuse, an alibi, for failing to live up to their example. Realizing that they were ordinary people—men and women just like us—places the responsibility to live saintly lives directly on our shoulders.


This is surely one of the great moral revolutions Christianity brought into the world. To the imperial pagan world of Christ’s time, heroes were the offspring of gods—an unattainable distinction. The spectacle of heroic suffering—tragedy—was meant to make ordinary men tremble, while encouraging them to rest satisfied that, as mortals, they were beneath the notice of the careless pagan divinities.


Contrast this with the Christian saints, who have arisen from every station of life, and often are not even recognized as special until some moment of crisis. Their stories are meant to expose the deceit and injustice underlying the world around them—and to disrupt our own self-satisfied appraisal of the world around us. Their suffering is heroic not because it defies unfeeling gods, but because it imitates the experience of God’s Son—who lived, felt and suffered alongside his children, out of love for them.


This miraculous reality is the gift that all the saints embraced. However ordinary their lives may have been, carrying Christ’s resurrection in their hearts magnified them. When their moment of decision came—whether in the Apostolic Age, in 1915, or even today—they refused to deny their Lord.


It falls to us to accept our own role in this drama. As the Gospel shows, Christ entrusted his message of faith, love, and redemption to people no different from us. Carrying it forward has been the work of dozens, hundreds, millions of faithful individuals—our own ancestors among them. That gift now rests in our hands, and whether it continues to be carried forward through another century is largely up to us.


Let that thought guide us, as we experience the season of Christ’s resurrection in the company of our sainted Genocide Martyrs, and affirm with them the everlasting truth that Christ was raised from the dead.


By Christopher H. Zakian
HTMLText_A903F639_B601_4D5C_41C3_0D100A7E8DF3.html =
The Martyrs
Ordinary Saints



Saints and martyrs loom large in Armenian Christian spirituality. We look up to them; but could we ever be like them? Is saintliness an unattainable ideal? Or something more ordinary?


* * *


Peter was sitting in the outdoor courtyard when a maid came up to him and said, “You too were with Jesus the Galilean.” But he denied it before everyone, saying, “I don’t know what you mean.” … After a little while the bystanders came up and said to Peter, “Certainly you are also one of them: your accent betrays you.” Then he began to invoke a curse on himself and to swear, “I do not know the man!” Immediately the cock crowed—and Peter remembered the saying of Jesus: “Before the cock crows, you will deny me three times.” He went outside, and wept bitterly. (Matthew 26:69-75)


Christ’s resurrection is our great story of victory, our assurance of triumph. God’s love for mankind won the contest against man’s age-old enemies, Sin and Death. The faithful declare their share in that victory when they announce: Christ was raised from the dead.


But to read the gospels, one is struck by the aura of failure that overhangs the figures in the resurrection story. Consider the situation of the disciple Peter. In a supreme moment of decision, he denies even knowing Jesus, the teacher he has followed for three years. It’s a revealing failure of discipleship—and worse, of friendship.


Yet Peter is clearly not a venal or evil man; in many ways he merely does what anyone else would do in the same situation. Peter’s failure merely proves how ordinary he is.


The all-too-ordinary disciple has plenty of company in the Easter story. Along with Peter’s denial, we witness the tearful despair of Mary Magdalene outside the tomb; the discouragement of the disciples on the road to Emmaus; the skepticism of Thomas; the terror of the main body of disciples hiding out in the upper room. We are tempted to ask: What are these stories doing in the Gospel at all?


Scripture offers no direct answer to this question; but it does lead us to an observation. The great Easter message of hope, redemption, and new life was Christ’s gift to the world. But to carry it forward into the world, Jesus entrusted his gift to messengers like these: the flawed and fearful, the discouraged and doubtful. Ordinary people, whose only distinction was that they had borne witness to something beyond understanding.


How remarkable it is to realize that these were the earliest Christian saints! For eventually, Peter and the rest became martyrs for Christ. They were individuals of no special distinction. But in light of our Lord’s resurrection they found the inner strength to stand with him, and not to deny him, in the end. “Saint” is the name we give to such people.


Sainthood has become a subject of renewed interest in the Armenian Church. In the coming week, we will mark the fifth anniversary of the canonization of the Holy Martyrs of the Armenian Genocide: the first Armenian saints to have been acknowledged as such in hundreds of years. The canonization in 2015 was a great milestone for our nation; but like all weighty moral undertakings, it did not occur without questions. Good and serious people questioned whether it was possible to acknowledge such a large company of people as saints of the church. Indeed, one can say with certainty that the vast majority of Genocide martyrs—people we now regard as saints—were flawed or otherwise unremarkable in their lives, apart from the circumstances of their sainthood.


But now, after five years of living in the consciousness of these “new” saints, perhaps we can find guidance in the Gospel account of those who witnessed the resurrection.


Who could live a saintly life?
The saints are indeed ordinary people. But far from being an obstacle to our understanding, the very ordinariness of the saints is what makes them examples—permits them to be aspirational figures for us. If they were superhuman beings with seamlessly virtuous lives, we might admire them; but we would have a ready excuse, an alibi, for failing to live up to their example. Realizing that they were ordinary people—men and women just like us—places the responsibility to live saintly lives directly on our shoulders.


This is surely one of the great moral revolutions Christianity brought into the world. To the imperial pagan world of Christ’s time, heroes were the offspring of gods—an unattainable distinction. The spectacle of heroic suffering—tragedy—was meant to make ordinary men tremble, while encouraging them to rest satisfied that, as mortals, they were beneath the notice of the careless pagan divinities.


Contrast this with the Christian saints, who have arisen from every station of life, and often are not even recognized as special until some moment of crisis. Their stories are meant to expose the deceit and injustice underlying the world around them—and to disrupt our own self-satisfied appraisal of the world around us. Their suffering is heroic not because it defies unfeeling gods, but because it imitates the experience of God’s Son—who lived, felt and suffered alongside his children, out of love for them.


This miraculous reality is the gift that all the saints embraced. However ordinary their lives may have been, carrying Christ’s resurrection in their hearts magnified them. When their moment of decision came—whether in the Apostolic Age, in 1915, or even today—they refused to deny their Lord.


It falls to us to accept our own role in this drama. As the Gospel shows, Christ entrusted his message of faith, love, and redemption to people no different from us. Carrying it forward has been the work of dozens, hundreds, millions of faithful individuals—our own ancestors among them. That gift now rests in our hands, and whether it continues to be carried forward through another century is largely up to us.


Let that thought guide us, as we experience the season of Christ’s resurrection in the company of our sainted Genocide Martyrs, and affirm with them the everlasting truth that Christ was raised from the dead.


By Christopher H. Zakian
HTMLText_A8C1E93A_B601_475F_4192_4977807AD534.html =
The Martyrs
Ordinary Saints



Saints and martyrs loom large in Armenian Christian spirituality. We look up to them; but could we ever be like them? Is saintliness an unattainable ideal? Or something more ordinary?


* * *


Peter was sitting in the outdoor courtyard when a maid came up to him and said, “You too were with Jesus the Galilean.” But he denied it before everyone, saying, “I don’t know what you mean.” … After a little while the bystanders came up and said to Peter, “Certainly you are also one of them: your accent betrays you.” Then he began to invoke a curse on himself and to swear, “I do not know the man!” Immediately the cock crowed—and Peter remembered the saying of Jesus: “Before the cock crows, you will deny me three times.” He went outside, and wept bitterly. (Matthew 26:69-75)


Christ’s resurrection is our great story of victory, our assurance of triumph. God’s love for mankind won the contest against man’s age-old enemies, Sin and Death. The faithful declare their share in that victory when they announce: Christ was raised from the dead.


But to read the gospels, one is struck by the aura of failure that overhangs the figures in the resurrection story. Consider the situation of the disciple Peter. In a supreme moment of decision, he denies even knowing Jesus, the teacher he has followed for three years. It’s a revealing failure of discipleship—and worse, of friendship.


Yet Peter is clearly not a venal or evil man; in many ways he merely does what anyone else would do in the same situation. Peter’s failure merely proves how ordinary he is.


The all-too-ordinary disciple has plenty of company in the Easter story. Along with Peter’s denial, we witness the tearful despair of Mary Magdalene outside the tomb; the discouragement of the disciples on the road to Emmaus; the skepticism of Thomas; the terror of the main body of disciples hiding out in the upper room. We are tempted to ask: What are these stories doing in the Gospel at all?


Scripture offers no direct answer to this question; but it does lead us to an observation. The great Easter message of hope, redemption, and new life was Christ’s gift to the world. But to carry it forward into the world, Jesus entrusted his gift to messengers like these: the flawed and fearful, the discouraged and doubtful. Ordinary people, whose only distinction was that they had borne witness to something beyond understanding.


How remarkable it is to realize that these were the earliest Christian saints! For eventually, Peter and the rest became martyrs for Christ. They were individuals of no special distinction. But in light of our Lord’s resurrection they found the inner strength to stand with him, and not to deny him, in the end. “Saint” is the name we give to such people.


Sainthood has become a subject of renewed interest in the Armenian Church. In the coming week, we will mark the fifth anniversary of the canonization of the Holy Martyrs of the Armenian Genocide: the first Armenian saints to have been acknowledged as such in hundreds of years. The canonization in 2015 was a great milestone for our nation; but like all weighty moral undertakings, it did not occur without questions. Good and serious people questioned whether it was possible to acknowledge such a large company of people as saints of the church. Indeed, one can say with certainty that the vast majority of Genocide martyrs—people we now regard as saints—were flawed or otherwise unremarkable in their lives, apart from the circumstances of their sainthood.


But now, after five years of living in the consciousness of these “new” saints, perhaps we can find guidance in the Gospel account of those who witnessed the resurrection.


Who could live a saintly life?
The saints are indeed ordinary people. But far from being an obstacle to our understanding, the very ordinariness of the saints is what makes them examples—permits them to be aspirational figures for us. If they were superhuman beings with seamlessly virtuous lives, we might admire them; but we would have a ready excuse, an alibi, for failing to live up to their example. Realizing that they were ordinary people—men and women just like us—places the responsibility to live saintly lives directly on our shoulders.


This is surely one of the great moral revolutions Christianity brought into the world. To the imperial pagan world of Christ’s time, heroes were the offspring of gods—an unattainable distinction. The spectacle of heroic suffering—tragedy—was meant to make ordinary men tremble, while encouraging them to rest satisfied that, as mortals, they were beneath the notice of the careless pagan divinities.


Contrast this with the Christian saints, who have arisen from every station of life, and often are not even recognized as special until some moment of crisis. Their stories are meant to expose the deceit and injustice underlying the world around them—and to disrupt our own self-satisfied appraisal of the world around us. Their suffering is heroic not because it defies unfeeling gods, but because it imitates the experience of God’s Son—who lived, felt and suffered alongside his children, out of love for them.


This miraculous reality is the gift that all the saints embraced. However ordinary their lives may have been, carrying Christ’s resurrection in their hearts magnified them. When their moment of decision came—whether in the Apostolic Age, in 1915, or even today—they refused to deny their Lord.


It falls to us to accept our own role in this drama. As the Gospel shows, Christ entrusted his message of faith, love, and redemption to people no different from us. Carrying it forward has been the work of dozens, hundreds, millions of faithful individuals—our own ancestors among them. That gift now rests in our hands, and whether it continues to be carried forward through another century is largely up to us.


Let that thought guide us, as we experience the season of Christ’s resurrection in the company of our sainted Genocide Martyrs, and affirm with them the everlasting truth that Christ was raised from the dead.


By Christopher H. Zakian
HTMLText_9606008F_99D2_46CF_41D8_447EFD71A2FB.html =
The Martyrs
Ordinary Saints



Saints and martyrs loom large in Armenian Christian spirituality. We look up to them; but could we ever be like them? Is saintliness an unattainable ideal? Or something more ordinary?


* * *


Peter was sitting in the outdoor courtyard when a maid came up to him and said, “You too were with Jesus the Galilean.” But he denied it before everyone, saying, “I don’t know what you mean.” … After a little while the bystanders came up and said to Peter, “Certainly you are also one of them: your accent betrays you.” Then he began to invoke a curse on himself and to swear, “I do not know the man!” Immediately the cock crowed—and Peter remembered the saying of Jesus: “Before the cock crows, you will deny me three times.” He went outside, and wept bitterly. (Matthew 26:69-75)


Christ’s resurrection is our great story of victory, our assurance of triumph. God’s love for mankind won the contest against man’s age-old enemies, Sin and Death. The faithful declare their share in that victory when they announce: Christ was raised from the dead.


But to read the gospels, one is struck by the aura of failure that overhangs the figures in the resurrection story. Consider the situation of the disciple Peter. In a supreme moment of decision, he denies even knowing Jesus, the teacher he has followed for three years. It’s a revealing failure of discipleship—and worse, of friendship.


Yet Peter is clearly not a venal or evil man; in many ways he merely does what anyone else would do in the same situation. Peter’s failure merely proves how ordinary he is.


The all-too-ordinary disciple has plenty of company in the Easter story. Along with Peter’s denial, we witness the tearful despair of Mary Magdalene outside the tomb; the discouragement of the disciples on the road to Emmaus; the skepticism of Thomas; the terror of the main body of disciples hiding out in the upper room. We are tempted to ask: What are these stories doing in the Gospel at all?


Scripture offers no direct answer to this question; but it does lead us to an observation. The great Easter message of hope, redemption, and new life was Christ’s gift to the world. But to carry it forward into the world, Jesus entrusted his gift to messengers like these: the flawed and fearful, the discouraged and doubtful. Ordinary people, whose only distinction was that they had borne witness to something beyond understanding.


How remarkable it is to realize that these were the earliest Christian saints! For eventually, Peter and the rest became martyrs for Christ. They were individuals of no special distinction. But in light of our Lord’s resurrection they found the inner strength to stand with him, and not to deny him, in the end. “Saint” is the name we give to such people.


Sainthood has become a subject of renewed interest in the Armenian Church. In the coming week, we will mark the fifth anniversary of the canonization of the Holy Martyrs of the Armenian Genocide: the first Armenian saints to have been acknowledged as such in hundreds of years. The canonization in 2015 was a great milestone for our nation; but like all weighty moral undertakings, it did not occur without questions. Good and serious people questioned whether it was possible to acknowledge such a large company of people as saints of the church. Indeed, one can say with certainty that the vast majority of Genocide martyrs—people we now regard as saints—were flawed or otherwise unremarkable in their lives, apart from the circumstances of their sainthood.


But now, after five years of living in the consciousness of these “new” saints, perhaps we can find guidance in the Gospel account of those who witnessed the resurrection.


Who could live a saintly life?
The saints are indeed ordinary people. But far from being an obstacle to our understanding, the very ordinariness of the saints is what makes them examples—permits them to be aspirational figures for us. If they were superhuman beings with seamlessly virtuous lives, we might admire them; but we would have a ready excuse, an alibi, for failing to live up to their example. Realizing that they were ordinary people—men and women just like us—places the responsibility to live saintly lives directly on our shoulders.


This is surely one of the great moral revolutions Christianity brought into the world. To the imperial pagan world of Christ’s time, heroes were the offspring of gods—an unattainable distinction. The spectacle of heroic suffering—tragedy—was meant to make ordinary men tremble, while encouraging them to rest satisfied that, as mortals, they were beneath the notice of the careless pagan divinities.


Contrast this with the Christian saints, who have arisen from every station of life, and often are not even recognized as special until some moment of crisis. Their stories are meant to expose the deceit and injustice underlying the world around them—and to disrupt our own self-satisfied appraisal of the world around us. Their suffering is heroic not because it defies unfeeling gods, but because it imitates the experience of God’s Son—who lived, felt and suffered alongside his children, out of love for them.


This miraculous reality is the gift that all the saints embraced. However ordinary their lives may have been, carrying Christ’s resurrection in their hearts magnified them. When their moment of decision came—whether in the Apostolic Age, in 1915, or even today—they refused to deny their Lord.


It falls to us to accept our own role in this drama. As the Gospel shows, Christ entrusted his message of faith, love, and redemption to people no different from us. Carrying it forward has been the work of dozens, hundreds, millions of faithful individuals—our own ancestors among them. That gift now rests in our hands, and whether it continues to be carried forward through another century is largely up to us.


Let that thought guide us, as we experience the season of Christ’s resurrection in the company of our sainted Genocide Martyrs, and affirm with them the everlasting truth that Christ was raised from the dead.


By Christopher H. Zakian
HTMLText_ABED2A3A_B263_41AD_41D9_295C40241A58.html =
The Martyrs
Ordinary Saints



Saints and martyrs loom large in Armenian Christian spirituality. We look up to them; but could we ever be like them? Is saintliness an unattainable ideal? Or something more ordinary?


* * *


Peter was sitting in the outdoor courtyard when a maid came up to him and said, “You too were with Jesus the Galilean.” But he denied it before everyone, saying, “I don’t know what you mean.” … After a little while the bystanders came up and said to Peter, “Certainly you are also one of them: your accent betrays you.” Then he began to invoke a curse on himself and to swear, “I do not know the man!” Immediately the cock crowed—and Peter remembered the saying of Jesus: “Before the cock crows, you will deny me three times.” He went outside, and wept bitterly. (Matthew 26:69-75)


Christ’s resurrection is our great story of victory, our assurance of triumph. God’s love for mankind won the contest against man’s age-old enemies, Sin and Death. The faithful declare their share in that victory when they announce: Christ was raised from the dead.


But to read the gospels, one is struck by the aura of failure that overhangs the figures in the resurrection story. Consider the situation of the disciple Peter. In a supreme moment of decision, he denies even knowing Jesus, the teacher he has followed for three years. It’s a revealing failure of discipleship—and worse, of friendship.


Yet Peter is clearly not a venal or evil man; in many ways he merely does what anyone else would do in the same situation. Peter’s failure merely proves how ordinary he is.


The all-too-ordinary disciple has plenty of company in the Easter story. Along with Peter’s denial, we witness the tearful despair of Mary Magdalene outside the tomb; the discouragement of the disciples on the road to Emmaus; the skepticism of Thomas; the terror of the main body of disciples hiding out in the upper room. We are tempted to ask: What are these stories doing in the Gospel at all?


Scripture offers no direct answer to this question; but it does lead us to an observation. The great Easter message of hope, redemption, and new life was Christ’s gift to the world. But to carry it forward into the world, Jesus entrusted his gift to messengers like these: the flawed and fearful, the discouraged and doubtful. Ordinary people, whose only distinction was that they had borne witness to something beyond understanding.


How remarkable it is to realize that these were the earliest Christian saints! For eventually, Peter and the rest became martyrs for Christ. They were individuals of no special distinction. But in light of our Lord’s resurrection they found the inner strength to stand with him, and not to deny him, in the end. “Saint” is the name we give to such people.


Sainthood has become a subject of renewed interest in the Armenian Church. In the coming week, we will mark the fifth anniversary of the canonization of the Holy Martyrs of the Armenian Genocide: the first Armenian saints to have been acknowledged as such in hundreds of years. The canonization in 2015 was a great milestone for our nation; but like all weighty moral undertakings, it did not occur without questions. Good and serious people questioned whether it was possible to acknowledge such a large company of people as saints of the church. Indeed, one can say with certainty that the vast majority of Genocide martyrs—people we now regard as saints—were flawed or otherwise unremarkable in their lives, apart from the circumstances of their sainthood.


But now, after five years of living in the consciousness of these “new” saints, perhaps we can find guidance in the Gospel account of those who witnessed the resurrection.


Who could live a saintly life?
The saints are indeed ordinary people. But far from being an obstacle to our understanding, the very ordinariness of the saints is what makes them examples—permits them to be aspirational figures for us. If they were superhuman beings with seamlessly virtuous lives, we might admire them; but we would have a ready excuse, an alibi, for failing to live up to their example. Realizing that they were ordinary people—men and women just like us—places the responsibility to live saintly lives directly on our shoulders.


This is surely one of the great moral revolutions Christianity brought into the world. To the imperial pagan world of Christ’s time, heroes were the offspring of gods—an unattainable distinction. The spectacle of heroic suffering—tragedy—was meant to make ordinary men tremble, while encouraging them to rest satisfied that, as mortals, they were beneath the notice of the careless pagan divinities.


Contrast this with the Christian saints, who have arisen from every station of life, and often are not even recognized as special until some moment of crisis. Their stories are meant to expose the deceit and injustice underlying the world around them—and to disrupt our own self-satisfied appraisal of the world around us. Their suffering is heroic not because it defies unfeeling gods, but because it imitates the experience of God’s Son—who lived, felt and suffered alongside his children, out of love for them.


This miraculous reality is the gift that all the saints embraced. However ordinary their lives may have been, carrying Christ’s resurrection in their hearts magnified them. When their moment of decision came—whether in the Apostolic Age, in 1915, or even today—they refused to deny their Lord.


It falls to us to accept our own role in this drama. As the Gospel shows, Christ entrusted his message of faith, love, and redemption to people no different from us. Carrying it forward has been the work of dozens, hundreds, millions of faithful individuals—our own ancestors among them. That gift now rests in our hands, and whether it continues to be carried forward through another century is largely up to us.


Let that thought guide us, as we experience the season of Christ’s resurrection in the company of our sainted Genocide Martyrs, and affirm with them the everlasting truth that Christ was raised from the dead.


By Christopher H. Zakian
HTMLText_AB782136_B261_C3A5_41D8_9E704C2D6DB2.html =
The Martyrs
Ordinary Saints



Saints and martyrs loom large in Armenian Christian spirituality. We look up to them; but could we ever be like them? Is saintliness an unattainable ideal? Or something more ordinary?


* * *


Peter was sitting in the outdoor courtyard when a maid came up to him and said, “You too were with Jesus the Galilean.” But he denied it before everyone, saying, “I don’t know what you mean.” … After a little while the bystanders came up and said to Peter, “Certainly you are also one of them: your accent betrays you.” Then he began to invoke a curse on himself and to swear, “I do not know the man!” Immediately the cock crowed—and Peter remembered the saying of Jesus: “Before the cock crows, you will deny me three times.” He went outside, and wept bitterly. (Matthew 26:69-75)


Christ’s resurrection is our great story of victory, our assurance of triumph. God’s love for mankind won the contest against man’s age-old enemies, Sin and Death. The faithful declare their share in that victory when they announce: Christ was raised from the dead.


But to read the gospels, one is struck by the aura of failure that overhangs the figures in the resurrection story. Consider the situation of the disciple Peter. In a supreme moment of decision, he denies even knowing Jesus, the teacher he has followed for three years. It’s a revealing failure of discipleship—and worse, of friendship.


Yet Peter is clearly not a venal or evil man; in many ways he merely does what anyone else would do in the same situation. Peter’s failure merely proves how ordinary he is.


The all-too-ordinary disciple has plenty of company in the Easter story. Along with Peter’s denial, we witness the tearful despair of Mary Magdalene outside the tomb; the discouragement of the disciples on the road to Emmaus; the skepticism of Thomas; the terror of the main body of disciples hiding out in the upper room. We are tempted to ask: What are these stories doing in the Gospel at all?


Scripture offers no direct answer to this question; but it does lead us to an observation. The great Easter message of hope, redemption, and new life was Christ’s gift to the world. But to carry it forward into the world, Jesus entrusted his gift to messengers like these: the flawed and fearful, the discouraged and doubtful. Ordinary people, whose only distinction was that they had borne witness to something beyond understanding.


How remarkable it is to realize that these were the earliest Christian saints! For eventually, Peter and the rest became martyrs for Christ. They were individuals of no special distinction. But in light of our Lord’s resurrection they found the inner strength to stand with him, and not to deny him, in the end. “Saint” is the name we give to such people.


Sainthood has become a subject of renewed interest in the Armenian Church. In the coming week, we will mark the fifth anniversary of the canonization of the Holy Martyrs of the Armenian Genocide: the first Armenian saints to have been acknowledged as such in hundreds of years. The canonization in 2015 was a great milestone for our nation; but like all weighty moral undertakings, it did not occur without questions. Good and serious people questioned whether it was possible to acknowledge such a large company of people as saints of the church. Indeed, one can say with certainty that the vast majority of Genocide martyrs—people we now regard as saints—were flawed or otherwise unremarkable in their lives, apart from the circumstances of their sainthood.


But now, after five years of living in the consciousness of these “new” saints, perhaps we can find guidance in the Gospel account of those who witnessed the resurrection.


Who could live a saintly life?
The saints are indeed ordinary people. But far from being an obstacle to our understanding, the very ordinariness of the saints is what makes them examples—permits them to be aspirational figures for us. If they were superhuman beings with seamlessly virtuous lives, we might admire them; but we would have a ready excuse, an alibi, for failing to live up to their example. Realizing that they were ordinary people—men and women just like us—places the responsibility to live saintly lives directly on our shoulders.


This is surely one of the great moral revolutions Christianity brought into the world. To the imperial pagan world of Christ’s time, heroes were the offspring of gods—an unattainable distinction. The spectacle of heroic suffering—tragedy—was meant to make ordinary men tremble, while encouraging them to rest satisfied that, as mortals, they were beneath the notice of the careless pagan divinities.


Contrast this with the Christian saints, who have arisen from every station of life, and often are not even recognized as special until some moment of crisis. Their stories are meant to expose the deceit and injustice underlying the world around them—and to disrupt our own self-satisfied appraisal of the world around us. Their suffering is heroic not because it defies unfeeling gods, but because it imitates the experience of God’s Son—who lived, felt and suffered alongside his children, out of love for them.


This miraculous reality is the gift that all the saints embraced. However ordinary their lives may have been, carrying Christ’s resurrection in their hearts magnified them. When their moment of decision came—whether in the Apostolic Age, in 1915, or even today—they refused to deny their Lord.


It falls to us to accept our own role in this drama. As the Gospel shows, Christ entrusted his message of faith, love, and redemption to people no different from us. Carrying it forward has been the work of dozens, hundreds, millions of faithful individuals—our own ancestors among them. That gift now rests in our hands, and whether it continues to be carried forward through another century is largely up to us.


Let that thought guide us, as we experience the season of Christ’s resurrection in the company of our sainted Genocide Martyrs, and affirm with them the everlasting truth that Christ was raised from the dead.


By Christopher H. Zakian
HTMLText_A814C282_B261_415D_41E2_2C1821C734AA.html =
The Martyrs
Ordinary Saints



Saints and martyrs loom large in Armenian Christian spirituality. We look up to them; but could we ever be like them? Is saintliness an unattainable ideal? Or something more ordinary?


* * *


Peter was sitting in the outdoor courtyard when a maid came up to him and said, “You too were with Jesus the Galilean.” But he denied it before everyone, saying, “I don’t know what you mean.” … After a little while the bystanders came up and said to Peter, “Certainly you are also one of them: your accent betrays you.” Then he began to invoke a curse on himself and to swear, “I do not know the man!” Immediately the cock crowed—and Peter remembered the saying of Jesus: “Before the cock crows, you will deny me three times.” He went outside, and wept bitterly. (Matthew 26:69-75)


Christ’s resurrection is our great story of victory, our assurance of triumph. God’s love for mankind won the contest against man’s age-old enemies, Sin and Death. The faithful declare their share in that victory when they announce: Christ was raised from the dead.


But to read the gospels, one is struck by the aura of failure that overhangs the figures in the resurrection story. Consider the situation of the disciple Peter. In a supreme moment of decision, he denies even knowing Jesus, the teacher he has followed for three years. It’s a revealing failure of discipleship—and worse, of friendship.


Yet Peter is clearly not a venal or evil man; in many ways he merely does what anyone else would do in the same situation. Peter’s failure merely proves how ordinary he is.


The all-too-ordinary disciple has plenty of company in the Easter story. Along with Peter’s denial, we witness the tearful despair of Mary Magdalene outside the tomb; the discouragement of the disciples on the road to Emmaus; the skepticism of Thomas; the terror of the main body of disciples hiding out in the upper room. We are tempted to ask: What are these stories doing in the Gospel at all?


Scripture offers no direct answer to this question; but it does lead us to an observation. The great Easter message of hope, redemption, and new life was Christ’s gift to the world. But to carry it forward into the world, Jesus entrusted his gift to messengers like these: the flawed and fearful, the discouraged and doubtful. Ordinary people, whose only distinction was that they had borne witness to something beyond understanding.


How remarkable it is to realize that these were the earliest Christian saints! For eventually, Peter and the rest became martyrs for Christ. They were individuals of no special distinction. But in light of our Lord’s resurrection they found the inner strength to stand with him, and not to deny him, in the end. “Saint” is the name we give to such people.


Sainthood has become a subject of renewed interest in the Armenian Church. In the coming week, we will mark the fifth anniversary of the canonization of the Holy Martyrs of the Armenian Genocide: the first Armenian saints to have been acknowledged as such in hundreds of years. The canonization in 2015 was a great milestone for our nation; but like all weighty moral undertakings, it did not occur without questions. Good and serious people questioned whether it was possible to acknowledge such a large company of people as saints of the church. Indeed, one can say with certainty that the vast majority of Genocide martyrs—people we now regard as saints—were flawed or otherwise unremarkable in their lives, apart from the circumstances of their sainthood.


But now, after five years of living in the consciousness of these “new” saints, perhaps we can find guidance in the Gospel account of those who witnessed the resurrection.


Who could live a saintly life?
The saints are indeed ordinary people. But far from being an obstacle to our understanding, the very ordinariness of the saints is what makes them examples—permits them to be aspirational figures for us. If they were superhuman beings with seamlessly virtuous lives, we might admire them; but we would have a ready excuse, an alibi, for failing to live up to their example. Realizing that they were ordinary people—men and women just like us—places the responsibility to live saintly lives directly on our shoulders.


This is surely one of the great moral revolutions Christianity brought into the world. To the imperial pagan world of Christ’s time, heroes were the offspring of gods—an unattainable distinction. The spectacle of heroic suffering—tragedy—was meant to make ordinary men tremble, while encouraging them to rest satisfied that, as mortals, they were beneath the notice of the careless pagan divinities.


Contrast this with the Christian saints, who have arisen from every station of life, and often are not even recognized as special until some moment of crisis. Their stories are meant to expose the deceit and injustice underlying the world around them—and to disrupt our own self-satisfied appraisal of the world around us. Their suffering is heroic not because it defies unfeeling gods, but because it imitates the experience of God’s Son—who lived, felt and suffered alongside his children, out of love for them.


This miraculous reality is the gift that all the saints embraced. However ordinary their lives may have been, carrying Christ’s resurrection in their hearts magnified them. When their moment of decision came—whether in the Apostolic Age, in 1915, or even today—they refused to deny their Lord.


It falls to us to accept our own role in this drama. As the Gospel shows, Christ entrusted his message of faith, love, and redemption to people no different from us. Carrying it forward has been the work of dozens, hundreds, millions of faithful individuals—our own ancestors among them. That gift now rests in our hands, and whether it continues to be carried forward through another century is largely up to us.


Let that thought guide us, as we experience the season of Christ’s resurrection in the company of our sainted Genocide Martyrs, and affirm with them the everlasting truth that Christ was raised from the dead.


By Christopher H. Zakian
HTMLText_BF100CFB_ACE5_C66B_41E0_8D235CA76615.html =
The Martyrs
Ordinary Saints



Saints and martyrs loom large in Armenian Christian spirituality. We look up to them; but could we ever be like them? Is saintliness an unattainable ideal? Or something more ordinary?


* * *


Peter was sitting in the outdoor courtyard when a maid came up to him and said, “You too were with Jesus the Galilean.” But he denied it before everyone, saying, “I don’t know what you mean.” … After a little while the bystanders came up and said to Peter, “Certainly you are also one of them: your accent betrays you.” Then he began to invoke a curse on himself and to swear, “I do not know the man!” Immediately the cock crowed—and Peter remembered the saying of Jesus: “Before the cock crows, you will deny me three times.” He went outside, and wept bitterly. (Matthew 26:69-75)


Christ’s resurrection is our great story of victory, our assurance of triumph. God’s love for mankind won the contest against man’s age-old enemies, Sin and Death. The faithful declare their share in that victory when they announce: Christ was raised from the dead.


But to read the gospels, one is struck by the aura of failure that overhangs the figures in the resurrection story. Consider the situation of the disciple Peter. In a supreme moment of decision, he denies even knowing Jesus, the teacher he has followed for three years. It’s a revealing failure of discipleship—and worse, of friendship.


Yet Peter is clearly not a venal or evil man; in many ways he merely does what anyone else would do in the same situation. Peter’s failure merely proves how ordinary he is.


The all-too-ordinary disciple has plenty of company in the Easter story. Along with Peter’s denial, we witness the tearful despair of Mary Magdalene outside the tomb; the discouragement of the disciples on the road to Emmaus; the skepticism of Thomas; the terror of the main body of disciples hiding out in the upper room. We are tempted to ask: What are these stories doing in the Gospel at all?


Scripture offers no direct answer to this question; but it does lead us to an observation. The great Easter message of hope, redemption, and new life was Christ’s gift to the world. But to carry it forward into the world, Jesus entrusted his gift to messengers like these: the flawed and fearful, the discouraged and doubtful. Ordinary people, whose only distinction was that they had borne witness to something beyond understanding.


How remarkable it is to realize that these were the earliest Christian saints! For eventually, Peter and the rest became martyrs for Christ. They were individuals of no special distinction. But in light of our Lord’s resurrection they found the inner strength to stand with him, and not to deny him, in the end. “Saint” is the name we give to such people.


Sainthood has become a subject of renewed interest in the Armenian Church. In the coming week, we will mark the fifth anniversary of the canonization of the Holy Martyrs of the Armenian Genocide: the first Armenian saints to have been acknowledged as such in hundreds of years. The canonization in 2015 was a great milestone for our nation; but like all weighty moral undertakings, it did not occur without questions. Good and serious people questioned whether it was possible to acknowledge such a large company of people as saints of the church. Indeed, one can say with certainty that the vast majority of Genocide martyrs—people we now regard as saints—were flawed or otherwise unremarkable in their lives, apart from the circumstances of their sainthood.


But now, after five years of living in the consciousness of these “new” saints, perhaps we can find guidance in the Gospel account of those who witnessed the resurrection.


Who could live a saintly life?
The saints are indeed ordinary people. But far from being an obstacle to our understanding, the very ordinariness of the saints is what makes them examples—permits them to be aspirational figures for us. If they were superhuman beings with seamlessly virtuous lives, we might admire them; but we would have a ready excuse, an alibi, for failing to live up to their example. Realizing that they were ordinary people—men and women just like us—places the responsibility to live saintly lives directly on our shoulders.


This is surely one of the great moral revolutions Christianity brought into the world. To the imperial pagan world of Christ’s time, heroes were the offspring of gods—an unattainable distinction. The spectacle of heroic suffering—tragedy—was meant to make ordinary men tremble, while encouraging them to rest satisfied that, as mortals, they were beneath the notice of the careless pagan divinities.


Contrast this with the Christian saints, who have arisen from every station of life, and often are not even recognized as special until some moment of crisis. Their stories are meant to expose the deceit and injustice underlying the world around them—and to disrupt our own self-satisfied appraisal of the world around us. Their suffering is heroic not because it defies unfeeling gods, but because it imitates the experience of God’s Son—who lived, felt and suffered alongside his children, out of love for them.


This miraculous reality is the gift that all the saints embraced. However ordinary their lives may have been, carrying Christ’s resurrection in their hearts magnified them. When their moment of decision came—whether in the Apostolic Age, in 1915, or even today—they refused to deny their Lord.


It falls to us to accept our own role in this drama. As the Gospel shows, Christ entrusted his message of faith, love, and redemption to people no different from us. Carrying it forward has been the work of dozens, hundreds, millions of faithful individuals—our own ancestors among them. That gift now rests in our hands, and whether it continues to be carried forward through another century is largely up to us.


Let that thought guide us, as we experience the season of Christ’s resurrection in the company of our sainted Genocide Martyrs, and affirm with them the everlasting truth that Christ was raised from the dead.


By Christopher H. Zakian
HTMLText_ABAE4B95_B261_4767_41D0_330699E18ADA.html =
The Martyrs
Ordinary Saints



Saints and martyrs loom large in Armenian Christian spirituality. We look up to them; but could we ever be like them? Is saintliness an unattainable ideal? Or something more ordinary?


* * *


Peter was sitting in the outdoor courtyard when a maid came up to him and said, “You too were with Jesus the Galilean.” But he denied it before everyone, saying, “I don’t know what you mean.” … After a little while the bystanders came up and said to Peter, “Certainly you are also one of them: your accent betrays you.” Then he began to invoke a curse on himself and to swear, “I do not know the man!” Immediately the cock crowed—and Peter remembered the saying of Jesus: “Before the cock crows, you will deny me three times.” He went outside, and wept bitterly. (Matthew 26:69-75)


Christ’s resurrection is our great story of victory, our assurance of triumph. God’s love for mankind won the contest against man’s age-old enemies, Sin and Death. The faithful declare their share in that victory when they announce: Christ was raised from the dead.


But to read the gospels, one is struck by the aura of failure that overhangs the figures in the resurrection story. Consider the situation of the disciple Peter. In a supreme moment of decision, he denies even knowing Jesus, the teacher he has followed for three years. It’s a revealing failure of discipleship—and worse, of friendship.


Yet Peter is clearly not a venal or evil man; in many ways he merely does what anyone else would do in the same situation. Peter’s failure merely proves how ordinary he is.


The all-too-ordinary disciple has plenty of company in the Easter story. Along with Peter’s denial, we witness the tearful despair of Mary Magdalene outside the tomb; the discouragement of the disciples on the road to Emmaus; the skepticism of Thomas; the terror of the main body of disciples hiding out in the upper room. We are tempted to ask: What are these stories doing in the Gospel at all?


Scripture offers no direct answer to this question; but it does lead us to an observation. The great Easter message of hope, redemption, and new life was Christ’s gift to the world. But to carry it forward into the world, Jesus entrusted his gift to messengers like these: the flawed and fearful, the discouraged and doubtful. Ordinary people, whose only distinction was that they had borne witness to something beyond understanding.


How remarkable it is to realize that these were the earliest Christian saints! For eventually, Peter and the rest became martyrs for Christ. They were individuals of no special distinction. But in light of our Lord’s resurrection they found the inner strength to stand with him, and not to deny him, in the end. “Saint” is the name we give to such people.


Sainthood has become a subject of renewed interest in the Armenian Church. In the coming week, we will mark the fifth anniversary of the canonization of the Holy Martyrs of the Armenian Genocide: the first Armenian saints to have been acknowledged as such in hundreds of years. The canonization in 2015 was a great milestone for our nation; but like all weighty moral undertakings, it did not occur without questions. Good and serious people questioned whether it was possible to acknowledge such a large company of people as saints of the church. Indeed, one can say with certainty that the vast majority of Genocide martyrs—people we now regard as saints—were flawed or otherwise unremarkable in their lives, apart from the circumstances of their sainthood.


But now, after five years of living in the consciousness of these “new” saints, perhaps we can find guidance in the Gospel account of those who witnessed the resurrection.


Who could live a saintly life?
The saints are indeed ordinary people. But far from being an obstacle to our understanding, the very ordinariness of the saints is what makes them examples—permits them to be aspirational figures for us. If they were superhuman beings with seamlessly virtuous lives, we might admire them; but we would have a ready excuse, an alibi, for failing to live up to their example. Realizing that they were ordinary people—men and women just like us—places the responsibility to live saintly lives directly on our shoulders.


This is surely one of the great moral revolutions Christianity brought into the world. To the imperial pagan world of Christ’s time, heroes were the offspring of gods—an unattainable distinction. The spectacle of heroic suffering—tragedy—was meant to make ordinary men tremble, while encouraging them to rest satisfied that, as mortals, they were beneath the notice of the careless pagan divinities.


Contrast this with the Christian saints, who have arisen from every station of life, and often are not even recognized as special until some moment of crisis. Their stories are meant to expose the deceit and injustice underlying the world around them—and to disrupt our own self-satisfied appraisal of the world around us. Their suffering is heroic not because it defies unfeeling gods, but because it imitates the experience of God’s Son—who lived, felt and suffered alongside his children, out of love for them.


This miraculous reality is the gift that all the saints embraced. However ordinary their lives may have been, carrying Christ’s resurrection in their hearts magnified them. When their moment of decision came—whether in the Apostolic Age, in 1915, or even today—they refused to deny their Lord.


It falls to us to accept our own role in this drama. As the Gospel shows, Christ entrusted his message of faith, love, and redemption to people no different from us. Carrying it forward has been the work of dozens, hundreds, millions of faithful individuals—our own ancestors among them. That gift now rests in our hands, and whether it continues to be carried forward through another century is largely up to us.


Let that thought guide us, as we experience the season of Christ’s resurrection in the company of our sainted Genocide Martyrs, and affirm with them the everlasting truth that Christ was raised from the dead.


By Christopher H. Zakian
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The Nativity*
Our Savior is Born and Revealed



The Nativity of Our Lord Jesus Christ refers to the accounts of the Birth of Jesus. This is based primarily on the two accounts in the Gospels of Luke and Matthew. The Canonical Gospels of Luke and Matthew describe Jesus being born in Bethlehem, in Judea, to a Virgin Mother named Mary. Luke features the Christmas story, in which Joseph and Mary, as part of a census, travel to Bethlehem. It is there, that Jesus is born in a manger.


Angles proclaim him a savior for all people, and shepherds come to adore him. In Matthew, wise men follow a start to Bethlehem to bring gifts to Jesus, born the “King of the Jews”. King Herod orders the massacre of all the toddler boys in Bethlehem, in an attempt to kill Jesus, but the holy family flees to Egypt and later settles in Nazareth. The main religious celebration among members of the Catholic Church is the Church Service on Christmas Eve, generally midnight Mass, or on the morning of Christmas Day. During the forty days leading up to Christmas, we begin observing the liturgical season of Advent, four Sundays before Christmas. This is a time of spiritual cleansing, recollection and renewal to prepare for the celebration of the Birth of Jesus.


The Nativity of Jesus shows the Incarnation of Jesus as God made Man, in fulfillment of the Divine Will of God, undoing the damage caused by the fall of the first man, Adam. Artistic depiction of the Nativity has been a major subject for Christian artists since the 4th century. The Nativity scene has emphasized the humility of Jesus, and has been celebrated since the 13th century.


The accounts of the Nativity of Jesus in the New Testament appear in only two of the four Canonical Gospels, namely the Gospel of Luke and the Gospel of Matthew. Luke’s story takes place mostly before the birth of Jesus and centers on Mary, while Matthew’s story takes place mostly after the birth of Jesus and centers on Joseph. The other Canonical Gospels, the Gospel of Mark and the Gospel of John, begin their narratives of Jesus’s life in his adulthood. Both mention him coming out of Galilee and John mentions the name of Jesus’s father, but neither John or Mark give any other details of His life prior to adulthood. The betrothal of Jospeh and Mary and the birth of Jesus in Bethlehem appear in both Matthew and Luke. Luke includes several events prior to the birth of Jesus that do not appear in Matthew; the trip from Nazareth to Bethlehem, while Matthew alone discusses the Flight to Egypt after his birth. The Nativity accounts in the New Testament are generally viewed as ending with “Finding Jesus in the Temple” several years later, after the family has returned to Galilee.


Christmas has been celebrated in the United States since it’s founding. Today, most Catholic Families celebrate by decorating a Christmas Tree, and wrap gifts to give to family and friends. It is is generally centered around the family gathering for a meal and celebration on Christmas Eve or Christmas Day. It is a Holy Day of Obligation for Catholics to attend Mass on either Christmas Eve or Christmas Day.
HTMLText_58AAE1E5_4A43_7C99_41CF_4A429BD9DA68.html =
The Nativity
Our Savior is Born and Revealed



The Nativity of Our Lord Jesus Christ refers to the accounts of the Birth of Jesus. This is based primarily on the two accounts in the Gospels of Luke and Matthew. The Canonical Gospels of Luke and Matthew describe Jesus being born in Bethlehem, in Judea, to a Virgin Mother named Mary. Luke features the Christmas story, in which Joseph and Mary, as part of a census, travel to Bethlehem. It is there, that Jesus is born in a manger.


Angles proclaim him a savior for all people, and shepherds come to adore him. In Matthew, wise men follow a start to Bethlehem to bring gifts to Jesus, born the “King of the Jews”. King Herod orders the massacre of all the toddler boys in Bethlehem, in an attempt to kill Jesus, but the holy family flees to Egypt and later settles in Nazareth. The main religious celebration among members of the Catholic Church is the Church Service on Christmas Eve, generally midnight Mass, or on the morning of Christmas Day. During the forty days leading up to Christmas, we begin observing the liturgical season of Advent, four Sundays before Christmas. This is a time of spiritual cleansing, recollection and renewal to prepare for the celebration of the Birth of Jesus.


The Nativity of Jesus shows the Incarnation of Jesus as God made Man, in fulfillment of the Divine Will of God, undoing the damage caused by the fall of the first man, Adam. Artistic depiction of the Nativity has been a major subject for Christian artists since the 4th century. The Nativity scene has emphasized the humility of Jesus, and has been celebrated since the 13th century.


The accounts of the Nativity of Jesus in the New Testament appear in only two of the four Canonical Gospels, namely the Gospel of Luke and the Gospel of Matthew. Luke’s story takes place mostly before the birth of Jesus and centers on Mary, while Matthew’s story takes place mostly after the birth of Jesus and centers on Joseph. The other Canonical Gospels, the Gospel of Mark and the Gospel of John, begin their narratives of Jesus’s life in his adulthood. Both mention him coming out of Galilee and John mentions the name of Jesus’s father, but neither John or Mark give any other details of His life prior to adulthood. The betrothal of Jospeh and Mary and the birth of Jesus in Bethlehem appear in both Matthew and Luke. Luke includes several events prior to the birth of Jesus that do not appear in Matthew; the trip from Nazareth to Bethlehem, while Matthew alone discusses the Flight to Egypt after his birth. The Nativity accounts in the New Testament are generally viewed as ending with “Finding Jesus in the Temple” several years later, after the family has returned to Galilee.


Christmas has been celebrated in the United States since it’s founding. Today, most Catholic Families celebrate by decorating a Christmas Tree, and wrap gifts to give to family and friends. It is is generally centered around the family gathering for a meal and celebration on Christmas Eve or Christmas Day. It is a Holy Day of Obligation for Catholics to attend Mass on either Christmas Eve or Christmas Day.
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The Processional Cross




The Processional Cross is used in special services and to lead spiritual processions in the Armenian Church.


Early in The Badarak when the altar and the Eucharistic gifts have been prepared, the curtain opens and the deacons lead the priest around the altar and down into the nave. The priest offers incense to the main and side altars, the baptismal font, the sacred icons, and all the people.


The Procesional Cross then leads as the priest makes his way around the church, the faithful come up to him, kiss the hand cross and say, Heeshescheer yev zees arachee anmah kareenun Asdoodzo [Remember me, too, before the immortal Lamb of God]. This is an acknowledgment that during the Divine Liturgy we encounter "the Lamb of God," Jesus Christ himself. The people ask that the priest pray for them in the presence of Jesus.


The procession marks the beginning of the Liturgy of the Word. Everything until this point has been a preparation for the Liturgy of the Word and the Eucharist, the two components of the Badarak. The Liturgy of the Word concerns the Word of God, Jesus Christ. He comes to his people in the public reading of the Bible, and especially when the deacon solemnly chants a passage from one of the four gospels (Matthew, Mark, Luke, John). Every prayer, psalm, hymn and ritual during this part of the Divine Liturgy is related to Jesus Christ as the Word, the supreme expression of God. This idea is inspired by the Gospel according to John: "In the beginning was the Word and the Word was with God and the Word was God" [John 1:1].
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The Resurrection
He Is Risen



The resurrection of Jesus Christ is the foundation of the Christian faith. Without the resurrection, the belief in God's saving grace through Jesus is destroyed. When Jesus rose from the dead, he confirmed his identity as the Son of God and his work of atonement, redemption, reconciliation, and salvation. The resurrection was a real, literal, physical raising of Jesus’ body from the dead.


Jesus was arrested, tried, and found guilty of claiming to be a king. His body was hung on a cross between two thieves. After his death, Jesus’ body was wrapped in linen cloths and placed in a tomb with a large stone rolled across the opening. On the third day, an early Sunday morning, Mary Magdalene and another Mary came to the tomb and found it empty. Sitting on the rolled away stone was an angel of the Lord who told them to not be afraid because Jesus had risen. As the women left to tell the disciples, Jesus Christ met them and showed them his nail-pierced hands.


Both the Old and the New Testament speak of the truth of Jesus being raised from death - Jesus testified of his resurrection before he died on the cross and his disciples witnessed his body after the resurrection.
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The Srpadoop




The srpadoop is a small, ornamented metal box that contains a few particles of Holy Communion reserved from a previous celebration of the Badarak. The priest takes the srpadoop with him to administer Holy Communion to the sick and shut-ins. The srpadoop may be placed on the main altar or in the niche in the north wall of the apse.
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Enjoy a realistic view of this virtual tour.


Move your mobile device and the tour
will respond to it's movement.



Click the Gyroscope below to
activate or de-activate this feature
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Baptismal Font
Our Spiritual Life Begins



Baptism is the first of the seven sacraments of the Christian Church, the others being: Confirmation (Chrismation), Marriage (Holy Matrimony), Holy Communion (Eucharist), Penance (Confession), Holy Orders (Ordination of Clergy), and Extreme Unction (last blessing given to a dying person).



Sacraments are outward or visible signs and ceremonies to give us God’s invisible graces. They are channels by which the Christian graces enter into our souls to feed, to nourish and to strengthen our spiritual life.



Baptism is the first sacrament which a Christian receives. Unless we are baptized, we are forbidden to receive any other sacrament. Any other sacrament received before receiving Baptism, will be invalid. That is why Baptism is called “the door of the Church.”



By Baptism we are made Christians, and are incorporated into the Church. Baptism gives new life to our souls. Through Baptism we become children of God, and co-heirs of Christ.



This sacrament, as well as each one of the others, was instituted by our Lord Himself. He gave us the first example by being Himself baptized by John the Baptist. On leaving this world the last order which He gave His disciples was: “Go and make disciples of all nations. Baptize them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.”



How was Baptism administered in ancient times?



In the early ages of Christianity Baptism was administered without special baptismal fonts. It was administered in rivers and pools. Jesus Himself was baptized in the River Jordan. St. Gregory, the Enlightener of Armenia, baptized King Tiridat, the first Christian King of Armenia, and thousands of others in the River Euphrates.



Indoor baptisms were, however, not uncommon even in the Apostolic age. St. Paul, for example, was baptized indoors. For the sake of privacy and solemnity indoor baptism came to be the rule.



Reverence for the rite itself, and for the water, which came in time to receive a special consecration, gave rise to the use of a special font for the sacrament of Baptism. This font became one of the most important parts of the Christian Church everywhere. The ancient practice was to have it hewn out of a solid piece of rock.



In the Armenian Church, according to ancient custom, the first part of the ceremony was performed outside the door of the church. This symbolic practice, however, is no longer kept. At present, the infant is brought to the church. While the godfather is holding the infant in his arms, the priest recites, in the name of the infant, some penitential psalms, makes a triple renunciation of Satan, and then recites the Creed.



Then the priest, together with the godfather and those attending, goes to the baptismal font. Water is poured into the font. The priest says a blessing over the water. In the meantime the child is taken to be undressed and brought back. The priest then asks the godfather, “What does this child request?” The godfather replies, “Faith, hope, and love; to be baptized and to be justified, to be cleansed from sins, to be delivered from evil, and to serve God.”



The priest then asks the name of the infant, holds him up, and then immersing him in the water says: “(name), Servant of God, has come as a catechumen to be baptized; he is now baptized in the name of the Father, of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit; being saved by the blood of Christ from the servitude of sin, receives the sonship of the heavenly Father, to be co-heir with Christ and a temple of the Holy Spirit.” While saying this the priest immerses the infant three times in the water. In this act of immersion in consecrated water consists the essence of Baptism.



Baptism by “dipping” or “immersion” was the universally accepted custom in the Church from the beginning. This is testified even by the Fathers of the Western Church, where at present it is a general practice to baptize by “sprinkling” or “pouring.” Immersion means dipping the whole body of the baptized in the water.



Since the grace of Baptism is absolutely necessary for all men, therefore this Sacrament must be denied to none, not even to infants. On this principle Infant Baptism became normal in the Church as soon as circumstances allowed. One of the aims of the Baptism is the forgiveness of all sins, including the original sin, in which we are born to this world. As original sin is universal, and the need for release from it is universal, therefore the Church wisely and justly allows infants to receive the Grace which cleanses them from the stains of the original sin and gives them, in their innocency, the equipment to fight victoriously against sin. Whole households, which included infants, were baptized by the Apostles (Cf. 1 Cor. 1: 16, Acts 10: 47, 16: 33).



“Just as parents provide the necessary physical cleansings of the child, supply it with food, guide it and educate it without regard to the will of the child, so, having in view the spiritual progress and wellbeing of their child, they provide for its spiritual regeneration and oversee its spiritual needs.”



From the earliest times a new name was given to the catechumen at Baptism, even if the receiver of this sacrament already had a name. Unusual and pagan names should be avoided when giving a new name to a child. It is always recommended that the name of a saint should be given because the name given at Baptism is the child’s “Christian” name.


At the Baptism someone should assist at the ceremony to make the profession of the faith on behalf of the child. Such a person is called godfather (in Armenian, “Gunka-hayr” which rhymes with hire). The duty of the godfather is to see that the child is brought up as a good Christian, if this is not done by the parents. In the Armenian Church there is only one godfather, of the male sex. The wife of a godfather may be considered as godmother but she never assists at the ceremony in any formal capacity. The godfather should be over 12 years old. He must be a member of the Armenian Church. One who is not a member of the Armenian Church cannot be a godfather at an Armenian Baptism. Also, those who neither know nor practice their faith should not be chosen as godfathers. Too many people choose godfathers for their children for reasons other than spiritual.



Baptism is necessary for salvation. The parents must not take the risk of depriving their children of the benefits of this sacrament. Parents who put off Baptism for a long time, or entirely neglect it, are endangering the eternal salvation of their children. Responsible people always should remember the warning of the Gospel, “Unless a man be born again of water and spirit he cannot enter the Kingdom of God.” This is what our Lord said.



The priest is the usual minister of Baptism; therefore, administration of the Sacrament, under all normal conditions, must be at the hands of the priest. If there is a danger to the life of an unbaptized baby, any one else may and should christen the baby. In such emergency cases it is sufficient to sprinkle or apply some water on the forehead or any part of the body, giving a name and using the proper formula: “(name) is now baptized in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.” Should the person so baptized recover, he must be brought to the church and his baptism must be normalized and validated by receiving the remaining parts of the ritual, at the hands of a regular priest. Such extraordinary Baptism is lawful only in the event of absolute and dire necessity.



After Baptism and Confirmation a certificate is given. It should be very carefully kept. Parents should tell their children when and where they were baptized, so that even if the certificate is lost the registration may be traced.
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Khachkar
Armenian Stone Cross



The Armenians, who recognized Christianity as their state religion at the beginning of the fourth century, have long maintained an independent Christian tradition. Living on the eastern border of Byzantium, they frequently installed imposing stone crosses called Khatchkars as memorials to the dead and to mark the location of significant events during the medieval period. The elaborate interlace frame on this Khatchkar contains a monumental cross resting on the heads of the four evangelists, the authors of the Gospels. The large head of Saint Matthew’s angel presides over the smaller heads of Saint Mark’s lion, Saint Luke’s ox (on its side), and Saint John’s eagle (in profile). The Khatchkar is from northern Armenia,a region that fell to the Mongols in the early thirteenth century, soon after the Khatchkar was carved.
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Mesrob the Vartabed
known as Mashdotz - 438 A.D.



St. Mesrob was born in the village of Hatzegatz in the province of Daron. In his early years, he learned both Greek and Persian and served in the Armenian royal court. Later, he decided to enter the ranks of the clergy, and with some other young men he went to preach in the province of Koghtn around 395 A.D. During this period, he felt the great need of the Armenian people for an alphabet of their own, so he petitioned Catholicos Sahag, and together they requested the aid of King Vramshabouh.


After much research and travel, Mesrob was able to come up with the skeleton of an alphabet. However, it did not meet the needs of the Armenian language. According to tradition, while meditating in a cave near the village of Palu, the saint had a vision, in which “the hand of God wrote the alphabet in letters of fire.” Upon his return to the Catholicos and king, the saint was received with great honors and much joy.


Immediately after the discovery of the alphabet, the Holy Translators worked to translate the Bible; the first words written in the Armenian language were from the Book of Proverbs: “To know wisdom and instruction; to perceive the words of understanding” (Proverbs 1:2). They also opened schools to teach the newly-discovered alphabet, among whose students were the famous translators Yeghisheh, Movses, Tavit, and Vartan.


After the discovery of the alphabet, St. Mesrob spent many years translating and writing literary and ecclesiastical works. He went to many provinces where paganism still existed and preached the word of God in the people’s own language, with the light of the Holy Gospels. During this period, he was invited to Georgia and Caucasian Albania, where he likewise invented alphabets to suit the respective local languages. His life’s works have been recorded by one of his famous students, Goriun, in his book, The Life of Mashdots. St. Mesrob was buried in Oshagan in the province of Vaspouragan, where a beautiful cathedral has been built in his honor, and where one may go and pay homage at the saint’s tomb to the present day.


The Book of Ritual used in the Armenian Church bears the name “Mashdots” and is dedicated to this great saint. Although compiled at a later date, it is based on an earlier sacramental anthology attributed to Mashdots.


St. Mesrob gave the Armenian people the most precious of gifts and continues to serve as an inspiration to all generations. Beloved by all, St. Mesrob is a special inspiration to Armenian writers and poets.
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St Bartholomew
Nathaniel in the Gospel of John



St. Bartholomew (known as Nathaniel in St. John's Gospel), was a doctor in Jewish law and a dear friend of St. Philip the Apostle. He went willingly with Philip to see Christ and recognized the Savior immediately as the Son of God. On that initial meeting, Jesus uttered the glorious compliment, "Behold, an Israelite indeed in whom there is no guile!"


After having received the gifts of the Holy Spirit on the first Pentecost, Bartholomew evangelized Asia Minor, northwestern India, and Greater Armenia. In the latter country, while preaching to idolaters, he was arrested and condemned to death.


After the Resurrection, Bartholomew was favored by becoming one of the few apostles who witnessed the appearance of the risen Savior on the Sea of Galilee (John 21:2). Following the Ascension, he is said to have preached in Greater Armenia and to have been martyred there. While still alive, his skin was torn from his body. Concerning the fate of his relics, the Martyrology says:


His holy body was first taken to the island of Lipari (north of Sicily), then to Benevento, and finally to Rome on an island in the Tiber where it is honored by the faithful with pious devotion.


The Church of Armenia has a national tradition that St. Jude Thaddeus and St. Bartholomew visited the Armenians early in the first century and introduced Christianity among the worshippers of the god Ahura Mazda. The new faith spread throughout the land, and in 302 A.D., St. Gregory the Illuminator baptized the king of Armenia, Dertad the Great, along with many of his followers. Since Dertad was probably the first ruler to embrace Christianity for his nation, the Armenians proudly claim they were the first Christian state.
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St George
the namesake of our Parish



St. George has been classed from the beginning among the greatest saints and martyrs of the Christian Church. In spite of his popularity both in the East and in the West, we do not know much about his life, except that he was a high ranking military officer in the Roman Army towards the end of the third century. He was a brave soldier, as well as a virtuous Christian. He openly protested against the persecutions of Christians ordered by the Emperor Diocletian. He was bold enough to tear down the imperial order of persecution which was posted in the streets of Antioch. He was summoned before the imperial court for this crime. He bravely defended his religion and showed the falsehood of paganism, as well as the injustice of the order of persecutions. For his outspoken courage, he was beheaded after terrible tortures in the year 303.


St. George is always represented in pictures as a horseman killing a monster or dragon. This is symbolic, representing St. George fighting against the powers of evil, against injustice, and for the liberty of human conscience. However, Christian imagination has invented stories about St. George fighting with a real dragon. According to one of the most widely spread stories, a terrible monster had overrun the countryside around a certain city. The monster inhabited a cave nearby. Its breath alone caused pestilence whenever the monster approached the town. The inhabitants finding themselves helpless against this monster had no other means to keep it away from their town except by giving two lambs every day to satisfy its hunger and to keep it in its cave. But eventually there was no lamp or sheep or goat left in the town or in the vicinity and they were obliged to offer human beings to the dragon. Lots were cast to determine the victim.


On one occasion when the lot was cast, as usual, it fell on a daughter of the Governor of the city. The Governor offered all his wealth to purchase a substitute, but the people had pledged themselves that no substitutes should be allowed. Therefore, the poor maiden dressed as a bridge, was led to the cave of the monster. It happened that as they were taking the daughter of the governor out of town, St. George was passing by and seeing the poor girl crying so helplessly, ask the reason. Learning the cause, he decided to fight and kill the dragon. So he alone followed the maiden to the entrance of the cave. The maiden earnestly request him to leave, lest he also might perish. St. George, however, prepared himself to meet the monster. When the dragon appeared, St. George making the sign of the cross, attacked the monster and nailed it to the ground with his lance, then dragged it to the city like a wooden log. When the townsfolk saw the dragon, they were so terrified that everybody ran away. But St. George ordered them to have no fear, but believe in the true God, and in Jesus Christ, “through whose power,” he said, “I have killed this dragon.” Then he cut off the head of the dragon to make everybody realize that it was no longer a dangerous monster. The townsfolk, seeing the supernatural power of St. George, were converted to Christianity and were baptized.



The Governor and his wife were so happy at the miraculous rescue of their daughter, that they offered half of their possessions and wealth to St. George. But the saint, thanking them for the offer, replied that his mission was to go from place to place and to save helpless people like their daughter. “Only I would ask of you,” he said, “to protect all Christians under your rule, honor their clergy, and have pity on and take good care of all poor people.” He then went off to carry on his God-given mission.



Commonly when we think about Saints, we are apt to think of pale, quiet persons, who think about nothing else but their salvation and heavenly bliss. This is not always a true picture of a saint. A true saint is a person of strong convictions. He is a man of action, a real fighter. St. George is the best example of this kind of active saintliness. His example and courage should inspire us to become better fighting member of the Church, fighting against falsehood and evil.
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St Ghevont
patron saint of the Armenian clergy



At the dawn of the 5th century, Armenia was an independent nation. Its people had invented an alphabet, translated the Holy Bible and established their first university. lt was during this era, known as the Golden Age of Literature, that a promising young man was ordained a priest. His name was Father Ghevont. He emerged as the most enlightened leader after the deaths of the great illuminators, St. Sahag and St. Mesrob.


In 432 AD, King Ardashes was deposed, exiled and jailed in Persia. The Persians were determined to destroy the Christianity of Armenia and establish their religion of fire-worship. The Persians delivered an official ultimatum. Father Ghevont, chief spokesman, drafted a firm and dignified refusal. The Persians were enraged. Battle was inevitable. The eloquence of Father Ghevont inspired General Vartan Mamigonian to take command to defend the Armenian Christian religion and homeland.


The Battle of Avarair in 451 AD represents the first military battle fought in the defense of Christendom in the history of the world.


On the eve of the battle, Father Ghevont stressed the supreme sacrifice of Jesus, before offering the sacrament of Holy Communion. During the ensuing battle, General Vartan was killed and the Armenian forces collapsed. Father Ghevont walked through the battlefield, administering last rites to the dying. He and other surviving clergy were captured, subjected to unbearable tortures and finally put to death by the sword.


St. Ghevont's courageous spirit, patriotism and devotion to the Armenian Church have been a source of pride and inspiration for fifteen centuries.


St. Ghevont is the patron saint of the Armenian clergy and is remembered two days before Vartanantz Day when St. Vartan and the spiritual victory of the Battle of Avarair are commemorated.
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St Gregory of Narek
Our Greatest Poet



St. Gregory was born in the city of Narek about 950 A.D. He was a monk, poet, mystical philosopher, and theologian, born into a family of writers. St. Gregory received his education under the guidance of his father, Bishop Khosrov, author of the earliest commentary on the Divine Liturgy, and from Anania Vartabed, Abbot of Nareg Monastery. He and his two brothers entered monastic life at an early age.


He became a priest at the age of 25 and dedicated himself to God completely, always searching for the truth. Most of his life he lived in the monasteries of Narek where he taught at the monastic school. He launched his writings with a commentary on the “Song of Songs,” which was commissioned by an Armenian prince. Despite his reservations that he was too young for the task, he wrote the commentary, which is famous for its clarity of thought and language, and its excellence of theological presentation.


He also wrote a number of famous letters, sharagans, treasures, odes, melodies, and church writings. However, his masterpiece is considered to be his Book of Lamentations, commonly called “Narek,” in which his genius is displayed. (This work, published in 1673 in Marseille, has been translated into at least 30 languages.) Also known as The Prayer Book, it is described by St. Gregory as his last testament: “Its letters like my body, its message like my soul.” He called his book an “encyclopedia of prayer for all nations.” It was his hope that it would serve as a guide to prayer by people of all stations around the world.


St. Gregory of Narek is considered the greatest poet of the Armenian nation and its first and greatest mystic. His writing style and command of the Armenian language are unparalleled, and his saintly person has been an inspiration to the Armenian faithful for centuries. St. Gregory’s poetry is deeply biblical and is filled with images and themes of sacred history, while also distinguished with an intimate and personal character. Numerous miracles and traditions have been attributed to him and he is referred to as “the watchful angel in human form.” St. Gregory died in 1003 A.D.
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St Gregory
The Enlightener 240-332



St. Gregory, whose birth name was Suren, was the son of Prince Anag, who was sent to Armenia by the Sasanian, King of Kings of Iran, to assassi­nate King Khosrov of Armenia and facilitate the Iranian occupation of that country. Our ancestors were convinced that St. Gregory had received the grace of the Apostle because he was conceived near the grave of the Holy Apostle Thaddeus, the first enlightener of Armenia.


Anag and his brother succeeded in murdering King Khosrov in the city of Vagharshabad in about A.D. 240. They fled in haste, but the Armenian con­tingents stopped them near the city of Ardashad and slew Anag’s entire fam­ily. Only two infants, Gregory and his brother, were saved from the massacre. Their Christian nurse Sophia took the boys to Caesarea to Eski Shehir, southwest of modern Kayseri in Anatolian Turkey.


In Caesarea, Gregory was christened and brought up as a Christian. When Gregory was of age, he married a Christian girl named Mariam, daughter of David. Gregory and Mariam had two sons, Vrtanes and Arisdages. Three years after Arisdages’ birth, the couple willingly decided to part from each other. The elder child, Vrtanes, was placed in the care of his nurse and Mariam took the younger Arisdages with her as she withdrew to a convent. The custom of Christian couples dissolving their marriage ties to seek monastic life was common in the 4th century.


Gregory himself headed for Armenia to serve as King Drtad’s secretary. At the time of King Khosrov’s assassination, Drtad, the king’s son and heir to the throne, was still an infant. Drtad was saved and taken to Roman territory. Also saved was Drtad’s sister Khosrovitukhd. Drtad was raised under Roman protection and later joined the Roman legions. He achieved fame as a valiant soldier and the Romans recognized Drtad as king of Armenia and helped him to reclaim his ancestral throne in 274. While eastern Armenia was still under Iranian sovereignty, Drtad ruled for two years before he was ousted from his kingdom.


It was at that time (between 274 and 276) that Gregory, who had found out about his father’s vile deed, decided entered the service of Drtad under a false identity to make amends. He pursued his duties faithfully over a period of several years. Drtad, once again with Roman help, was permanently established on the throne of western (Roman) Armenia in 287. Soon after, the relationship between him and Gregory deteriorated. The ceremony of thanksgiving and sacrifice to the pagan goddess Anahid in the village of Yeres (province of Yegeghik in western Armenia), following Drtad’s great victory over the Persians. When Gregory refused to offer wreaths and thick branches of trees to the altar of the goddess at the king’s request, he was incarcerated.


King Drtad ordered him to be subjected to twelve different kinds of torture at a site located to the imme­diate south of Erez, the present-day city of Erzinjan in Turkey. A monastery dedicated to the passion of St. Gregory was erected at this site.


After withstanding numerous incidents of torture, St. Gregory was transferred to the city of Ardashad and thrown into a bottomless pit reserved for notorious criminals condemned to death and located in the citadel of that town.


It is reported that Gregory survived in the pit for thirteen years. Gregory’s survival was made possible through the charity of a widow who lived in the fortress where the dungeon was located. She had received a command in a dream to prepare a loaf of bread every day and throw it down into the pit. That served as the source of Gregory’s sustenance for thirteen years. At the site of the bottomless pit, there is now a monastery called Khor Virabi vank (Monastery of Khor Virab, a place of pilgrimage facing Mount Ararat and almost on the border of present-day Armenia and Turkey).


His Sons and Grandsons
The Feast of St. Gregory the Illuminator’s Sons & Grandsons


The calendar of the Armenian Church singles out four members of St. Gregory’s family—his two sons, Sts. Arisdagés and Vrtanés, and his grandsons, Sts. Krikoris and Husig—and assigns them a special day of commemoration called “The Feast of the Sons and Grandsons of St. Gregory.”


The day of commemoration (according to the present calendar in force since 1774-75) falls on the Saturday before the Third Sunday of Transfiguration. Originally it was observed on the Tuesday following the Fifth Sunday after Pentecost. The feast of the discovery of the relics of St. Krikoris, however, is observed separately on the Monday following the Fifth Sunday of the Exaltation. Excluded from this group of saints are the rest of the members of the Gregorid family, namely Sts. Nersés the Great, Sahag the Parthian, Vartan and his daughter Shushanig. The latter are commemorated on different days during the year.
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St Sahag
played a fundamental role
in creating Armenian Alphabet


St. Sahag Bartev was born on September 29, 348 and was son of Nerses the Great while his mother belonged to the Mamigonian family as a part of the descendents of St. Gregory the Illuminator. Sahag was the 10th catholicos of the armenian church for a period of about 50 years and was elected in 387.


He worked alongside King Khosrov IV to restore the unity of Greater Armenia and after the exile of Khosrov III, he had a fundamental role with the next king Vramshabouh - who was Khosrovs brother - and made it possible to restore the catholicos.


Sahag supported St. Mesrob’s work leading to the creation of the Armenian alphabet along with the school network to teach the new alphabet in the beginning of the 5th century. Whenever Mesrob and other translators needed to make phonetic comparisons between Armenian and Greek they would ask their questions to Sahag because he received a good education and had stupendous knowledge of phonetics, rhetorical commentary and was well versed in philosophy.


Sahag worked to arrange the Armenian calendar of religious festivities and wrote many rules related to the ecclesiastic and secular classes and other issues. He also composed many liturgical hymns and prayers as well as played an important role in the translation of the Bible which was later completed in 435.


St. Sahag sadly passed away on September 7, 439 in the village Pelrots and province of Pagrevant. He was buried in the city of Ashtishat and region of Daron and his death ended the line of St. Gregory the Illuminator.


The Armenian Church remembers St. Sahag Bartevs memory twice a year, the first being 8 days before Paregentan and the second on the Thursday following the 4th Sunday of Pentecost and he is remembered with Mesrob as the Holy Translators.
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St Santookhd
The Virgin
The First Martyr



The story of St. Santoukhd, the first Armenian saint, is inextricably bound to that of Saint Thaddeus. Thaddeus, one of Christ’s holy disciples, was charged by Peter, leader of the disciples, to spread Christianity in Armenia in the 1st century A.D.


In his travels to Urfa, St. Thaddeus healed King Abgar, king of the Armenians and Assyrians. This miracle, witnessed by others, led to the king’s conversion as well as the baptism and conversion of all the people of Edessa. Here St. Thaddeus built a church and ordained priests and deacons.


After leaving Urfa, the apostle traveled to northern Armenia, bearing the spear given him by Peter and a letter from King Abgar. He finally arrived at the town of Shavarshan, where King Sanadroug lived in the province of Arda. He preached the Word of Life, performed many astonishing miracles there, and baptized many believers.


One night the young and beautiful Princes Santoukhd, the king’s daughter, went to see Thaddeus and find out about the new religion herself. According to accounts, she changed her royal garments and dressed in ordinary clothes and was led by a servant to a house where these early Christian meetings were held. Santoukhd received instruction from Thaddeus, and when she declared her belief in Christ and was baptized, a sign from heaven designated her as a holy virgin.


Those who witnessed this event immediately believed. The news enraged her father, King Sanadroug, who ordered all believers to be slain. As the soldiers were about to kill Thaddeus, a tremor and bright light streaked across the sky, frightening the unbelievers and sparing the apostle. Some time after this, however, the king’s soldiers came and arrested Thaddeus as well as Princess Santoukhd.


Despite the king’s punitive actions, the number of Christians increased. Even some of the king’s soldiers who witnessed the miracles of Thaddeus became believers and converted. Further enraged, yet feeling some pity for his daughter, the king summoned Santoukhd from prison to give her a last chance to renounce her new faith and to claim allegiance to her father and his pagan gods.


Santoukhd was forced to choose between the crown and the sword. Because of her decision to stand firm in her Christian faith and reject her father’s false gods, she was subjected to torture and ultimately ordered to be executed. During these times when she was weak and at her lowest, she drew strength from St. Thaddeus who encouraged her to hold fast, reminding her that she was a holy virgin and would soon see Christ face to face.


One account of her death states that immediately after one of the soldiers thrust his sword into the holy virgin’s heart “a sweet fragrance filled the air and a light shone from heaven in the form of a fiery pillar that hovered over Santoukhd’s body for three days and three nights.” The more than 2,000 people that witnessed these events, it is said, all converted and were baptized that night. St. Santoukhd’s body was buried and entombed by St. Thaddeus at the same site.


St. Santoukhd was martyred on the 15th of December, and the apostle St. Thaddeus, eight days later.
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St Vartan
invented the secret handshake



St. Vartan is considered one of the most famous heroes of the Armenian people. He, along with a brave band of Armenian soldiers, clergy, and companions, resisted the more powerful and larger Persian army and sacrificed their lives in order to defend their Christian faith. The famous battle took place on May 26, 451 A.D. on the plains of Avarayr, in the province of Artaz in Armenia.


Very few biographical details exist about St. Vartan’s early life. However, various sources confirm his noble lineage. He was the grandson of St. Sahag, who, in turn, descended from St. Nerses, and ultimately his lineage is traceable to St. Gregory the Illuminator. His father, Hamazasp, was the sparapet, or commander-in-chief, of Armenia at that time.


St. Vartan was well educated, most likely, by his grandfather, Catholicos Sahag. Instead of entering the priesthood as others in his family had done, he became a soldier. St. Vartan was considered the worthy representative and head of the Mamigonian clan, which in the royal succession of Armenian kings, held the fifth position. He was respected by the King of Persia as the commander-in-chief of the Armenian armies. Equally important as St. Vartan’s dedication to being a good soldier was St. Vartan’s dedication to being a faithful Christian. He believed that one cannot serve one’s people without serving Christ at the same time.


However, the political situation in Armenia during the mid-5th century made it increasingly difficult for Christian-Armenians to practice their faith. The Persians, who occupied the various Armenian regions, initially allowed the Armenians to retain their own rules and practices. However, because of the Armenians’ growing zeal for their religion and the consequent loss of Persian influence, the Persians retaliated.


The Persian ruler, King Yazdigerd II, was a ruthless, evil person, who was fanatically opposed to Christianity. He was particularly cruel to the Armenians. He imposed unfair taxes and demanded that the Armenians abandon their religion and submit to the precepts of the pagan Persian religion (Zoroastrianism) and its worship of fire.


It was during this time a decree was sent out demanding that Armenians convert to Zoarastrianism. In response, Armenian bishops, led by St. Leontius as well as St. Vartan, called a council at Ardashad and unanimously agreed to defend their faith at all costs. They sent their declaration of faith to the king, who became more enraged and issued further threats.


Ultimately the brave Christians led by St. Vartan were forced to fight against the Persians. Numerous accounts exist describing the undying faith of these Christian warriors as they prepared for battle. They prayed, recited the Twenty-Third Psalm, shared their food, and took communion together as they waited to face the powerful Persian army, which outnumbered them.


The battle has been described as bloody and horrendous. Although St. Vartan, along with many of his comrades, suffered defeat and died, their fight to defend their faith was not in vain. The Persians eventually stopped their efforts to convert Armenia to Zoroastrianism.


The Feast of Vartanantz, commemorated on the Thursday preceding Great Lent, is both a religious and nationalistic one. It is a symbol of the conscience, the faith, and the general rebellion of Armenians against tyranny, and their effort to preserve their identity and freedom. Although St. Vartan, as leader and patriot emerged as the most revered figure, the many other commanders, priests, and companions who numbered over 1,036 are also remembered on this feast day for their martyrdom. Many churches throughout the Diaspora have been named after the Vartanian saints, including St. Vartan Armenian Cathedral in New York City.
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The Ascension
40th day after his Resurrection



Luke chapter 24 tells how Jesus leads the eleven disciples to Bethany, a village on the Mount of Olives, where he instructs them to remain in Jerusalem until the coming of the Holy Spirit: "And it came to pass, while he blessed them, he parted from them, and was carried up into heaven.
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The Baptism
The Start of His Ministry



Jesus came to John the Baptist while he was baptising people in the River Jordan. ... As soon as Jesus was baptised, he came up out of the water. Heaven was opened and he saw the spirit of God descending like a dove and alighting on him. Then a voice said from heaven, “This is my own dear son with whom I am pleased.”
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The Baptism
The Start of His Ministry



Jesus came to John the Baptist while he was baptising people in the River Jordan. ... As soon as Jesus was baptised, he came up out of the water. Heaven was opened and he saw the spirit of God descending like a dove and alighting on him. Then a voice said from heaven, “This is my own dear son with whom I am pleased.”
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The Martyrs
Ordinary Saints



The Martyrs is a unique work of iconography, depicting the first “new” saints to be recognised by the Armenian Church in several centuries: the martyrs who (in the words of the official prayer of intercession) “gave their lives during the Armenian Genocide for faith and for the homeland.” The Holy Martyrs are portrayed in the dress typical of the Ottoman empire in 1915, and represent all ranks of Western Armenian society: men, women, children, and the elderly; merchants, intellectuals, artists, clergymen, farmers—all of whom perished in the brutal crime of 1915.


Although the icon directly depicts God the Father and the Holy Spirit, the figure of Christ is not explicitly shown. However, the artist’s intention is that the multitude of figures represents the mystical Body of Christ: his holy Church. In this way, all three Persons of the Holy Trinity are present in the icon.


In the manner of our Lord at his resurrection, the martyrs travel from Death to Life, emerging upon the precincts of God’s heavenly kingdom as the Church Victorious. Their path is bordered by desecrated khatchkars and the shattered remains of Armenian monuments, suggesting the centuries of sacred and material culture lost to the Armenians when they were driven from their historic land.


His Holiness Karekin II and a special council of bishops approved the icon for display as a sacred image. The original is on view at the museum of the Mother See of Holy Etchmiadzin, in the Republic of Armenia.


The consecration took place at the Mother See of Holy Etchmiadzin on 23 April, 2015 .
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The Nativity
Our Savior is Born and Revealed



The Nativity of Our Lord Jesus Christ refers to the accounts of the Birth of Jesus. This is based primarily on the two accounts in the Gospels of Luke and Matthew. The Canonical Gospels of Luke and Matthew describe Jesus being born in Bethlehem, in Judea, to a Virgin Mother named Mary. Luke features the Christmas story, in which Joseph and Mary, as part of a census, travel to Bethlehem. It is there, that Jesus is born in a manger.


Angles proclaim him a savior for all people, and shepherds come to adore him. In Matthew, wise men follow a start to Bethlehem to bring gifts to Jesus, born the “King of the Jews”. King Herod orders the massacre of all the toddler boys in Bethlehem, in an attempt to kill Jesus, but the holy family flees to Egypt and later settles in Nazareth. The main religious celebration among members of the Catholic Church is the Church Service on Christmas Eve, generally midnight Mass, or on the morning of Christmas Day. During the forty days leading up to Christmas, we begin observing the liturgical season of Advent, four Sundays before Christmas. This is a time of spiritual cleansing, recollection and renewal to prepare for the celebration of the Birth of Jesus.


The Nativity of Jesus shows the Incarnation of Jesus as God made Man, in fulfillment of the Divine Will of God, undoing the damage caused by the fall of the first man, Adam. Artistic depiction of the Nativity has been a major subject for Christian artists since the 4th century. The Nativity scene has emphasized the humility of Jesus, and has been celebrated since the 13th century.


The accounts of the Nativity of Jesus in the New Testament appear in only two of the four Canonical Gospels, namely the Gospel of Luke and the Gospel of Matthew. Luke’s story takes place mostly before the birth of Jesus and centers on Mary, while Matthew’s story takes place mostly after the birth of Jesus and centers on Joseph. The other Canonical Gospels, the Gospel of Mark and the Gospel of John, begin their narratives of Jesus’s life in his adulthood. Both mention him coming out of Galilee and John mentions the name of Jesus’s father, but neither John or Mark give any other details of His life prior to adulthood. The betrothal of Jospeh and Mary and the birth of Jesus in Bethlehem appear in both Matthew and Luke. Luke includes several events prior to the birth of Jesus that do not appear in Matthew; the trip from Nazareth to Bethlehem, while Matthew alone discusses the Flight to Egypt after his birth. The Nativity accounts in the New Testament are generally viewed as ending with “Finding Jesus in the Temple” several years later, after the family has returned to Galilee.


Christmas has been celebrated in the United States since it’s founding. Today, most Catholic Families celebrate by decorating a Christmas Tree, and wrap gifts to give to family and friends. It is is generally centered around the family gathering for a meal and celebration on Christmas Eve or Christmas Day. It is a Holy Day of Obligation for Catholics to attend Mass on either Christmas Eve or Christmas Day.
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The Resurrection
The Foundation of Our Faith



Without the resurrection, the belief in God's saving grace through Jesus is destroyed. When Jesus rose from the dead, he confirmed his identity as the Son of God and his work of atonement, redemption, reconciliation, and salvation. The resurrection was a real, literal, physical raising of Jesus’ body from the dead.


Jesus was arrested, tried, and found guilty of claiming to be a king. His body was hung on a cross between two thieves. After his death, Jesus’ body was wrapped in linen cloths and placed in a tomb with a large stone rolled across the opening. On the third day, an early Sunday morning, Mary Magdalene and another Mary came to the tomb and found it empty. Sitting on the rolled away stone was an angel of the Lord who told them to not be afraid because Jesus had risen. As the women left to tell the disciples, Jesus Christ met them and showed them his nail-pierced hands.


Both the Old and the New Testament speak of the truth of Jesus being raised from death - Jesus testified of his resurrection before he died on the cross and his disciples witnessed his body after the resurrection. Below are the Bible verses and Scriptures that both prophecize of the resurrection and testify of its reality after Christ’s death.
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St Thaddeus
brought Christianity to Armenia



Saint Thaddeus was born in the Syrian city of Edessa in the first century. In the Gospel of Luke he was identified at Nathaniel. When Thaddeus first came to the city of Jerusalem for a feast day, he heard the preachings of John the Baptist.


After being baptised by John in the river Jordan, he stayed in Palestine. Once he was baptised he was chosen by Jesus to be one of the seventy disciples who were gifted with the power to cast out demons and perform miracles. They were sent out in pairs to every town and place Jesus himself intended to go.


After Jesus ascended to heaven, saint Thaddeus preached the wonderful news in places like Syria and Mesopotamia. He came preaching the lord to the city of Edessa and even converted King Abgar and his people to christianity. After preaching to King Abgar and his loyal Pagan followers and converting them to Christianity, he went out to other cities to convert loyal Pagans to Christ and the Gospel.


At the end of his life he went to the city of Beirut and founded a christian church there in order to spread christianity even more, and peacefully died in the year 44. (The place of his death is indicated as Beirut in the Slavonic MENAION, but according to other sources he died in Edessa. According to an ancient Armenian tradition, Saint Thaddeus, after various tortures, was beheaded by the sword on December 21 in the Artaz region in the year 50).
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