The Synaxis of Sinai Saints - .

Christos Anesti! Christ is Risen!

The Synaxis of Sinai Saints - Bright Wednesday:

THE LIVING LEGACY

'Standing out majestically above the waters, and even more powerfully above the cool upland plain', Mount Sinai is the place where union with God was understood as the objective of life. 

Moreover, it is the place where countless holy ascetics, martyrs, and teachers summited the goal by pursuing purity of heart, recording their revelations for all generations to follow.

Not surprisingly, this legacy grew on the roots of the Burning Bush where God revealed His name to humankind, and has flourished ever since ‘at the foot of the Mountain' where the first and greatest commandment manifested the path: love God first, above everyone and everything.

Thus, in the light of the risen Christ, both the lawgiver and the fulfillment of the law of love, Renewal Wednesday, the first Wednesday after Holy Pascha, is devoted each year by the universal Orthodox Church to the commemoration of All the Saints of Sinai.

A total of 181 recognized saints include the 3rd c. Martyr-Saints Galaktion and Epistimi, the Holy Forty Martyrs of Sinai and Raitho in the 4th and 5th, St. John Klimakos in the 6th and his disciples throughout the following centuries, theologians and ascetic writers Hesychios, Philotheos, and the two Anastasios of Sinai, Nikon and Moses of Raitho, and St. Gregory of Sinai (of 13th-14th c.) who is credited with translating Sinai’s ancient tradition of hesychasm, or ‘prayer of the heart’ to the Slavic lands, and a cloud of others whose names and struggles in the formidable desert remain hidden in God.

… In whose understanding, to paraphrase St. Hesychios of the Monastery of the Bush, ‘the holy name of Jesus shone without ceasing, bringing to it riches and fullness of light in all its thoughts.’

"By a flood of tears you made the desert fertile, and your longing for God brought forth fruits in abundance. By the radiance of miracles you illumined the whole universe! O our Holy Venerable Fathers of Sinai, pray to Christ our God to save our souls!"

(Troparion of the Feast)