St Vincent Orthodox Church

06/02/2026

St Winefride’s Well is one of Britain’s oldest Christian pilgrimage sites.

Pilgrims seeking healing have been visited for over 1,300 years. According to legend, a healing spring appeared where the 7th century saint Winefride was beheaded by a rejected suitor. After her miraculous restoration to life, the well became a famous destination.

It flows inside a stunning, vaulted 16th century Perpendicular Gothic chapel.

06/01/2026

St. Walstan of Bawburgh (c. 975–1016)

Born into nobility (and possibly East Anglian royalty), Walstan gave up all his wealth at the age of 12. He walked to Taverham, near Norwich, to work as an agricultural labourer.
He gave his wages, food, and shoes to the poor. When the farmer's wife spitefully forced him to walk barefoot among thorns, they miraculously turned into fragrant rose petals.
An angel visited him while he was mowing hay, telling him he had three days left to live. Following his death in 1016, a cart drawn by two white oxen carried his body to his resting place in Bawburgh.

St. Walstan, pray to God for us!

05/31/2026

05/14/2026

Patrick went back.

That is the detail that changes everything about his story.
Patrick was born in Roman Britain around 385 AD into a Christian family — his father was a deacon, his grandfather a priest. At sixteen he was kidnapped by Irish raiders in a coastal attack and taken to Ireland as a slave.
He spent six years there — tending sheep on a hillside in all weathers, isolated, cold and far from everything he had known. It was during this captivity, according to his own autobiography, that his faith became real to him. He prayed constantly. He said he prayed a hundred times in the day and almost as many at night.
Then he heard a voice telling him that his ship was ready.
He walked nearly 200 miles to a port, found a ship and escaped. He made his way back to Britain. He was reunited with his family.
And then he heard a voice again.
He wrote in his Confession — the earliest document written in Ireland — that he heard the voices of the Irish people calling him back. He saw them as a child sees a letter from a friend. They were crying out — we beg you holy boy to come and walk among us again.
Patrick entered the church, trained for the priesthood and returned to Ireland around 432 AD.
Voluntarily. To the country that had stolen his youth. To the people who had enslaved him.
He didn't go back angry. He went back as a missionary. He preached across Ireland for nearly 30 years — baptising thousands, ordaining clergy, establishing churches and monasteries that would eventually produce the scholars who preserved European knowledge through the Dark Ages.
Ireland became so saturated with Christian faith that it became known as the Island of Saints and Scholars.
Patrick went back to his captors.
And Ireland became the most Christian country in medieval Europe.
Share this with someone who has never read Patrick's actual story.

"Love your enemies. Do good to those who hate you." — Luke 6:27

05/12/2026

FR THOMAS HOPKO ON FR SERAPHIM ROSE

"If ever a human being lived on this earth who sought God with his whole heart, whatever sins or errors he may have had—and as the Orthodox requiem service says, there is no man who lives who does not sin—it was Fr. Seraphim Rose."
– Fr Thomas Hopko

To many familiar with either St Vladimir’s Seminary or Fr Seraphim Rose, it may come as a surprise that, in 2002, Fr Thomas Hopko — then-dean of SVS and son-in-law of Fr Alexander Schmemann — visited St Herman of Alaska Monastery in Platina, California and gave the homily at the memorial liturgy for the 20th anniversary of Fr Seraphim Rose’s repose. The full text of Fr Hopko’s remarkable homily (along with a link to a video of the event) is at the link in the first comment.