March 2010 - Iconostasis Top Row Complete! - 03/10/10

These are close-ups of the icons of these 18 saints just before they were installed. This was the last chance to see them close up (unless you bring in a scaffold!) and so we wanted to share these images with you. In choosing a range of Saints spanning from the early Church all the way to the 1960s, our hope is to show that Saints are not remote, shadowy figures with no connection to our lives, but rather they are just like us - and many of these have shared the same struggles that we and our ancestors have faced!  They are truly majestic gazing down from the third "story" of the iconostasis! 
St. Maxim Sandovich, a Galician priest martyred in 1914; St. Peter the Apostle to the Jews; and St. Philip, one of the original seven Deacons.
St. Tikhon of Zadonsk, Russian Bishop of the 18th century and patron of St. Tikhon's Monastery & Seminary; St. Tikhon of Moscow, founder of St. Tikhon's Monastery; and St. Herman of Alaska, beloved pioneering Orthodox missionary to North America.
St. Silouan of Mt. Athos, beloved contemporary monastic saint (+1938); St. Nektarios of Aegina, Greece, renowned for many healing miracles (+1920); and St. Luke the Blessed Surgeon, who served both as Bishop and as a surgeon and professor of medicine in Soviet Russia (+1961).
St. Stephen the Proto- (First) Deacon and Protomartyr; St. Paul, the Apostle to the Gentiles; and St. Panteleimon, the Unmercenary Pnysician and Martyr, a doctor who healed with Christ's power and never took payment.
Saints Boris & Gleb, martyred sons of St. Vladimir the Prince of Kiev; and St. Elizabeth, the New Martyr of Russia, a duchess in the Russian Royal Family who was murdered by the Communists in 1918.
St. Seraphim of Sarov & St. Sergius of Radonezh, two of the best known Russian monk saints; and St. Nina, Apostle to the country of Georgia in the 300s AD.