enrich ru lives with Chetyi-Minei texts and track static data

static/data/shared/commemorations/543.json

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+{"SCRIPTURE":[{"Type":"apostol","Reading":"Heb_7:26-8:2","Pericope":"318","Cmd":"nday == -35"},{"Type":"gospel","Reading":"Jn_10:9-16","Pericope":"36","Cmd":"nday == -35"}],"NAME":{"Long":"St. Gregory Palamas, Archbishop of Thessalonica","ShortN":"Saint Gregory Palamas","ShortF":"for the Hierarch"},"INFO":{"BirthY":"1296","BirthD":"","BirthM":"","BirthN":"about","PlaceB":"Asia Minor","Death":"1359","DeathD":"14","DeathM":"11","DeathN":"","PlaceD":"Mt. Athos"},"CHURCH":{"Rank":"1"},"LIFE":{"Id":"bulgakov","Copyright":"Bulgakov Handbook. Copyright 1997 by translator Fr. S. Janos.","text":"<p>Sainted Gregory Palamas, Archbishop of Thessalonika, was born in the year 1296 in Asia Minor. During the time of a Turkish incursion the family fled to Constantinople and found refuge at the court of Andronikos II Paleologos (1282-1328). The father of Saint Gregory became a prominent dignitiary under the emperor, but he soon died, and Andronikos himself took part in the raising and education of the orphaned boy. Endowed with fine abilities and great diligence, Gregory without difficulty mastered all the subjects which then comprised the full course of medieval higher education. The emperor hoped that the youth would devote himself to government work. But Gregory, just barely age 20, withdrew to Holy Mount Athos in the year 1316 (per other sources, 1318) and became a novice in the Batopedeia monastery under the guidance of the monastic-elder, the Monk Nikodemos of Batopedeia (Comm. 11 July), and there he accepted tonsure and began on the path of asceticism. A year later, the holy Evangelist John the Theologian appeared to him in a vision and promised him his spiritual protection. Gregory's mother and sisters likewise became monastics.</p><p>After the demise of the monastic-elder Nikodemos, the Monk Gregory spent 8years of prayerful effort under the guidance of the monastic-elder Nicephoros, and after the death of this latter elder Gregory transferred to the Laura-monastery of the Monk Athanasias. Here he served in the refectory, and then became a church singer. But after three years, striving for a greater degree of spiritual perfection, he re-settled in the small hermit-life monastery of Glossia. The head of this monastery began to teach the youth the manner of concentrated spiritual prayer -- the mental activity, which by degrees gradually was appropriated and cultivated by monastics, beginning with the great wilderness ascetics of the IV Century -- Euagrios (Lat. Evagrius), Pontikos and the Monk Makarios of Egypt (Comm. 19 January). Later on, in the XI Century in the works of Simeon the New Theologian (Comm. 12 March), those praying in outward manner received detailed elucidation on adapting the mental doing, and it was implemented by the Athos ascetics. An experienced usage of mental activity, requiring solitude and quiet, received the name \"Hesychiasm\" (from the Greek \"ἡσυχία, hesychia\" meaning calm, silence), and those practising it were called \"hesychiasts\". During the time of his stay at Glossia the future hierarch Gregory became fully embued with the spirit of hesychiasm and adapted it as fundamental to his life. In the year 1326, because of the threat of Turkish invasions, he together with the brethren retreated back to Thessalonika, where he was then ordained to the dignity of priest.</p><p>Saint Gregory combined his priestly duties with the life of an hermit: five days of the week he spent in silence and prayer, and only on Saturday and Sunday did the pastor emerge to his people -- he celebrated Divine-services and preached sermons. For those present in church, his teaching often evoked both tenderness and tears. Sometimes he visited theological gatherings of the city's educated youth, headed by the future patriarch, Isidor. Having returned from being a certain while at Constantinople, he found near Thessalonika the locale of Bereia, a place suitable for solitary life. Soon he gathered here a small community of hermit-monks and guided it over the course of 5 years. In 1331 the saint withdrew to Athos and lived in solitude at the skete-monastery of Saint Savva, near the Cave monastery of the Monk Athanasias. In 1333 he was appointed hegumen of the Esthygmena monastery in the northern part of the Holy Mountain. In 1336 the saint returned to the skete-monastery of Saint Savva, where he concerned himself with theological works, continuing on with it until the end of his life. </p><p>But amidst all this, in the 1330's culminated events in the life of the Eastern Church which put Saint Gregory amongst the most significant universal apologists of Orthodoxy, and brought him reknown as the teacher of hesychiasm.</p><p>In about the year 1330 the learned monk Barlaam (Varlaam) had arrived in Constantinople from Calabria (in Italy).He was the author of tractates on logic and astronomy, a skilled and sharp-witted orator, and he received an university-chair in the capital city  and began to expound on the worksLine truncated