Post #1976581

Today we remember with sorrow the incineration of the relics of St. Sava, first archbishop of the autocephalous Church of Serbia, by Sinan Pasha of Belgrade in 1594. St. Sava, the son of Serbian Grand Prince Stefan Nemanja, was responsible for setting in order the church of Serbia, as well as for re-founding the Monastery of Hilandar on Mouth Athos, which to this day is largely a Serbian monastery. He also restored many churches and monasteries that had fallen into disrepair. 700 years before that, Saint Sabbas the Sanctified, who had founded the Mar Sabbas monastery in the Judean desert, prophesied that one day a monk from a western land, bearing his own name, would come, and should be given Sabbas's own pastoral staff. This came to pass when St. Sava visited. The staff itself, made of ebony and elephant tusk, is preserved on Mount Athos in a cell which is a dependency of Hilandar. The site of the burning of St. Sava's relics is now the church of St. Sava in Belgrade, which is one of the largest church buildings in the world. For more reading: https://www.johnsanidopoulos.com/2012/08/the-pateritsa-staff-of-st-savvas.html https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saint_Sava