To Armenians in the United States, “Armenian Cultural Month” has been a feature of community life for as long as they can remember. It arrives each October—and with it a flurry of lectures, readings, exhibits, sacred celebrations, and events intended to remind Armenians of the richness of their cultural heritage.
For the word of the cross is folly to those who are perishing. But to those of us who are being saved, it is the power of God. (I Corinthians 1:18)
This coming Sunday will be the Feast of the Exaltation of the Holy Cross: the start of the season of the Holy Cross, one of the five major divisions of the Armenian Church calendar.
It was the great religious “confab” of the 4th century: a gathering of Christian bishops from throughout the world, convened by no less an authority than the Roman Emperor Constantine I. In A.D. 325, a town in the Black-Sea province of Bithynia played host to 318 scholars of the church who met to deliberate on the burning theological questions of the day.
The Armenian Church calendar occasionally gives us an unlikely pairing of saints on a single feast day: an “odd couple” who don’t quite fit together. That’s the case with the day dedicated to St. John the Forerunner and Job the Righteous—observed today, August 31.
This year the Armenian Church liturgical calendar designates August 24 as the feast of St. Jeremiah: one of the major prophets of the Bible.
