A Daily Calendar of Saints: A Synaxarion for Today’s North American Church

by Lawrence R. Farley

Popular biblical commentator and church historian Fr. Lawrence Farley turns his hand to hagiography in this collection of lives of saints, one or more for each day of the calendar year. His accessible prose and contemporary approach make these ancient lives easy for modern Christians to relate to and understand.

First published September 6, 1999

About the author

Father Lawrence, born in 1954, completed his M. Div. at Wycliffe College, Toronto School of Theology in 1979. After 6 years in pastoral ministry with the Anglican Church of Canada, he entered the Orthodox Church and completed a Certificate program at St. Tikhon’s Seminary in Pennsylvania and was ordained to the priesthood in 1986. Since 1987 he has served as the pastor St. Herman of Alaska Church in Langley BC, a missionary parish of the OCA (Archdiocese of Canada) founded by local laity, which has since grown to attain regular parish status and purchased its own building. Several priests, deacons, and lay members of new missions have emerged from the membership of St. Herman’s. Fr. Lawrence is the author of the Orthodox Bible Study Companion Series from Conciliar Press, and of a number of other books and articles, and appears in regular weekday podcasts on Ancient Faith Radio. He lives in Surrey B.C. with his family.

Reviews

[Marianna · Rating 4 out of 5]

It is a great book if you want to start reading the lives of the saints daily. A book you can reread throughout each year. The lives of the saints are based off of the new calendar in the Orthodox Church in this book.

[Christina · Rating 5 out of 5]

As the principal of our school, I was very excited to have the opportunity by Ancient Faith Publishing to read and review this book Every morning, as a school, we gather for morning prayers. I have been looking for a way to incorporate short readings of the saint of the day into our morning prayers and kept coming across either very lengthy readings of saints lives or the readings incorporated language that is way over the heads of our youngest children (our Montessori preschool begins at age three). This book is the perfect balance of length and difficulty for even our youngest students. In fact, I may have our 5th graders eventually read the life of the saint to the children during our morning prayer time. As we use this book everyday, my prayer is that over the years, the children will remember these lives of the saints (not just the well known saints, but even the lesser known saints).

I highly recommend this book for families with children at all age levels. It is easy to read and comprehend. Most of the daily lives of the saints are a short paragraph while the more well know saints are a bit longer.

I was gifted a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.