Today is the feast-day of the Saint that I am named after. The particular Saint in question, is Saint Luke the Evangelist. I was going to upload an image of an icon of him, but the disk is full on the server my website is on, so I can't do it at the moment (you will probably be lucky if you see this post). Hope later in the week i'll be able to upload the image.
EDIT 11:23pm: Disc space freed up, image now here (duh!)
Anywho, below is both Luke's (Loukas in Greek, hence Lucas) Apolytikion and a short description of his life.
Apolytikion for Luke in tone 3
O Holy Apostle and Evangelist Luke, intercede to our merciful God, that He may grant our souls forgiveness of sins.
Description of the Feast
This Apostle was an Antiochean, a physician by trade, and a disciple and companion of Paul. He wrote his Gospel in Greek after Matthew and Mark, after which he wrote the Acts of the Apostles, and dedicated both works to Theophilus, who, according to some, was Governor of Achaia. He lived some eighty-six years and died in Achaia, perhaps in Patras, the capital of this district. His emblem is the calf, the third symbolical beast mentioned by Ezekiel (1:10), which is a symbol of Christ's sacrificial and priestly office, as Saint Irenaeus says.
In looking at the Greek Orthodox Archdiocese of America's website, i've found that they now have a podcast of the daily scripture readings. A great idea, although the American accent of the reader is slightly irritating, I have now subscribed to it through iTunes and it will be on my iPod.
Today I couldn't go to Church nor work, as I'm still getting over this cold/flu. I will probably go back to work tomorrow, but we'll see. I worked on developing a website for the majority of the day, something I am quite happy with.
for those not in the know, an 'apolytikion' (literally 'dismissal hymn') is the main hymn of a saint - it's called a dismissal hymn because it's done at the end of vespers. the fact that it's tone 3 means that it sounds kinda trippy.
and that podcast thing is pretty cool 🙂 of course, there's no way that i'm wading through american accents 😛
a/s
The more I listen to the GOAofAmerica podcasts, the more I think that the reader is a computer program reading the script. They must have paid some good money for it though, because they get it to pronounce the Greek pretty well.