Our Holy Father Nahum, the Wonderworker of Ochrid.

Commemorated December 23 in the Orthodox Christian Menaion

From the Prologue

He was a disciple of Ss Cyril and Methodius, and one of the Five Followers - those zealous fellow-workers with these apostles of the Slavs. St Nahum travelled to Rome, where he was renowned both for his wonderworking power and his great learning. He knew many languages. At the time of his return from Rome, he settled, with the help of the Emperor Boris Michael of Bulgaria, on the shores of Lake Ochrid. While St Clement was working in Ochrid as bishop, St Nahum built a monastery on the southern shore of the lake, a monastery that adorns that shore till this day as the name of St Nahum adorns the history of Slav Christianity, and has been through the ages a fount of strength and recourse for the sick and the wretched. Many monks from all over the Balkans gathered round St Nahum, who was a wise teacher, a strict ascetic, a wonderworker and a man of prayer. A tireless worker, St Nahum laboured especially to translate the Holy Scriptures from Greek into Slavonic. He worked wonders both during his lifetime and after his death, and his wonderworking relics to this day perform many marvels, particularly healing from grave illness and from madness. He entered into rest in the first half of the tenth century, and went to the joy of his beloved Christ.

In the Greek Synaxarion, Ss Clement and Nahum are called the new Moses and Aaron, and this marvel is recorded of them: heretics in Germany bound them and threw them into prison, but, b God's power, the prison shook, the chains fell off them, the doors of the prison opened and they went out freely.

From The Prologue From Ochrid by Bishop Nikolai Velimirovich
©1985 Lazarica Press, Birmingham UK