www.byzcath.org Forums Faith & Christian Life Faith & Theology patron saint question

Once you accept a patron saint, are you bound to that saint from then on?
Can you switch to a different one later?
Is there some rule forbidding switching later?
Is switching permitted depending on circumstance, and if so, what?
Thank you in advance.

Do you mean like the patron-saint whose name you bear? It is possible to change your name legally, of course.

You can have as many other patron saints as you like.

In the Byzantine tradition where one prays the Horologion or Daily Office, one is to pray the Troparion in honour of the "patron of the Church." According to Fr. John Whiteford, one may choose a patron of one's home church where one prays the Office and say a Troparion to him/her.

The most important thing is not in choosing this or that patron. The most important thing is to get to know their life, how they stayed close to God, to imitate their life as much as we can and to invoke them in prayer (i.e. have a spiritual relationship with them). Celebrating their feastday in some ostensible way is one of the best ways of staying close to our patron saint(s).

Alex

We are Orthodox Christian, and it is best if our names and jurisdiction remain anonymous.

My wife and I, our first names are not the names of saints, so originally we took saint names before which are different from our given first names.

But my wife's saint name is also the same as my real life non-Orthodox brother's wife's real life first name, and over time my wife began stressing over this to the max, which my wife sees as a confusion of identities.
There is no confusion to me, but my wife feels very bad about it.
I've tried to give it time, lots of time, and to be patiently and gently persuasive about keeping with her original saint name, all to no avail.

Then one day, I realized my wife and I both have middle names that are the same as Orthodox saints.
I thought, it would be so easy for us to just switch my wife to a patron saint with the same name as her real middle name, and solve her stress situation.
Myself, I'm fine as-is, but for my wife, this could work.

I emailed and asked at our church (which is not nearby) if this would be alright, and they are alternately either trying to steer us away from the name switch, or completely ignoring our queries on this.
It's only exacerbating my wife's stress, because now not only is she feeling bad about her perceived confusion of personal identities, but she feels she is being belittled and ignored.

I did not know what to do, or if a switch is even permitted.
Even if our church refuses to go along with it, at least now at home we can begin acting as if her patron saint is any saint with her given middle name.
Actually, without telling our church, I have already begun doing this, and you would not believe how much her stress situation is improved.
Obviously, we should be in total harmony and obedience with our church, I totally agree.
But it was putting me between a rock and a hard place.
So now I have your information, to consolidate the decision to switch -at least at home- even more.
Who knows, maybe now that she is being listened to, maybe my wife will get over this, although so far she is sticking to the new saint name with great affirmation and relief of stress.
Thank you.

There are no formal rules regarding patron saints. You can certainly have several. As someone named "John" I choose two patron saints - John the Baptist and John Chrysostom. Someone might have several patron saints. One for his nameday. One for his profession. I know someone who is in remission from cancer who each day asks the intercession of the patron saint of cancer patients.

I suggest discussing this with your pastor.

When I became Orthodox, I did choose Marcellinus as my Saint name, but I didn't forget Peter the Apostle, since he was the saint i had muttered to the bishop when I was confirmed 19 years ago (?). I have an icon of Peter on my wall, praying to both him and the saint I chose.

You should do what is best for your own situation and that of your wife's - sometimes one's pastor and others can simply be blind to what is your own specific life context.

(Also, you say your names before your becoming Orthodox Christians were not saints' names - if you like, you could send me a private email and I could do research on this. There are many saints whose names have become transformed, but I can track down the original saint's name from which it is derived. I do this all the time for my religion students who come from mixed marriages and have all kinds of names that were chosen by their parents - let me know.).

One further point is that in Slavic Orthodoxy (I can't speak for other traditions) one Saint's name is what is allowed only. Of course, people can and do have more than one name, but this goes back to the tradition of every Christian having three names: the Christian Saint's name, the patronymic (the father's name with "ovych" or "ivna/ovna" as a suffix) and the family name - a form of a celebration of the Holy Trinity.

The Christian name is so sacred in the East that the Saint's feastday, as you know, is celebrated instead of one's birthday (my grandfather, Fr. John, always celebrated his Namesday on the feast of the Nativity of St John the Baptist and it was only during his funeral that I saw that his actual birthday was today, July 4th). A board was cut to the length of the baby and the icon of the patronal Saint was written on it "taking the full measure." Someone celebrating his or her Saint's day is to sit in the holiest spot in the house - in the very corner of the icon corner itself.

Just go ahead and do what you and your wife feel is best. My own life motto is, "It is easier to ask for forgiveness than to ask for permission!"

Alex

I lived in Poland for two years in the mid 1980s. Namedays were their birthday equivalent...only communists celebrated birthdays. I loved the tradition so much I personally adopted it, but never lived in a milieu afterwards where it was customary. My mother-in-law was from Finland and even in that mostly Protestant country namedays were observed.
Poles usually had the name of the saint following their birthday. I do not know if that is the case in the East. It is a bit confusing going to a Russian church. Since the priests know their sheep by name, they offer a Many Years after liturgy if a popular name falls on or near that Sunday, but can it always be the same Saint Soandso after whom the person is named?
Patronymics are awesome...but mine would make me sound too much like a foreigner (to East Slavs). None of the first generation Rusin-Americans in my background were given middle names, nor were my brother and I. Unbeknownst to my mother, she was preserving the void of what would have been the patronymic.

That's a cute motto. (:
Ours is 'American Orthodox' and might be under some kind of Slavonic jurisdiction, but I'm not positive.
With that Slavonic tradition you mention (I highlighted it in bold), is that just a custom, or does it have the force of Canonical law?

I don't know if it goes as far as canonical law, but the UGCC in Ukraine also issued a directive that only one Christian name was to be given a person at the Mysteries of Initiation (i.e. Baptism, Chrismation and Holy Communion).

That doesn't mean it is followed. Our Patriarch Lubomyr Husar issued a similar directive about the form of the Ukrainian Our Father and Hail Mary to be used by Ukrainian Catholics (he adopted the Ukrainian Orthodox version based on the living Ukrainian language). I certainly took that seriously and I had to pray the new versions for over a week before I got used to it . . . But my parish doesn't follow it.

The older and one could say "un-Latinized" tradition is to have one Christian name only (especially since we don't separate the Mysteries/Sacraments of Initiation as the West does and on the occasion of one's Confirmation, a second name is chosen for oneself).

Other similar directives include the ban on drinking alcohol during funeral agapes.

I think it's rather neat to use the Christian name, patronymic and surname in this way. Cosmopolitanism isn't what it used to be, so why not?

Alex