Holy Glorious Prophet Elias

July 20, 2025

Feast of the Holy Glorious Prophet Elias

And [Elijah] said to her, “Give me your son,” and he took him out of her arms and carried him up to a loft where he slept and laid him on his own bed. He cried to the Lord and said, “O Lord, my God, have You brought tragedy upon the widow with whom I live by killing her son?” And he stretched himself upon the child three times and cried to the Lord and said, “O Lord, my God, I pray that You let this child’s soul come into him again.”

The Lord heard the voice of Elijah, and the soul of the child came into him again, and he was revived. Elijah took the child and brought him down out of the chamber into the house and returned him to his mother, and Elijah said, “See, your son lives!” (1 Kings 17:19-23)

The icon is of the Holy Glorious Prophet Elias (July 20th).

News

Iraqis Add Lenten Sacrifices to Daily Trials

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Prelate Hopes for Sufficient Security to Have Sunday Mass

BAGHDAD, Iraq, FEB. 28, 2007 (Zenit.org).- Christians in war-torn Iraq have been asked to add Lenten sacrifices to their daily privations as an offering to God.

Chaldean Auxiliary Bishop Shlemon Warduni of Babylon explained this to the Italian bishops' SIR news agency.

"They are renunciations that are added to the privations that we experience daily in Iraq," said Bishop Warduni. Such privations include lack of drinking water, food, medicines and electricity.

"It is paradoxical, moreover, that in an oil-rich country such as Iraq there is no gasoline for the population's needs," he added in the interview published Friday by SIR.

"We have no security or stability, or job possibilities, and we suffer violence and abuses," the prelate said. "Despite this, we have asked our faithful to offer all these difficulties to God so that he will keep present the fate of Iraq, of its children, of its sick, of its elderly, and of peace and security." At home

According to his statements, since Christmas, Masses are no longer celebrated regularly because it is very dangerous.

For Lenten celebrations, "we have asked our faithful to meet in homes to do little Stations of the Cross, to pray the rosary or vespers with the help of a committed layman or subdeacon," said Bishop Warduni.

The celebrating of Mass on one of the forthcoming Sundays will be impossible, unless the situation improves, he lamented.

"And this makes us suffer a lot. Our faithful try to live the celebrations together, gathering in family groups, avoiding moving around for security reasons," the bishop added.

Nevertheless, priestly vocations and the Church are growing and the Church in Iraq is "full of hope in the Lord," he said.

Bishop Warduni asked "all Christian families worldwide to remember the Iraqi people in their prayers."
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