The Church honors Saint Gabriel Lesnovski today, one of the three great followers of the Rila hermit St. Ivan Rilski.
Gabriel celebrates a name day today for the first time this year, he will also celebrate on Archangel's Day and on March 26 - the Feast of St. Archangel Gabriel, writes offnews.bg.
The saint lived in the 11th - 12th centuries. He was born in the Macedonian village of Osiche, his parents were rich and he received a good education. They betrothed him to a bride from a good family, but she died before the wedding. Then Gabriel entered a monastery and took monastic vows.
With the inheritance he received from his parents, he built a monastery with a church in the name of St. Archangel Michael on the Lesnovo Mountain in Northern Macedonia, near the present-day city of Kratovo. The venerable father gathered monks, appointed an abbot for them, and he himself retired to the mountain to live a hermit's life and silence, striving in this way for 30 years. Then he returned to his monastery and died on January 15.
Thirty years after the death of the Venerable Gabriel, a Russian monk named Joseph in the city of Sredets (Sofia) went to the place where the venerable had been ascetic, found his grave, discovered his incorruptible relics, placed them in a coffin and offered them for prayerful veneration to the faithful.
For many years, the holy relics of the Venerable Gabriel rested in the Lesnovsky Monastery and performed many miracles. Probably in the 13th century, one of the Bulgarian kings of the Asen dynasty transferred them to his capital Tarnovo and placed them in the church of "St. Apostles" on Trapezitsa.
After the Ottoman invasion of Bulgaria, traces of the holy relics of the Venerable Gabriel of Lesnovsky were lost. The monastery he founded was later named after him and became an important literary center.