Everyday Saints

Some books find you at exactly the right moment. Everyday Saints is one of them.

Father Luke Sidaros spent five decades as a Coptic Orthodox priest, serving in Alexandria, Egypt and later in Los Angeles, California. Along the way he wrote down what he saw. A mechanic who never spoke a cruel word in his life. A woman who arranged her own affairs three days before she died because she knew exactly when it would happen. A soldier who lived peacefully with a snake in his trench for a year. A widow whose empty oil jars filled overnight. A colonel on his deathbed who saw Abraham, David, and Job preparing a welcome for him and wept that he was not worthy.

These accounts were first written in Arabic and published as a series of small booklets under the title The Sweet Fragrance of Christ. For decades they circulated among Coptic Christian communities across Egypt and beyond, passed from hand to hand, read aloud in homes and churches, given to friends who were losing faith. A previous English translation was known under variations of the title The Fragrance of Christ in the Lives of Contemporary Saints. If you are searching for that book, you have found it. This is the same beloved series, now gathered complete into one volume in English for the first time under the title Everyday Saints.

Every person in this book lived in the twentieth century. They worked ordinary jobs, raised children, stood in church on Sundays, and carried their crosses in ways that were quietly remarkable. Father Luke Sidaros knew most of them personally. He sat with them, prayed with them, heard their confessions, and buried them. What he recorded is not legend. It is witness.

Everyday Saints by Father Luke Sidaros, also known as Father Loka Sidaros and Hegumen Loka Sidaros, is for anyone drawn to Coptic Christian books, Orthodox spirituality, true stories of faith, contemporary saints, or simply accounts of people who lived differently and left the world better than they found it.

If you have been searching for The Sweet Fragrance of Christ in English, for Coptic Orthodox books, for true Christian stories, or for Father Luka Sidaros, Father Luke Soderos, or Hegumen Loka Sidaros, welcome. This is the book you were looking for.