Everyday Saints

Everyday Saints by Fr Luke Sidarous is a collection of true stories of extraordinary faith in ordinary people, for anyone drawn to Coptic Orthodox spirituality and real accounts of holy lives.

Some books find you at exactly the right moment. This is one of them. Fr Luke spent five decades as a Coptic Orthodox priest, serving in Alexandria, Egypt, and later in Los Angeles, California, and along the way he wrote down what he saw:

• a mechanic who never spoke a cruel word in his life
• a woman who put her affairs in order 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 to welcome him, and wept that he was not worthy

These accounts were first written in Arabic and published as a series of small booklets called The Sweet Fragrance of Christ. For decades they were passed from hand to hand among Coptic communities in Egypt and beyond, read aloud in homes and churches. An earlier English translation was known by titles such as The Fragrance of Christ in the Lives of Contemporary Saints. This is the same beloved series, now gathered complete in one English volume for the first time.

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 quietly remarkable ways. Fr Luke (also known as Hegumen Loka Sidaros) knew most of them personally. He prayed with them, heard their confessions and buried them. What he recorded is not legend. It is witness.

Book details

• Author: Fr Luke Sidarous
• Format: Printed book