All four of them were of the Royal Tribe of Judah. When Nebuchadnezzar destroyed and plundered Jerusalem, Daniel, as a boy, was taken off into slavery together with Jehoiachin, King of Judah, and many other Israelites. The account of his life, sufferings and prophecies can be found in detail in his book. Utterly given to God, Daniel from his early youth received from God the gift of great discernment. His fame among the Jews in Babylon began when he denounced two lecherous and unrighteous elders, and saved the Babylonians stemmed from the day when he solved and interpreted the dream of King Nebuchadnezzar.

The Holy Sacrament of Repentance and Confession can rightly be called "the Forgotten Medicine." The whole world is lying in evil. Every one of us is infected with the deadly disease (virus) of sin, and one can be cured from the disease! The medicine is provided, and it is miraculous at that. You are healed the moment you take it. But we do not reach for it, to be healed and to lighten our conscience. Why? Because we have forgotten and neglect it.

This new life is our Lord Jesus Christ, Who is now born in Bethlehem, as He Himself said during the last days of His earthly life: "I am the way, and the truth, and the life" (John 14:6).

Entering Jerusalem, the Wise Men asked, "Where is He Who was born King of the Jews? For we saw His star in the east, and came to do homage to Him." But after Herod the king heard these things, he was troubled, and all Jerusalem with him" (Matthew 2:3).

"The Magi sought the Lord Christ, born King of the Jews, among those from whose race they knew that Balaam, a Prophet from the Gentiles, had prophesied that He would come. The faith of the Magi is the condemnation of the Jews. The Magi believed in the authority of their soothsayer Balaam and the Prophet Daniel; but the Jews, from the testimony of many Prophets, refused to believe. Whereas the Magi acknowledged that the coming of Christ would terminate their profane knowledge and magical arts, the Jews would not accept the Lawgiver's doing away with their sacrifice and refused to accept the mysteries of the divine dispensation. The Magi confessed a Stranger; the Jews rejected their own."

Spyridon, our Holy Father among the Saints, the boast of the inhabited world, and the adornment of the faithful, flourished during the reign of Emperor Constantine the Great (Saint Constantine) [306-337 A.D.]. He hailed from the famous island of Cyprus. The Saint's virtue and divine conduct were such that his accomplishments shone forth brightly throughout the inhabited world, leaving no adult Christian who is not acquainted with his life. This is the same God-bearing Father who had taken part in the First Ecumenical Synod (325 A.D.). Who has not heard of his renowned demonstration at Nicaea? But his participation at that First Synod shall be triumphantly recounted later.