Cloud of Witnesses
The Orthodox Saint Finder
“Therefore, since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, let us also lay aside every weight, and sin which clings so closely, and let us run with endurance the race that is set before us…”Hebrews 12 : 1
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Today
Finding today’s commemoration…
The Workshop

Project Status

A Living Encyclopedia

A Cloud of Witnesses is an ongoing effort to build a free Orthodox Christian encyclopedia — thousands of biographies, historical articles, angelology resources, feast information, and much more. While many features are complete, every section continues to be expanded, corrected, and refined. Thank you for your patience as this project grows.

CompleteIn ProgressUnder ReviewPlanned

Saint Database

In Progress

Over 2,950 saints currently have profiles.

We are systematically reviewing every saint page to expand biographies, improve historical accuracy, add citations, and correct errors.

We have begun printing the Church's own hymns on saint pages — the troparion and kontakion appointed for the day — reproduced with the kind permission of the Orthodox Church in America. Close to 1,400 saints now carry theirs, and we add more day by day as we walk the calendar.

Progress updates are posted weekly.

  • 2,950+ saint profiles
  • Core database complete
  • Search completed
  • Daily commemorations
  • Icons on the saints' pages
  • Troparia & kontakia on nearly 1,400 saint pages
  • Hymns for the rest of the calendar
  • Biography expansion
This month:Nearly 1,400 saints now carry their troparion and kontakion, the icons on the saints' pages have more than doubled, and forty-six saints were added — the newly-canonized among them.
We are actively working through the group profiles and synaxes, correcting and expanding information as we go.
Every saint now has a page. A dove seal marks the entries a person has personally reviewed against the sources; we add more each day as we pray through the calendar. This is a family project and slow going — thank you for your patience as we continue to verify and enrich it.
In Progress

The Heavenly Hosts

High PriorityIn Progress

One of the largest expansions of A Cloud of Witnesses is a comprehensive Orthodox encyclopedia dedicated to the holy angels and heavenly powers.

The section is now largely built — every being in it has its own page — and it remains under active development as one of the project’s highest priorities.

Future goals
  • Interactive visual hierarchy
  • Timeline of angelic appearances in Scripture
Section progress
  • The Nine Orders of Angels
  • Named Archangels in Orthodox Tradition
  • Guardian Angels
  • Biblical angelic events
  • Angels throughout Holy Scripture
  • Revelation angelology
  • Second Temple Jewish literature (distinguished from canonical Scripture)
  • A shelf of the works themselves — sixteen books, each with the beings drawn from it
  • Early Christian angelology
  • A page for every being in the section
  • Cross-linked encyclopedia articles
  • Interactive hierarchy of the Heavenly Hosts
The Fallen is now part of the section: the beings the Church names and never venerates, grouped by the source that names them, recorded for study and shown with no icon.

Contributors

In Progress

We are looking for Orthodox iconographers and monasteries to obtain permission to feature their icons on the website. If you would like to work with us please reach out.

Legacy Icons has agreed to work with us, joining Theophany Works — their icons now appear on saint pages with a credit and a link back to the artisans behind them.

The Orthodox Church in America has granted us the lives of the saints and the liturgical texts from oca.org, attributed to them and free to all.

Please contact us at [email protected] to join the cloud.

The Church Year

In Progress

The interactive calendar now supports both the New (Revised Julian) and Old (Julian) calendars. Open any day and it will tell you its liturgical color, the fasting kept on it, the customs and traditions belonging to it, and the scripture appointed to be read.

The Feasts & Fasts pages are still very much a work in progress. Every feast and fast has a page, but each is being expanded and corrected — the history, the meaning, and the customs — as we work through them.

Section progress
  • New Calendar
  • Old Calendar toggle
  • Liturgical colors
  • Fasting rules by tradition (Greek & Russian)
  • Customs and traditions
  • The day's appointed scripture readings
  • Moveable Paschal calendar
  • Subscribable calendar feeds (New & Old)
  • Icons on the feast pages
  • Feast pages — history, meaning, and customs
  • Fast pages — the discipline and its background
This month:All eighty-four feasts and fasts were audited row by row, the days connected to one another, and festal icons wired onto the pages.
Every calendar day is now tinted with a liturgical color commonly used in Orthodox practice, with a Liturgical Colors & Fasting Guide explaining each one.
Fasting follows Greek Orthodox (GOARCH) practice in the New Calendar view and Russian Orthodox practice in the Old Calendar view — with notes to speak with your parish priest, including the American Thanksgiving allowance at the start of the Nativity Fast.
The whole year has been walked for customs and traditions — feast by feast, saint by saint, including the movable cycle from Great Lent to Pentecost.
The daily readings name which usage they follow, since Greek and Slavic practice differ on many days. Your parish's own bulletin is always the authority.
Saint pages show each feast day in both reckonings.

The Orthodox Home

Under Review

Icons in the Home is now available with an interactive guide to creating an Orthodox home. The page is currently undergoing review as we continue expanding its content.

Giving Icons joins it — help choosing an icon as a gift for a baptism, a nameday, a wedding, or a new home, with the icons themselves now shown on each recommendation.

New

Parish Resources

In Progress

As told in Our Story, the initial point of this website was to create a patron saint quiz to help catechumens connect to the saints. One of the first plans was to put a QR code up outside our parish library so that our catechumens could scan it and take the quiz.

That idea is now a full page of free, print-ready materials: nine QR cards — one for each major section of the site, from the patron saint quiz to the calendar and Icons in the Home — each in color and black & white, with a printing and display guide. Post them in the narthex, by the register, or on the parish bulletin board; everything is freely given.

What's on the page
  • Nine print-ready QR cards (color & black-and-white)
  • Download one card or the whole set
  • Printing & display guide
  • Custom requests — flyers, banners, social graphics
  • More resources for teachers & ministries
Every card is free to download and print — no account, no cost. If your parish needs a custom size or a feast-day graphic, reach out and we'll prepare it.
New

The Daily Dove

In Progress

A newspaper that has been running since Pentecost. Each dispatch reports the events of its own century as though a paper had been there to cover it — the martyrdoms, the councils, the miracles, the pilgrim roads.

It is a reporting voice, never fiction: every dispatch closes at the Historian's Desk, where each strand of the story is set against the evidence that actually carries it — a contemporary source, an eyewitness, later Orthodox tradition, or popular legend — and says plainly which parts are the paper's own device.

What's on the page
  • Dispatches across nineteen centuries
  • The Historian's Desk on every dispatch
  • An archive with search, sorting, and filters
  • Linked from the saints, feasts, and calendar it reports
  • New dispatches as the calendar turns
The longest file so far follows St Spyridon from Trimythous to Corfu across twenty-three dispatches; a second follows St Lucia of Syracuse across five.
Weekly Updates

Latest Progress

August 2026
  • Partnered with Legacy Icons
  • Printed the troparia and kontakia on nearly 1,400 saint pages, with the permission of the Orthodox Church in America
  • More than doubled the icons on the saints' pages — 144 portraits to 306, with over 500 icons in the carousels
  • Audited all eighty-four feasts and fasts, connected the days to one another, and wired festal icons onto their pages
  • Added the recent canonizations — twenty-six saints, each with a full profile
  • Added eleven saints the icon harvest turned up, and the nine sons of Jacob who were missing
  • Opened a shelf of the extra-biblical works in the Heavenly Hosts — fourteen books, each with the beings drawn from it
  • Widened Witnesses of Our Time beyond America — twenty-eight witnesses now, with a page to hold them
  • Added the St Lucia of Syracuse file to The Daily Dove — five dispatches
  • Put the day's fast or feast on the home page and on Feasts & Fasts, and the day's appointed readings under the Today card
  • Published the plain-language terms we send an iconographer or publisher, so a permission is clear on both sides
July 2026
  • Received permission from the Orthodox Church in America to reproduce the lives of the saints and the liturgical texts
  • Launched The Daily Dove — the Church's history reported as a newspaper
  • Completed the Heavenly Hosts section, including The Fallen
  • Added the day's appointed scripture readings to the calendar
  • Added liturgical colors to every day of the calendar
  • Added fasting rules by tradition — Greek on the New Calendar, Russian on the Old
  • Walked the whole year for customs and traditions, feast by feast and saint by saint
  • Published subscribable calendar feeds for the New and Old calendars
  • Reviewed and corrected the group profiles and synaxes
  • Added the new Parish Resources section
  • Published the first Heavenly Hosts pages
  • Continued expanding the feast and fast pages
  • Added a moveable Paschal-season calendar covering all dates until 2031
  • Reviewed the first 500 saint profiles
  • Introduced a redesigned navigation system with dropdown menus
  • Added the About section and contact page
  • Began building the Heavenly Hosts section
  • Expanded saint relationship networks
  • Continued historical review and correction of saint profiles
June 2026
  • Completed the initial saint database
  • Began comprehensive profile expansion and verification
  • Modernized the Patron Saint Quiz
  • Partnered with Theophany Works
  • Published editorial standards and research methodology
  • Expanded Saints of America
  • Improved the interactive liturgical calendar
May 2026
  • Launched OrthodoxSaintFinder.com
  • Published the initial searchable database
  • Released the Patron Saint Quiz
  • Introduced the interactive calendar