Saturday, 4 July 2026

St Andrew of Crete

Saturday of the 5th week after Pentecost

83 days after Pascha · Tone 3 · Liturgy · No Fast

Saints commemorated

★ Holy Royal Martyrs of Russia: Tsar Nicholas II, Tsaritsa Alexandra, Crown Prince Alexei, and Grand duchesses Olga, Tatiana, Maria, and Anastasia, and those martyred with them

1918

“Tsar Nicholas II was the son of Alexander III, who had reposed in the arms of St John of Kronstadt. Having been raised in piety, Tsar Nicholas ever sought to rule in a spirit consonant with the precepts of Orthodoxy and the best traditions of his nation. Tsaritsa Alexandra, a grand-daughter of Queen Victoria of England, and a convert from Lutheranism, was noted for her piety and compassion for the poor and suffering. Their five children were beloved of all for their kindness, modesty, and guilelessness. “Amidst the political turmoil of 1917, Tsar Nicholas selflessly abdicated the throne for what he believed was the good of his country. Although he had abdicated willingly, the revolutionaries put him and his family under house arrest, then sent them under guard to Tobolsk and finally Ekaterinburg. A letter written from Tobolsk by Grand Duchess Olga, the eldest of the children, shows their nobility of soul. She writes, ‘My father asks that I convey to all those who have remained devoted to him… that they should not take vengeance on his account, because he has forgiven everyone and prays for them all. Nor should they avenge themselves. Rather, they should bear in mind that this evil which is now present in the world will become yet stronger, but that evil will not conquer evil, but only love shall do so.’ “After enduring sixteen months of imprisonment, deprivation, and humiliation with a Christian patience which moved even their captors, they and those who were with them gained their crowns of martyrdom when they were shot and stabbed to death in the cellar of the Ipatiev house in Ekaterinburg in 1918. “Together with them are also commemorated those who faithfully served them, and were either slain with them, or on their account…” (Great Horologion)

★ Saint Andrew, Archbishop of Crete, the Hymnographer

Saint Andrew was born about 660 in the city of Damascus into a pious Christian family. Until his seventh year the boy was mute and did not speak; only after communing of the Holy Mysteries of Christ did he receive the gift of speech and begin to talk. At fourteen he went to Jerusalem, where he was tonsured at the Lavra of Saint Sabas the Sanctified and afterwards served as notary of the Patriarchate of Jerusalem.

In 680 the locum tenens of the see of Jerusalem, Theodore, included the archdeacon Andrew among the representatives of the Holy City sent to the Sixth Ecumenical Council in Constantinople. There, by his profound knowledge of Orthodox doctrine, the saint contended successfully against the Monothelite heresy. Choosing to remain in Constantinople after the Council, he was appointed orphanotrophos, head of the Orphanage of Saint Paul, and afterwards director of the home for the aged. Towards the close of the seventh century, during the reign of Justinian II (685-695), he was consecrated Archbishop of Gortyna on the island of Crete.

Saint Andrew is above all renowned as a hymnographer. He is regarded as the inventor, or at least the principal introducer into liturgical use, of the canon, the hymnographic form which afterwards became central to Orthodox worship. His Great Canon of Repentance, sung in the first week and on the Thursday of the fifth week of Great Lent, is the longest canon ever composed, comprising some two hundred and fifty troparia in nine odes. He also composed canons for the Nativity of Christ, for Lazarus Saturday, for Palm Sunday, and for many feasts and saints, together with numerous homilies. Returning from a journey to Constantinople, he reposed on the island of Lesbos in 740, and his relics were afterwards translated to Constantinople.

Holy martyrs Theodotus and Theodota

The holy martyrs Theodotus and Theodota suffered together with Saint Hyacinth of Caesarea during the reign of the emperor Trajan in the early second century. They were Christians of Caesarea in Cappadocia, kinsfolk and friends of the young chamberlain Hyacinth, who openly confessed their faith in Christ at a time when believers were being sought out and put to death. When Hyacinth had been arrested at the imperial court for refusing to take part in the sacrifices to idols, Theodotus and Theodota were also seized and brought before the persecutors. After the death of Hyacinth in prison, they were subjected to many cruel torments. Theodota, after enduring scourgings and the rack, gave up her soul to God; Theodotus, faithful to the end, was finally beheaded by the sword. Their relics were afterwards venerated together with those of Saint Hyacinth in Caesarea.

Saint Andrei Rublev the Iconographer

Saint Andrei Rublev (about 1360 to about 1430) is the most renowned of all Russian iconographers and one of the greatest sacred artists of the Christian East. Little is known of his early life save that he was tonsured at the Trinity-Sergius Lavra under the disciples of Saint Sergius of Radonezh, and afterwards entered the Andronikov monastery in Moscow, where he was the spiritual son of Saint Nikon of Radonezh.

In 1405 he worked alongside Theophanes the Greek and the elder Prokhor of Gorodets in the painting of the Cathedral of the Annunciation in the Kremlin, and in 1408 he laboured with Daniel the Black in the Dormition Cathedral at Vladimir. About 1411, at the request of Saint Nikon and as a memorial to Saint Sergius, he wrote his most celebrated work, the icon of the Holy Trinity, depicting the three angelic visitors of Abraham at the oak of Mamre as a contemplation of the inner life of the Triune God. The Stoglav Council of 1551 declared his manner of icon painting to be the model for the Russian Church.

He reposed at the Andronikov monastery between 1427 and 1430, and was buried there beside his fellow ascetic Daniel. The Russian Orthodox Church glorified him as a saint in 1988, on the millennium of the Baptism of Rus, with his principal feast appointed for 4 July; in some calendars his memory is also kept on 17 October together with Daniel the Black.

Venerable Martha, mother of Saint Symeon of the Wonderful Mountain

Saint Martha lived in the sixth century and was a native of Antioch in Syria. From her youth she prepared herself for a life of virginity and longed for the monastic state, but her parents insisted that she marry. After ardent prayer in a church dedicated to Saint John the Forerunner, she was directed in a vision to submit to the will of her parents, and she entered into marriage with a pious man named John. The Forerunner himself revealed to her that she would bear a son who would be a great pillar of the Church.

In 521, in answer to her prayers, she gave birth to a son who was named Symeon, who from his earliest childhood was filled with extraordinary grace and afterwards became Saint Symeon Stylites the Younger of the Wonderful Mountain. When Symeon was six years old an earthquake destroyed the city of Antioch, in which her husband John perished. Martha thereafter dedicated herself wholly to the service of God and the rearing of her son in the fear of the Lord, presenting him to the elder John on the Pillar, under whom he too began the life of a stylite.

Saint Martha rose every night to pray, watering her prayers with tears, fasted strictly, and gave herself with great charity to the service of the poor, the orphans, and the sick, often selling her own clothing to assist them. She was granted gifts of clairvoyance and miracle-working, and the Theotokos appeared to her to foretell the time of her repose. She fell asleep in the Lord peacefully on 4 July 551, and her body was buried at the foot of her son's pillar on the Wonderful Mountain. Saint Symeon afterwards translated her relics to a place of honour in his monastery, where many miracles were wrought through her prayers.

Also commemorated: St Andrew of Crete · St Andrew (Rublev), iconographer (1430)

Daily readings

Epistle

weekly cycle

Romans — Romans 8.14-21

¹⁴For as many as are led by the Spirit of God, they are the sons of God. ¹⁵For ye have not received the spirit of bondage again to fear; but ye have received the Spirit of adoption, whereby we cry, Abba, Father. ¹⁶The Spirit itself beareth witness with our spirit, that we are the children of God: ¹⁷And if children, then heirs; heirs of God, and joint-heirs with Christ; if so be that we suffer with him, that we may be also glorified together.

¹⁸For I reckon that the sufferings of this present time are not worthy to be compared with the glory which shall be revealed in us. ¹⁹For the earnest expectation of the creature waiteth for the manifestation of the sons of God. ²⁰For the creature was made subject to vanity, not willingly, but by reason of him who hath subjected the same in hope, ²¹Because the creature itself also shall be delivered from the bondage of corruption into the glorious liberty of the children of God.

Gospel

weekly cycle

Matthew — Matthew 9.9-13

⁹And as Jesus passed forth from thence, he saw a man, named Matthew, sitting at the receipt of custom: and he saith unto him, Follow me. And he arose, and followed him.

¹⁰And it came to pass, as Jesus sat at meat in the house, behold, many publicans and sinners came and sat down with him and his disciples. ¹¹And when the Pharisees saw it, they said unto his disciples, Why eateth your Master with publicans and sinners? ¹²But when Jesus heard that, he said unto them, They that be whole need not a physician, but they that are sick. ¹³But go ye and learn what that meaneth, I will have mercy, and not sacrifice: for I am not come to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance.