Eastern Rite - Feasts of 2 May AM 7531

Today is the Feasts of Our Father Among the Saints Athanasius the Great and of the Translation of the Relics of the Holy Passionbearers Boris and Hlib (in Baptism Roman and David).

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Saint Athanasius the Great, Archbishop of Alexandria, was a great Father of the Church and a pillar of Catholicism. He was born around the year 297 in the city of Alexandria into a family of pious Christians. He received a fine secular education, but he acquired more knowledge by diligent study of the Holy Scripture. In his childhood, the future hierarch Athanasius became known to Saint Alexander the Patriarch of Alexandria (May 29). A group of children, which included Athanasius, were playing at the seashore. The Christian children decided to baptize their pagan playmates.

The young Athanasius, whom the children designated as “bishop”, performed the Baptism, precisely repeating the words he heard in church during this sacrament. Patriarch Alexander observed all this from a window. He then commanded that the children and their parents be brought to him. He conversed with them for a long while and determined that the Baptism performed by the children was done according to the Church order. He acknowledged the Baptism as real and sealed it with the sacrament of Chrismation. From this moment, the Patriarch looked after the spiritual upbringing of Athanasius and in time brought him into the clergy, at first as a reader, and then he ordained him as a deacon.

It was as a deacon that Saint Athanasius accompanied Patriarch Alexander to the First Ecumenical Council at Nicea in the year 325. At the Council, Saint Athanasius refuted the heresy of Arius. His speech met with the approval of the Catholic Fathers of the Council, but the Arians, those openly and those secretly so, came to hate Athanasius and persecuted him for the rest of his life.

After the death of holy Patriarch Alexander, Saint Athanasius was unanimously chosen as his successor in the See of Alexandria. He refused, accounting himself unworthy, but at the insistence of all the Catholic populace that it was in agreement, he was consecrated bishop when he was twenty-eight and installed as the archpastor of the Alexandrian Church. Saint Athanasius guided the Church for forty-seven years, and during this time he endured persecution and grief from his antagonists. Several times he was expelled from Alexandria and hid from the Arians in desolate places since they repeatedly tried to kill him. Saint Athanasius spent more than twenty years in exile, returned to his flock, and then was banished again.

There was a time when he remained the only Catholic bishop in the area, a moment when all the other bishops had fallen into heresy. At the false councils of Arian bishops, he was deposed as bishop. Despite being persecuted for many years, the saint continued to defend the purity of the Catholic Faith, and he wrote countless letters and tracts against the Arian heresy.

When Julian the Apostate (361-363) began a persecution against Christians, his wrath first fell upon Saint Athanasius, whom he considered a great pillar of Catholicism. Julian intended to kill the saint in order to strike Christianity a grievous blow, but he soon perished himself. Mortally wounded by an arrow during a battle, he cried out with despair: “Tho hast conquered, O Galilean.” After Julian’s death, Saint Athanasius guided the Alexandrian Church for seven years and died in 373, at the age of seventy-six.

Numerous works of Saint Athanasius have been preserved; four Orations against the Arian heresy; also an Epistle to Epictetus, bishop of the Church of Corinth, on the divine and human natures in Jesus Christ; four Epistles to Serapion, Bishop of Thmuis, about the Holy Spirit and His equality with the Father and the Son, directed against the heresy of Macedonius.

Other apologetic works of the Saint in defense of the Catholic Faith have been preserved, among which is the Letter to the Emperor Constantius. Saint Athanasius wrote commentaries on Holy Scripture, and books of a moral and didactic character, as well as a biography of Saint Anthony the Great (January 17), with whom Saint Athanasius was very close. Saint John Chrysostom advised every Catholic Christian to read this Life.

The memory of Saint Athanasius is celebrated also on January 18 with Saint Cyril of Alexandria.

Troparion — Tone 3

You were a pillar of the Catholic Faith, Hierarch Athanasius, / supporting the Church with divine doctrines; / you proclaimed the Son to be of one Essence with the Father, / putting Arius to shame. / Righteous father, entreat Christ God to grant us His great mercy.

Kontakion — Tone 2

You planted the dogmas of Catholicism / and eradicated the thorns of false doctrine; / you propagated the seeds of the Faith watered with the rain of the Spirit. / Therefore, we praise you, Righteous Athanasius.

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The Transfer of the Relics of the Holy Passion-Bearers Boris and Hlib. Saint Boris (July 24) was a brother of the Great Prince of Kyiv Iaroslav the Wise (1019-1054), and was baptized with the name Roman. The murdered Prince Boris was buried at the church of Saint Basil the Great at Vyshhorod near Kyiv.

Metropolitan John I of Kyiv (1008-1035) and his clergy solemnly met the incorrupt relics of the holy passion-bearer Hlib and placed them in the church where the relics of Saint Boris rested. Soon the burial place was glorified by miracles. Then the relics of the holy brothers Boris and Hlib were removed from the ground and placed in a specially constructed chapel. On July 24, 1026 a church of five cupolas built by Iaroslav the Wise was consecrated in honor of the holy martyrs.

In later years, the Vyshhorod Saints Boris and Hlib church containing the relics of the holy Passion-Bearers became the family church of the Iaroslavichi, their sanctuary of brotherly love and service to the nation. The symbol of their unity was the celebration of the Transfer of the Relics of Boris and Hlib, observed on May 2. The history of the establishment of this Feast is bound up with the preceding events of Russian history. On 2 May 1069, the Great Prince Izyaslav, who had been expelled from the princedom for seven months (i.e. from September 1068) because of an uprising of the Kyivan people, entered into Kyiv. In gratitude for God’s help in establishing peace in the Russian land, the prince built a new church to replace an older structure. Two Metropolitans, George of Kyiv and Neophytus of Chernihiv, participated in its consecration with other bishops, igumens, and clergy. The transfer of the relics, in which all three of the Iaroslavichi (Izyaslav, Sviatoslav, Vsevolod) participated, was set for May 2, and it was designated as an annual celebration.

Sviatoslav Iaroslavich, Prince of Kyiv during 1073-1076, made an effort to transform the Saints Boris and Hlib temple into a stone church, but he was able to build the walls only eight cubits high. Later Vsevolod (+ 1093) finished the church construction, but it collapsed by night.

The veneration of Saints Boris and Hlib developed during the time of Iaroslav’s grandsons, often producing a peculiar pious competition among them. Izyaslav’s son Svyatopolk (+ 1113), built silver reliquaries for the saints. In 1102 Vsevolod’s son Volodymyr Monomakh (+ 1125), sent master craftsmen by night and secretly adorned the silver reliquaries with gold leaf. Sviatoslav’s son Oleh (+ 1115) outdid them. He was called “Gorislavich”, and was mentioned in the “Tale of Igor’s Campaign.” He “intended to raise up the collapsed stone (church) and hired some builders.” He provided everything that was necessary.

The church was ready in the year 1111, and Oleh “pressured and besought Svyatopolk to transfer the holy relics into it.” Svyatopolk did not want to do this, “because he did not build this church.”

The death of Sviatopolk Izyaslavich (+ 1113) brought a new insurrection to Kyiv, which nearly killed VolodymyrMonomakh, who had become Great Prince of that city. He decided to cultivate friendship with the Sviatoslavichi through the solemn transfer of the relics into the Oleh church. “Volodymyr gathered his sons, and David and Oleh with their sons. They all arrived at Vyshhorod. All the hierarchs, igumens, monks and priests came, filling all the town and there was no space left for the citizenry along the walls.”

On the morning of May 2, 1115, the Sunday of the Myrhhbearing Women, they began to sing Matins at both churches, old and new, and the transfer of relics began. The three were separated. “First they brought Saint Boris in a cart, and with him went Metropolitan Volodymyr and his clergy.” On other carts went Saint Hlib “and David with bishops and clergy.” (Oleh waited for them in the church).

This separation was adhered to in future generations. Saint Boris was considered a heavenly protector of the Monomashichi; Saint Hlib, of the Ol’govichi and the Davidovichi. When Volodymyr Monomakh speaks about Boris in his “Testament”, he does not mention Hlib. In the Ol’govichi line, none of the princes received the name Boris.

In general the names Boris and Hlib, and so also Roman and David, were esteemed by many generations of Kyivan and Muscovite princes. The brothers of Oleh Gorislavich were named Roman (+ 1079), Hlib (+ 1078), David (+ 1123), and one of his sons was named Hlib (+ 1138).

From Monomakh were the sons Roman and Hlib; from Yuri Dolgoruky, Boris and Hlib; of Saint Rostislav of Smolensk, Boris and Hlib; of Saint Andrew Bogoliubsky, Saint Hlib (+ 1174); of Vsevolod Big Nest, Boris and Hlib. Among the sons of Vseslav of Polotsk (+ 1101) was the full range of “Saints Boris and Hlib” names: Roman, Hlib, David, and Boris.

The Vyshhorod sanctuaries were not the only centres for the liturgical veneration of Saints Boris and Hlib. It was spread throughout the Russian land. First of all, there were churches and monasteries in specific places connected with the martyrdom of the saints, and their miraculous help for people; the temple of Boris and Hlib at Dorogozhich on the road to Vyshhorod, where Saint Boris died; the Saints Boris and Hlib monastery at Tmo near Tver where Hlib’s horse injured its leg; a monastery of the same name at Smyadyno at the place of Hlib’s murder; and at the River Tvertsa near Torzhok (founded in 1030), where the head of Saint George the Hungarian was preserved [trans. note: the beloved servant of Saint Boris was beheaded in order to steal the gold medallion given him by Saint Boris]. Churches dedicated to Saints Boris and Hlib were built at the Alta in memory of the victory of Iaroslav the Wise over Svyatopolk the Accursed on July 24, 1019; and also at Gzena near Novhorod where Hlib Sviatoslavich defeated a sorcerer.

The Ol’hovichi and the Monomachichi vied with each other in building churches dedicated to the holy martyrs. Oleh himself, in addition to the Vyshhorod church, built the Saints Boris and Hlib Cathedral in Old Ryazan in 1115 (therefore, the diocese was later called Saints Boris and Hlib). His brother David also built at Chernihiv (in 1120). In the year 1132, Yuri Dolgoruky built a church of Boris and Hlib at Kideksh at the River Nerla, “where the encampment of Saint Boris had been.” In 1145, Saint Rostislav of Smolensk “put a stone church at Smyadyno,” at Smolensk. In the following year the first (wooden) Saints Boris and Hlib church was built in Novgorod. In 1167 a stone foundation replaced the wood, and it was completed and consecrated in the year 1173. The Novgorod Chronicles name the legendary Sotko Sytinich as the builder of the church.

The holy Passion-Bearers Boris and Hlib were the first Russian saints glorified by the Russian and Byzantine Churches. A service to them was composed soon after their death, and its author was Saint John I, Metropolitan of Kyiv (1008-1035), which a MENAION of the twelfth century corroborates. The innumerable copies of their Life, the accounts of the relics, the miracles and eulogies in the manuscripts and printed books of the twelfth-fourteenth centuries bear witness to the special veneration of the holy Martyrs Boris and Hli in Russia.

[trans. note: Neither this account nor those of the individual feastdays give the details of their martyrdom. Perhaps it is assumed that the reader is familiar with the story, or perhaps it is too painful to recount. The saints chose not to take up arms to defend themselves, or flee to safety. In their final prayers, they refer to the Lord’s voluntary suffering and death, as recorded by the chroniclers. Since they meekly accepted an unjust death for the sake of Christ, they are known as “Passion-Bearers.”]

Troparion — Tone 2

Righteous passion-bearers and true fulfillers of the Gospel of Christ, / chaste Boris and guileless Hlib, / you did not resist the attacks of your brother, the enemy, / when he killed your bodies but could not touch your souls. / Therefore, let the evil lover of power mourn / while you rejoice with the angels standing before the Holy Trinity. / Pray that those who honor your memory may be pleasing to God, / and that all Catholic Christians may be saved.

Kontakion — Tone 3

Today your most glorious memory shines forth, / noble participants in the passion of Christ, holy Boris and Hlib, / for you call us together to sing praises to Christ our God! / Praying to Him before your sacred images, / we receive the gift of healing by your prayers, / for you are indeed divine healers.