On Dimitrievskaya Parental Saturday, Metropolitan Alexander held a memorial service in the church, Representative Office of the Metropolitan District in Moscow

November 2, 2024 – Dimitrievskaya Parental Saturday. The closest Saturday before the day of remembrance of the holy great martyr Demetrius of Thessaloniki (November 8) was initially dedicated to the prayerful commemoration of the soldiers who died in the battle on the Kulikovo field. Over time, Dimitrievskaya Saturday became a day of memorial commemoration of all deceased Orthodox Christians.

After the end of the Divine Liturgy in the Moscow church in the name of the martyrs Vera, Nadezhda, Lyubov and Sophia on Miusy – Representative Office of the Orthodox Church of Kazakhstan, Metropolitan Alexander of Astana and Kazakhstan held a memorial service for all “Orthodox Christians who have died from the beginning of time to this day.”

The key keeper of the church, Hieromonk Anthony (Drobiazko), clergy, employees of the Representative Office and parishioners prayed at the service.

The parents of the Head of the Metropolitan District, the ever-memorable Gennady Fyodorovich and Anastasia Mikhailovna, were especially remembered at the memorial service (November 2 is the anniversary of her birth).

At the end of the memorial service, Metropolitan Alexander addressed those gathered with an archpastoral word about the importance of remembering the deceased.

“The Church has great power, an extraordinary authority, granted to it by God, to change the fate of its deceased children. We bring to the church notes with names dear to our hearts, we pray fervently for the forgiveness of voluntary and involuntary sins of “our relatives and neighbors who lived before us and passed away,” we give prosphora, from which particles are taken out at the very beginning of the Liturgy, during the Proskomedia on the holy altar. Also, during the Divine Service, a very important, spiritually significant moment comes - all these particles are immersed in the chalice with the Most Pure and Life-giving Blood of the Lord Jesus Christ. At the same time, the prayer is said: “Wash away, Lord, the sins of all those remembered here by Your Precious Blood through the prayers of Your saints.” Our relatives, close and known, whose names are written in the memorial notes, receive grace, sanctification and remission of sins from the Bloodless Sacrifice brought on the Throne. Those righteous people to whom, by special Divine providence, the secrets of the afterlife were revealed, testify that the souls of the departed are granted the greatest consolation and inexpressible joy when church prayer is poured out for them and the Bloodless Sacrifice of the Holy Eucharist is offered.” From the sermon of Metropolitan Alexander.