Memorial Saturday of Great Lent. Metropolitan Alexander celebrated the Liturgy in the church of the Representative Office of the Kazakhstan Metropolitan District in Moscow

March 15, 2025 – Saturday of the 2nd week of Great Lent, commemoration of the departed; celebration in honor of the icon of the Mother of God "Sovereign".

Metropolitan Alexander of Astana and Kazakhstan celebrated the Divine Liturgy in the church of the holy martyrs Vera, Nadezhda, Lyubov and Sophia at the Patriarchal Metochion of the city of Moscow – Representative Office of the Metropolitan District of the Russian Orthodox Church in the Republic of Kazakhstan.

His Eminence was assisted by: Acting Rector of the Alma-Ata Orthodox Theological Seminary, Head of the Information Department of the Metropolitan District Archpriest Evgeny Ivanov; Vice-Rector of the Alma-Ata Theological Seminary, Candidate of Theology, Doctor of Medical Sciences, Professor Hegumen Agafangel (Gagua); the key-keeper of the Church of the Holy Martyrs Vera, Nadezhda, Lyubov and their mother Sophia, Hieromonk Anthony (Drobiazko); clergy of the metochion.

The church choir sang under the direction of Anna Rozhnova.

The employees of the Representative Office, benefactors of the Patriarchal metochion and parishioners of the church prayed during the service.

During the Liturgy, special funeral prayers were offered for the ever-memorable rector, Archpriest Boris Prisyazhnyuk, through whose efforts the parish was revived, for the deceased builders and beautifiers of the church and for those buried in the Miusskoye Cemetery.

At the end of the service, Metropolitan Alexander addressed the congregation with a sermon on the importance of commemorating the departed, after which a memorial service was held for all "Orthodox Christians who have died from the beginning of time to this day."

"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 who have died," we give prosphora, from which particles are taken out at the very beginning of the Liturgy, during the Proskomedia on the holy altar. And 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, O Lord, the sins of all those remembered here by Thy Precious Blood through the prayers of Thy saints." Our relatives, friends and acquaintances, whose names are written in the memorial notes, receive grace, sanctification and remission of sins from the Bloodless Sacrifice offered 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.