October 9, the Church celebrates the day of the repose of the Apostle and Evangelist John the Theologian

The first of them is the apostle and evangelist John the Theologian. He was the only disciple who did not leave Christ at the Cross, for which the Savior entrusted him with the care of the Virgin. John’s life was full of miracles: in Rome he drank a cup of deadly poison and emerged unharmed from a cauldron of boiling oil. For his tireless preaching he was exiled to the island of Patmos, where he was given a great revelation about the fate of the world, recorded in the famous Apocalypse.

It is also the end of his earthly journey. After living more than a hundred years, John ordered his disciples to dig a cross-shaped grave and fill it with earth. Later, however, when other followers excavated the burial, it turned out to be empty. Only a thin, grace-filled ashes that appeared there annually healed ailments. For his fiery faith, he was called the “Son of Gromov”, and the eagle became a symbol of his high theology.

On the same day, the church glorifies St. Tikhon (in the world Vasily Bellavina), the first patriarch after the restoration of the patriarchate in 1917. At the head of the church in the era of revolutions and civil war, he took on a heavy cross. Saint Tikhon boldly denounced the persecution, resisted the schismatics-renovationists and survived imprisonment in the Donskoy monastery. Despite an assassination attempt and poor health, he continued to serve until his death in 1925, and in 1989 was listed as a saint.

October 9 celebrate the name day: Alexander, Athanasius, Vladimir, Dmitry, Ephraim, Ivan, Nikolai, Tikhon.