Dmitrievsky Memorial Saturday. Metropolitan Alexander Commemorates the Departed at the Representation Church of the Kazakhstan Metropolitan District in Moscow

November 1, 2025 — Dmitrievsky Memorial Saturday. The Saturday immediately preceding the commemoration day of the Holy Great-Martyr Demetrius of Thessalonica (November 8) was originally dedicated to prayerful remembrance of the warriors fallen in the Battle of Kulikovo. Over time, Dmitrievsky Saturday became a day of memorial prayer for all departed Orthodox Christians.

Following the Divine Liturgy at the Church in honor of the Holy Martyrs Faith, Hope, Love and their mother Sophia in Miusy — the Representation of the Orthodox Church of Kazakhstan in Moscow — Metropolitan Alexander of Astana and Kazakhstan served a memorial service for all “Orthodox Christians who have reposed from ages past until this day.”

Clergy of the church, staff of the Representation, and parishioners prayed at the service.

During the memorial service, special remembrance was offered for the parents of the Head of the Metropolitan District — the ever-memorable Gennady Fyodorovich and Anastasia Mikhailovna (November 2 being the anniversary of her birth). The hierarch also offered fervent prayers for the newly-reposed clergy — Hieromonk Seraphim (Petrovsky) and Archdeacon Basil (Kryukov).

At the conclusion of the memorial service, Metropolitan Alexander delivered an address on the importance of praying for the departed.

“The Church possesses great power, an extraordinary authority granted to her by God, to change the condition of her departed children. We bring to the temple commemoration slips with names dear to our hearts, diligently praying for the forgiveness of voluntary and involuntary sins ‘of our relatives and loved ones who lived before us and have departed,’ and we offer prosphora, from which particles are removed at the very beginning of the Liturgy during the Proskomedia on the holy table. And during the Divine Service comes a very important, spiritually significant moment — all these particles are immersed in the chalice with the Most Pure and Life-Giving Blood of the Lord Jesus Christ. At that moment the prayer is pronounced: ‘Wash away, O Lord, the sins of those who here have been commemorated by Thy Precious Blood, through the prayers of Thy saints.’ Our relatives, those close to us and known to us, whose names are written on the memorial slips, receive grace, sanctification and the remission of sins from the Bloodless Sacrifice offered on the Holy Altar. Those righteous ones to whom, by special Divine providence, the mysteries of the afterlife were revealed, bear witness that the souls of the departed receive the greatest consolation and ineffable joy when church prayer is offered for them and the Bloodless Sacrifice of the Holy Eucharist is brought.”

From the homily of Metropolitan Alexander