April 21, 2026 – Tuesday of the second week after Pascha – Radonitsa. According to ancient tradition, on the ninth day after the Bright Resurrection of Christ, the Orthodox Church performs a special Paschal commemoration of the departed.
Metropolitan Alexander of Astana and Kazakhstan celebrated the Divine Liturgy at the Church of the Holy Martyrs Faith, Hope, Love, and their mother Sophia at the Patriarchal Metochion in the city of Moscow – the Representation of the Metropolitan District of the Russian Orthodox Church in the Republic of Kazakhstan.
Concelebrating with His Eminence were: Vice-Rector of the Almaty Theological Seminary, Candidate of Theology, Doctor of Medical Sciences, Professor Hegumen Agafangel (Gagua); Dean of the Church of the Holy Martyrs Faith, Hope, Love, and their mother Sophia Hieromonk Antony (Drobyazko); clergy of the metochion; Head of the Correspondence Department of the Almaty Theological Seminary Priest Daniil Bobylev; Deacon Anatoly Ledenev; Deacon Roman Frolov.
Praying at the Liturgy were: Deputy Head of the Secretariat of the Deputy Chairman of the Government of the Russian Federation N.V. Parshikova; benefactors of the metochion and parishioners of the church.
The choir of the church sang under the direction of Anna Rozhnova.
During the litany for the departed, all “Orthodox Christians who have reposed from ages past to this day” were commemorated; special prayers were offered for the late rector of the Church of Sophia, Archpriest Boris Prisyazhnyuk, through whose labors the parish was revived; the ever-memorable builders and benefactors of the church; the departed hierarchs and clergy of Kazakhstan; those buried at the Miusskoye cemetery of the capital, among them A.F. Vedernikov, People’s Artist of the USSR, the “Golden Bass of Russia”; for all those who in the years of godless persecutions were innocently tortured and killed, who died from hunger, cold, wounds, illnesses, and hard labor; for leaders and soldiers who laid down their lives on the battlefield for the faith and the Fatherland; for clergy and laity who died from pestilence.
After the dismissal of the Liturgy, the glorification of the Bright Resurrection of Christ and the Paschal commemoration of the departed took place.
Divine Liturgies with Paschal commemoration of the departed were celebrated in all churches of the Kazakhstan Metropolitan District.
At the request of the faithful, clergy performed memorial litanies for the departed at urban and rural cemeteries.
“On the ninth day after the feast of the Bright Resurrection of Christ, we, according to a pious tradition sanctified by centuries, perform the Paschal commemoration of the departed. The Resurrection of Christ has opened for us the way to Heaven, and the Church now proclaims in the Paschal canon: ‘From death to life and from earth to heaven Christ God has led us.’ Pascha assures us of forgiveness, which has shone upon humanity from the Life-Giving Tomb, and affirms the hope of the future general resurrection. ‘Let no one fear death,’ we hear on the Paschal night in the words of Saint John Chrysostom, ‘for the Savior’s death has set us free. Christ is risen – and life reigns; Christ is risen – and not one dead remains in the grave.’ From the moment of the Resurrection of our Lord, death for man has become but a sleep, a repose, a temporary separation, after which there will come for all the faithful the day when, as the Apostle John the Theologian testifies in the Book of Revelation: ‘God will wipe away every tear from their eyes, and there shall be no more death, nor sorrow, nor crying, nor pain anymore.’”
from the homily of Metropolitan Alexander.
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