3/3/2023
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In memory of this occurrence, the Orthodox Church annually celebrates the holy Great Martyr Theodore the Recruit on the first Saturday of Great Lent.
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Fifty years after the death of St Theodore, the emperor Julian the Apostate (361-363), wanting to commit an outrage upon the Christians, commanded the city-commander of Constantinople during the first week of Great Lent to sprinkle all the food provisions in the marketplaces with the blood offered to idols. St Theodore appeared in a dream to Archbishop Eudoxius, ordering him to inform all the Christians that no one should buy anything at the marketplaces, but rather to eat cooked wheat with honey (koliva).
Hieromonk Ignaty (Shestakov)
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Divine grace is indeed the real meat and drink for all of us. If we deprive ourselves of this grace, then anything else that we will achieve and acquire in our life will have no meaning—it will only lead us further and further away from our salvation and Christ, from communion with God.
Archpriest Valery Zakharov
There is a very important lesson in this story for us: We must always be cautious in our actions and words, and try not to let anything defile our fasting.
Hieromonk Innokenty (Prisadkov)
We celebrate a prayer service to Greatmartyr Theodore the Tyro with gratitude to him and with the faith that true fasting is never put to shame, but the Lord covers the faster with His power, giving him spiritual joy and strength.
St. Innocent of Kherson
And the Lord and His grace will make no long tarrying, beloved!
Igumen Leonty (Kozlov)
Christ is the eternal King of Glory, and the power of His Kingdom is in the truth because only the truth lasts forever as one of the Divine attributes.
Priest Ioannis Fortomas
After the melancholy days of the first week of the Lenten fast, a joyous celebration radiates. A day of gladness hath dawned in the season of mourning, and with its light it hath dispersed the gloominess thereof.
Jesse Dominick
The great accomplishment of St. Theodore, extolled by the Church on this day, was to be burned alive! To the world, this is pure madness. “Fool! Why dost thou vainly set thy trust in a man that was put to death?” the impious governor mocked the martyr. But the holy Apostle Paul already told us 2,000 years ago that the Cross is foolishness to the world.
Yuri Ruban
The greatmartyr’s commemoration in the Lenten Triodion signified the triumph of Orthodoxy over the perfidy of paganism.
Today we remember the miracle of Saint Theodore the Recruit and the boiled wheat.
