A saint's day
St John the Russian
John was a young soldier from Little Russia, captured in 1711 and sold to a Turkish cavalry officer in Prokopion, Cappadocia. Threats and beatings could not make him renounce Christ; he lived in a corner of the stable, served his master with humble faithfulness, slipped away at night to pray in the church of St George, and shared his meager food with the poor. His master's household prospered because of him, and after his repose in 1730 his relics were found incorrupt.
The dates
- Kept on
- 27 May (9 June on the Old Calendar)
- Next, New Calendar
- Next, Old Calendar
The New Calendar (the Greek, Antiochian, Romanian and Bulgarian churches, the OCA and most converts) keeps fixed feasts on the church date; the Old Calendar (the Russian, Serbian and Georgian churches, Jerusalem and Mount Athos) keeps them 13 days later. Pascha and the feasts that follow it are kept on the same day by both.
How the day is kept
He is venerated far more in Greece than in Russia. When the Greeks of Prokopion came to Greece in 1924 they carried his relics with them to Evia, and pilgrims walk from Chalkida to his shrine at New Prokopi for his feast.
Orthodox Christians pray to him for safe travels, for sick children and for all who suffer far from home, and in Greece also for the healing of cancer.