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On
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Theodore’s Saturday 3/23/2013
The first Saturday of the Great Lent the Orthodox Church dedicates to the memory of the wondrous appearance of Christ’s warrior Theodore Tiro for deliverance of the Christians from the implacable defilement of the emperor Julian the Apostate. And it came to pass thus: saint Theodore Tiro had suffered a martyr’s death for Christ’s faith in 306 AD, in the time of the emperor Maximian’s persecutions. Fifty years after he had presented himself to God, the emperor Julian the Apostate decided to deceive in a perfidious and secret way Christians, whom he despised, in that during the Great Lent, when Christians purify themselves from sins and try to please God the most, he ordered at the markets the food for selling previously to be sprinkled with blood offered at the altars of unclean idols. By this Christians would defile themselves buying and eating the food from the markets. However, the apostate emperor did not succeed in his intention, since God commanded the brave warrior Theodore Tiro to appear not in a dream, but in waking state to the Constantinopolitan hierarch Eudoxius, warning him about the emperor’s intention. Saint Theodore Tiro suggested the blessed Eudoxius that the Christians should use kallyva, that is, cooked wheat, instead of buying food from the market. By this he hindered the intention of the evil emperor, and the one, for his part, upon seeing his deception revealed, ordered the clean food to be returned at the markets. Celebrating the memory of this miracle on the first Saturday of the Great Lent, the holy Orthodox Church teaches Christians that fasting is pleasing to God and they who fast are under God’s special patronage.
