The Church celebrates the apodosis (leave-taking) of Easter, that is, 40 days after the Resurrection of the Lord.
The service of the Resurrection of the Lord takes place after forty days marking the leave-taking or apodosis, as it is called, of the feast of Easter. Christians experience the event of the Resurrection of Christ every Saturday evening with the Vespers and every Sunday with the Orthros and the Divine Liturgy.
We also celebrate the memory of Saint John the Russian and of Hieromartyr Helladios. Moreover, we celebrate the translation of the holy relics of Saint Therapon from Cyprus to Constantinople.
Saint John was born in the late 17th century in Ukraine. Nurtured by his parents with the teachings of the Orthodox Church, he struggled to defend his homeland during the Russo-Turkish war. He was taken prisoner to Constantinople, and from there to Prokopi in Asia Minor, where he was brutally tortured to renounce his faith in Jesus Christ. Saint John endured it all with admirable courage and faith.
While the Turks were eating him, he responded by quoting the words of Saint Paul the Apostle: “Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall trouble or hardship or persecution or famine or nakedness or danger or sword?”
On May 27, 1730, after having received the Holy Communion, as usual, secretly by the Turks, he fell asleep in the Lord.
In 1733, Saint John appeared to the priest who offered him the Holy Communion every Saturday, they opened his tomb and found his holy relic gushing myrrh.
Later, due to a dispute between the Sultan and Ibrahim of Egypt, the envoy of the pasha, Osman, wanted to burn the holy relic of St. John the Russian in order to avenge the Christians in this way. However, the envoys were so afraid that they fled, after finding that the holy relic remained intact, incorruptible, and myrrh-flowing.
The Christians of Minor Asia reverently carried the holy relic of Saint John to the area of Neo Prokopi in Evia (Greece), where it is placed in a beautiful temple and is a pole of attraction for believers from all over the world.
Source: Church of Cyprus
