Our Holy Father, the Martyr Nectarius
Commemorated July 11
Born in Vryoulla in Asia Minor, he was forced to accept Islam at the age of seventeen. His fate was similar to that of St Nicodemus. When he showed himself to his mother as a Turk, she cried at him: "Get away from me! I don"t know you. I bore you as a Christian, not as a Turk!" He repented bitterly, went to the Holy Mountain and there, in the skete of St Anne, became a monk. Having resolved to die for Christ and thus take away his sin, he went again to Vryoulla, where he suffered. He was beheaded for Christ by the Turks in his birthplace on July 11th, 1820, at the age of twenty-one.
Troparion
In thee, O father, was manifestly preserved what is in the image of God, for having taken up the cross, thou didst follow Christ and by thine own example hast taught that the flesh is to be despised as transient, but that particular care should be bestowed on the soul as a thing immortal; wherefore together with the angels rejoiceth also thine, O ascetic Nectarius, spirit.
Kontakion
As a keeper of fasts pious and skilled, as an honoured voluntary martyr and one that in the desert led the life of a hermit, — let us worthily extol in hymns Nectarius, the ever to be praised; for he hath trodden the serpent under his feet.
Source: Crkveni Kalendar
