Saturday before Nativity

Saints commemorated

• Virgin Martyr Juliana and Companions

  Juliana of Nicomedia (†c. 304) is the virgin-martyr who broke off her marriage to save her chastity for Christ. The daughter of a pagan noble named Africanus, she was betrothed as a child to Eleusius, a magistrate of Nicomedia; secretly baptised, she refused to complete the wedding unless her bridegroom became a Christian, and when he would not, she was denounced by her own father and handed to Eleusius for judgment. Beaten, hung by the hair, poured over with molten metal, and — in the celebrated passio — locked in prison where she overcame and bound a demon that came to her disguised as an angel, she was healed of every wound; the crowd who watched, some five hundred men and a hundred and thirty women, confessed Christ at the sight and were beheaded with her. Juliana was executed by the sword about the year 304. She is commemorated on December 21, within the forefeast of the Nativity.

• Our Holy Father Peter, Metropolitan of Moscow (1326)

  Peter, Metropolitan of Kiev and All Russia (c. 1260–1326), was the first primate of the Russian Church to make his residence at Moscow, and by that act one of the founders of Moscow's greatness. Born in Volhynia, a monk, icon-painter and abbot of his own foundation on the river Rata, he was consecrated Metropolitan of Russia at Constantinople about 1308, in an age when the see, uprooted from devastated Kiev, had settled at Vladimir. Amid the disorders of the Tatar yoke Peter befriended the rising princes of Moscow, transferred the metropolitan residence there in 1325, and blessed the laying of the foundations of the Dormition Cathedral in the Kremlin, foretelling that Moscow would be exalted above all the cities of Russia. He reposed on December 21, 1326, was buried in the cathedral he had begun, and was glorified in 1339 as the first wonderworking hierarch of Moscow. He is commemorated on December 21, and among the Hierarchs of Moscow on October 5.

• Saint Procopius of Vyatka, Fool for Christ (1627)

• Juliana of Vyazma

  Juliana (†21 December 1406) was the wife of Prince Simeon Mstislavich of Vyazma, and died at Torzhok defending her marriage and her chastity against Yuri Svyatoslavich, the dispossessed Prince of Smolensk. Sheltering in the same town as his exiled kinsmen, Yuri conceived a passion for her; when she refused him he killed her husband at table and turned on her, and when she wounded him with a knife he cut off her hands and feet with his sword and had her body thrown into the frozen Tvertsa. In the spring her body was found — the tradition says floating against the current — and was buried at the Transfiguration Cathedral of Torzhok, where healings were reported at her tomb through four centuries until the Church uncovered her relics and glorified her on 2 June 1819. She is honoured among the Wonderworkers of Novy Torg and is one of the Russian Church's patrons of the sanctity of marriage.

• Themistocles of Myra

  Themistocles (†251) was a shepherd of Myra in Lycia who gave his life to save another. During the persecution of the emperor Decius he sheltered in his house a hunted Christian named Dioscorides; when the pursuers came, Themistocles went out to them, took upon himself the danger meant for the man he had hidden, and confessed Christ in his stead. He was cruelly tortured and received the crown of martyrdom in the year 251. He is commemorated on December 21.

British Isles and Ireland

• St. Bernwald of Bampton (8th C)

Troparia & kontakia

Readings