SAINT ALEXIS

February 12

From the Prologue

Alexis was a great hierarch of the Russian Church at the time of the burdensome bondage of the Russian people under the Tartars. Once as a child, he was hunting birds and, asleep in a dream, he heard a voice: "Alexis, why do you labor in vain? I will make you a fisherman of men." At age twenty he was tonsured a monk and in time became the Metropolitan of Moscow. Twice he went among the "golden horde" of the Tartars: the first time to mitigate the wrath of Khan Verdevir against the Russian people and the second time, at the invitation of the Khan Amurat, to heal his wife of blindness. She was blind for three years but her sight was restored when Alexis prayed over her and anointed her with holy water. Following a very laborious and fruitful life, Alexis died in the year 1378 A.D. in his eighty-fifth year and took up habitation in the courts of the Lord.