Our Holy Father, the Martyr Nectarius.

Commemorated July 11 in the Orthodox Christian Menaion

From the Prologue

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.

From The Prologue From Ochrid by Bishop Nikolai Velimirovich
©1985 Lazarica Press, Birmingham UK