MARTYR ANDREW STRATILATES

In 1591, on the outskirts of Moscow, the Russian army successfully repelled the last invasion of the Crimean Khanate on the capital in history. The troops were located opposite each other, and the center of the battle took place on the site where, in gratitude, a monastery in honor of St. Andrew Stratilates was soon erected on Sparrow Hills. The victory was won on his feast day. Currently, the St. Andrew’s Monastery houses important dicasteries of the Russian Church, the Synodal Library, and the main Orthodox radio station, Radio Vera.

1 On the first day of autumn, the Orthodox Church celebrates the memory of the martyr Andrew Stratilate. The martyr was the patron saint of the Russian writer Andrei Platonov (1899-1951), whose poems and prose about autumn are characterized by a special melancholy. “There is much gloomy anxiety in life, / The days bring many troubles. / Autumn roads in the rain, / It is hard to walk along them,” he wrote in his poem “Ivan da Marya”.

2 The exact time of Andrei Stratilate’s life is unknown. It is assumed that he suffered for his faith during the time of the Roman Emperor Maximian (284-305). The Greek word “Stratilate” is translated as “army commander”. The life says that Andrew was a pagan, but, as was often the case in the Roman army, he trusted Jesus extremely. In a moment of danger, when he and the detachment under his command were ordered to pursue some “Persians” in order to engage them in battle, he called on the soldiers to hope in Christ. Victory was won. But along with the honors, the soldiers were denounced for confessing the Crucified.

3 Without waiting for the pursuit to arrive, Andrew deployed his small army towards Tarsus of Cilicia, the birthplace of the Apostle Paul, because this region was already Christianized, and there was hope of meeting a priest or bishop there to be baptized. After his baptism, Andrew and his detachment laid down their arms so as not to engage in battle with their brothers in arms who had been sent by the pagan command to deal with them. If Andrew truly lived under Maximian, he was a contemporary of the patron saint of the French, Swiss, and other ancient Christian armies, the martyr Maurice. Like Andrew the Stratelates, who, out of brotherly love, laid down his arms with his legion to refuse to fight against his brothers, Maurice was killed for his faith in Helvetia, the future Switzerland. A remarkable example of the Communion of Saints who did not know each other personally, by the grace of the Holy Spirit.

4 The early Church glorified its saints not for heroism, but for holiness. Saint Augustine makes a detailed distinction between these two characteristics in his work “On the City of God”. Thus, according to the Father of the Church, the ancient Romans were heroes, but they were also very wicked. Andrew Stratelates was glorified by the Church not for his military valor, but for his preaching of the Gospel among his fellow soldiers and his willingness to suffer for the faith. Thus, the Gospel commandment was fulfilled: “Greater love has no one than this, that one lay down his life for his friends” (John 15:13).

5 Like all Russians before the Revolution of 1917, Platonov was a baptized child. But even in his youth he “believed” in Bolshevism, and in his works, he claimed that Jesus Himself was a Bolshevik, and under no circumstances should He be handed over to the “churchmen.” Only at the end of his short but sorrowful life did the writer begin to return to the Church and asked his loved ones to pray for him. The writer looked after his son, who had tuberculosis. Platonov became infected himself and died. Converted to the modern calendar, he was born on August 28, that is, on the Assumption, and died on January 5, before Christmas Eve, as if for poets the history of salvation lived in reverse order.

6 “But in the deep, dying autumn / One can mournfully and forever fall in love: / After all, the pines turn green in winter - / One must live all year round,” Platonov wrote in the same poem. The memory of the holy martyr Andrew is also a duty to offer a prayer for the eternal memory of the writer.