The first Sunday after Pentecost, we keep the feast of All Saints, indicating that the gifts of God are, as it were sown, but that a harvest is expected.  Again, an alien thought for many of our own generation, who seem to believe that any gift or comfort they might be granted is given for their own possession and nothing more.  The saints, even those who are living in it, do not accept this self-centred ideology of the “Me” generation.  They bore fruit, some thirty, some sixty and some an hundredfold.  We hymn them on this day, but we should also honour them in our lives by trying to emulate them.

The day after All Saints’ Sunday, we begin the Apostles’ Fast, which lasts from this Monday (22nd May / 4th June) until the feast of the Holy Chiefs of the Apostles, Peter and Paul, on 29th June / 12th July, for which cause it is sometimes referred to as the St Peter’s Fast.  Because it starts on a day dependent on the date of Easter, the primary moveable feast, and ends on a date in the fixed calendar, the length of this fast varies from year to year.  It may be as short as eight days when Easter is late, or as long as six weeks.  This year, Pascha was early, but not as early as it might have been, and so the fast will last 38 days.

Among the saints we have in May, we celebrate:-

The Holy Martyrs Timothy and Maura (3rd/16th May):  St Timothy was the son of a village priest from the region about Antinoë in Egypt. and was brought up in piety, and he was eventually made a reader to assist his father.  Besides the appointed readings in church, Timothy read the sacred books daily at home, and he also learned to copy them.  In those days of course there were no printed books, and all had to be copied by hand.  In time, he entered into marriage with a seventeen-year-old maiden, Maura.  She also had learned to read and to love the Scriptures.  However, they were married only twenty days.  Then an edict was published which instigated a new period of persecution of the Christians, and further ordered that their sacred books be destroyed.  St Timothy spoke out against this and for his boldness he was arrested and put to torture.  The authorities instructed Maura to try and persuade her young husband to compromise, and in a moment of wavering she agreed to this, but soon strengthened by his good counsel she repented, and was herself put to torture.  Both were put to the most horrible tortures and were at last sentenced to death.  They were crucified, with their crosses opposite each other so that their torment might be increased by their seeing each other suffer.  However, they used this circumstance to the good, and comforted and exhorted each other in their sufferings.  That the power of the Crucified One might be made manifest, the two young martyrs hung on their crosses for nine days, before they gave up their souls and received the crowns of martyrdom.  They probably died in 286 A.D.

The Venerable Cassian the Greek of Uglich (21st May / 3rd June) celebrates on the same day as the saint who was probably his original name-saint, Constantine the Great.  Cassian was a Byzantine or Greek, and of a princely line.  He was born in Morea, or, according to other records, in Crimea.  He first comes to notice when, in 1473 A.D, he accompanied the Princess Sophia Paleologos to Russia for her marriage of the Great Prince John III.  He conceived a desire to remain in Russia and was appointed to the household of Archbishop Ioasaph of Rostov.  When the Archbishop retired, he went to live in the White Lake Monastery of St Therapont and Constantine, as St Cassian was called before becoming a monk, went with him. Living in the monastery, Constantine began to live a strictly ascetical life, but for some reason he refused to be tonsured a monk, even though Archbishop Ioasaph urged him to do so.  However, the founder of the house, St Therapont appeared to him in a vision and ordered him to accept the monastic tonsure.  Constantine reported the vision to his Elder, Archbishop Ioasaph, who advised him to accept the vision as true, and the next day he was tonsured and renamed Cassian.  After some time, Father Cassian left that monastery and founded a hermitage on the banks of the River Uchma, which is about fifteen miles from Uglich.  Here he lived out his remaining days, receiving people who came to him for a blessing or to ask his spiritual direction and help.  He died in the year 1504, and is known as a saint and wonder-worker.