Commemorated on August 24Saint Peter, Metropolitan of Moscow, died on December 21, 1326. The first transfer of his relics was on July 1, 1472 and a feastday was established. The second transfer of the relics of St Peter was after the consecration of the Dormition Cathedral, rebuilt on August 24, 1479, and the July 1 feastday was replaced.
There was a feastday of the appearance of the relics of St Peter (August 4) upon the occasion of an appearance to the wife of Ivan the Terrible (1533-1584), the Tsaritsa Anastasia (1547-1560). St Peter appeared to Tsaritsa Anastasia and would permit no one to open his grave. He commanded the grave to be sealed and a feastday established.
Three epistles of St Peter are preserved. The first was to priests with an exhortation to pursue their pastoral service worthily, and to tend their spiritual children with zeal. It concluded with an account of Church law concerning widowed priests, and intended to protect them from reproach and temptation. He advised them to settle in a monastery, and for their children to be enrolledin a monastery school for upbringing and instruction. In the second missive, the saint urged priests to be true pastors and not hirelings, and to be concerned about the strengthening of themselves with Christian and pastoral virtues. In the third letter, St Peter again exhorts priests concerning their pastoral obligations, and he urges laypeople to fulfill the commandments of Christ.
Prominent in church-state affairs, there was good reason even for his contemporaries to compare St Peter with Sts Basil the Great, Gregory the Theologian and John Chrysostom. The principal effort of St Peter was in the struggle for an unified Russian state and the blessing of Moscow as the unifier of the Russian land.
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SAINT OR FEAST POSTED THIS DATE 2008(with 2007's link here also):
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