The Church commemorates the dead at every Liturgy. However, there are also special days on which the Church prescribes a commemoration of the dead. One of these special days is the Saturday before the feast of St. Demetrius of Thessalonika, for which it is known as St. Demetrius’ Saturday. For what reason does our church commemorate the dead on this day?

Medieval Russia went through very hard times in the 11th - 13th centuries. Because of the intestine strife among the Russian princes who had divided the land into petty principalities, Russia was so weakened that when it was attacked by the Tatars it could not resist and was conquered by the infidels. For more than 200 years the Russian people were ruled by the Tatars and paid tribute to their khans. But the time came when the Russians decided to rid themselves of the harsh Tatar yoke. When the Tatar khan Mamai found out about this, he gathered all his Tatar forces and also invited the Lithuanian King Yagailo to join him, and decided to erase the Russian people from the face of the earth and to convert Orthodox churches into Moslem mosques. But the Lord did not allow the evil intentions of the infidels to materialize. At that time the Great Prince of Moscow was Dmitri Ioannovich. Not relying only upon his own forces, he asked for help from the divine saint, Sergius of Radonezh. St. Sergius blessed the prince and foretold his victory.

Placing his faith totally in the help of God, Prince Dmitri Ioannovich moved with his forces against the Tatars. A decisive battle took place in the Kulikovo field near the Don River. The Tatars were roundly defeated. Mamai himself fled with a few surviving warriors. This took place in 1380. Having vanquished his enemy at the expense of losing more than half of his army,

Prince Dmitri Ioannovich commemorated his dead warriors in the Holy Trinity Monastery of St. Sergius, and decreed that a similar commemoration be held annually on the Saturday before October 26th (the feast day of St. Demetrius). Later the Church began to commemorate on this day not only all those who had fallen on the battlefield, but all Orthodox Christians.