The Holy Trinity, pervading everyone from first to last, from head to foot, binds them all together… The saints in each generation, joined to those who have gone before, and filled like them with light, become a golden chain, in which each saint is a separate link, united to the next by faith, works, and love. So in the One God they form a single chain which cannot quickly be broken.
(Symeon the New Theologian, in Centuries, quoted in Ware, The Orthodox Church, New Edition, Penguin Books, London, 1997, p. 255,6.)
“In the Russian Orthodox Church, the Sunday closest to January 25 (February 7 on the Gregorian Calendar) is the “Sunday of the Holy New Martyrs and Confessors of Russia.” The date of January 25 was chosen because that was the date in 1918 of the martyrdom of St. Vladimir (Bogoiavlensikii), Metropolitan of Kiev, who is referred to as the ‘Protomartyr of the communist yoke in Russia.’ ” From Wikipedia
