Day of Worship of the Honorable Chains of the Apostle Peter

Saint Peter, like the other apostles, after the crucifixion and resurrection of Jesus, was engaged in active missionary activity For this, opponents of the Christian faith repeatedly subjected the saint to persecution and arrest But even the shackles on the apostle’s hands were imbued with his holiness and became relics The Orthodox holiday of January 29 is the Day of Worship of the Honorable Chains of the Holy and All-Glorious Apostle Peter On this day, all believers can see and touch the great shrine - the chains in which the hands of the apostle, whose name means stone, were bound In 42 AD, Herod Agrippa of Jerusalem ordered the arrest of Peter for his Christian preaching and great popularity among the people In prison, the apostle’s wrists are bound with heavy iron chains, like a dangerous criminal And even the shackled preacher is guarded by two soldiers right in his dungeon But at night a miracle happens: an angel appears to the prisoner, frees him from his chains and takes him away from guard The secret of the miraculous liberation soon becomes known to the whole city Believers find the shackles that fell from the hands of the apostle and preserve them, passing them on as an inheritance, as the most sacred relic It is known that the chains were in Jerusalem until 439, being an object of worship Next, the saint’s chains pass into the hands of Empress Eudokia, who was a true ascetic of the Christian faith The empress brings the gift of the Jerusalem Patriarch Juvenal to Constantinople, where she leaves one of the two chains in the temple at the Cathedral of St Sophia The second sacred chain is sent as a gift to the daughter of Evdokia, who was the wife of the emperor of the Western Roman Empire Eudoxia received the relic sent by her mother in Rome with the greatest trepidation and reverence The chain from Peter's shackles was placed in the temple erected in honor of the apostle Soon another chain was added to this chain, preserved by the faithful since 64 AD, when Perth was a prisoner in prison in Rome on the orders of the mad Emperor Nero The apostle could have avoided captivity, but while fleeing from Rome, Christ himself appeared to him and reproached him for leaving the Christians who remained in the city The saint returned and accepted his inevitable fate, first arrest, and then a terrible execution The honorable chains acquired by Eudoxia are still in the Roman Cathedral of San Pietro in Vincoli today According to legend, the cathedral is located above the place of the last captivity of the apostle Thousands of worshipers come to venerate the shackles of the saint, and the church commemorates the sacred power contained in the shackles every year on January 29 Among the people, special beliefs and signs were associated with this date Thus, it was strictly forbidden to use any piercing or cutting objects The symbolic closing of the hearth with a chain was used as a talisman It became dangerous to go out onto the river; it was believed that the ice floes began to crack on Verigov's day