In his report at the diocesan meeting of Moscow in 2003, His Holiness Patriarch Alexy II noted: “Recently, the veneration of the holy martyr Huar has become increasingly widespread. Chapels are built in his honor and icons are painted. From his life it follows that he had special grace from God to pray for unbaptized dead people. During the times of militant atheism in our country, many people grew up and died unbaptized, and their believing relatives want to pray for their repose. Such private prayer was never prohibited. But in church prayer, during divine services, we remember only the children of the Church who have joined it through the Sacrament of Holy Baptism.
Some abbots, guided by mercantile considerations, perform church commemorations of unbaptized people, accepting a lot of notes and donations for such commemoration and assuring people that such commemoration is tantamount to the Sacrament of Holy Baptism. People with little church life get the impression that it is not necessary to accept Holy Baptism or be a member of the Church, it is enough just to pray to the martyr Uar. Such an attitude towards the veneration of the holy martyr Huar is unacceptable and contradicts our church teachings” [5, p. 23–24]
The Primate of the Russian Church rightly pointed out that important canonical violation, which, unfortunately, has recently become quite common.
However, it is not the life of the holy martyr Huar that provides the basis for those distortions of Orthodox piety that the Patriarch spoke about. No one prays for the pagans, resorting to the help of the prophet Jonah, although the shipmen asked him: Arise and pray to your God, for God will save us, so that we do not perish (Jon. 1:6).
Unfortunately, there is a textual basis for this anti-canonical practice in the latest editions of the liturgical Menaion.
Thus, on October 19, two services are given to the martyr Uar - statutory and non-statutory. The first (which the Typikon points to) is composed quite habitually and traditionally. The holy martyr is glorified together with the prophet Joel. The main motive of the service can be expressed by the troparion of the canon: “Give us through your prayers the resolution of sins, the correction of life, Uare” (Song 9, p. 469).
The second service - which the Typikon does not mention at all - begins with a rather unconventional and pretentious name: “Another service, vigil, to the holy martyr Huar, who was given the grace to pray for the dead of Cleopatraine’s ancestors, who were not worthy to receive holy Baptism” [7, p. 469].
The following should be noted about this name.
Firstly, not just a service is presented in honor of such and such a saint of God, as is always the case in the Menaion, but a certain goal is declared, as if a super task: to glorify Uar precisely as a prayer book for the unbaptized “Cleopatrine ancestors”.
For comparison, let’s assume that someone would like to create a new alternative service for “the feast of the Beheading of the venerable head of John the Baptist, to whom was given the grace to heal from headaches” - on the grounds that, they say, prayer to the Forerunner helps with headaches. Or someone would compose a new service “to St. Nicholas, to whom was given the grace of deliverance to grant the governors an unrighteous death to those who had it.” Although the Church sings with these words (Akathist, Ikos 6) of the Miracle Worker of Myra, this does not give grounds to make this single episode from the life of St. Nicholas decisive in the content and title of the service to the saint. In the same way, the title of the service should not impoverish the abundance of talents of the glorious martyr and wonderworker Uar.
Secondly, it should definitely be said that the title of this second, non-statutory service contains, if not an outright lie, then an unsubstantiated and unfounded statement: there is no evidence that Blessed Cleopatra (comm. on the same day, October 19) had unbaptized relatives. It is likely that a pious and zealous Christian wife was raised by believing Christian parents. Life of St. Uara gives no reason to suspect Cleopatra’s relatives of unbelief and paganism. This should be stated with at least some facts indicating their wickedness.
Let us remember what life says. After the martyrdom of Huar, Cleopatra secretly stole his body and, instead of her deceased husband, took “... the relics of Saint Huar, brought them, like some kind of jewel, from Egypt to Palestine and in her village called Edra, which was located near Tabor, she laid them with her ancestors” [4, p. 439]. After some time, Saint War appeared in a dream to Cleopatra and said: “Or do you think that I did not feel anything when you took my body from the pile of cattle corpses and laid me in your room? Don’t I always listen to your prayers and pray to God for you? And first of all, I prayed to God for your relatives, with whom you laid me in the tomb, so that their sins would be forgiven” [4, p. 441].
Thirdly, even if we assume that among Cleopatra’s relatives there were people who were not baptized and who did not believe in Christ, they, by the Providence of God, found themselves in a crypt, sanctified by the grace emanating from the relics of Saint Uar: “The earth on which your most patient body, wiser, lies, divinely sanctified” (Canon, Canto of the 9th statutory service, p. 469). God is omnipotent. even to raise the dead from touching the relics of His saints, as was the case with the holy prophet Elisha: I cast down a man in Elisha’s tomb and the body of a man fell dead, and I touched Elisha’s bone and came to life and rose to his feet (2 Kings 13:21).
No one, however, has yet thought of composing a new service to “the prophet Elisha, to whom was given the grace to raise the dead to their feet.”
Let us also note that even if there were unbaptized relatives in the family crypt, neither Cleopatra herself prayed to Christ for their salvation, nor did she ask the holy martyr Huar for prayers about this. The martyr carried out his intercession before the Lord standing before the throne of the Almighty, and not at all consulting with those living on the sinful earth.
Let us consider the content of the liturgical text of the non-statutory service to the martyr Uar according to Menaea.
The verses on “Lord, I cried” of Little Vespers state about Saint Uar that “with his prayers the Lord Christ forgives the dead pagans” [7, p. 469]. “The dead are delivered from infidelity and freed from the places of hell through the prayers of Uara the Martyr” [7, p. 469].
From such a more than dubious thesis follows the following first timid petition: “Accept our pity, martyr, and remember in the darkness and the shadow of death those condemned, even our relatives, and pray to the Lord God to fulfill our petitions for them” [7, p. 470].
At Great Vespers in the stichera on “Lord, I have cried,” this theme is developed with great boldness: “beg Christ the God of all to show mercy to our relatives who have not achieved faith and Baptism, to have mercy on them and save our souls” [7, p. 471].
At the end of the stichera there is a “slavnik” of more than half a page, which contains the following “real cries”: “Remember... the faith and Baptism of the saint who has not achieved Orthodoxy, but in perplexity, as well as in contradictions, deceived and fallen in every way, hear, great martyr, these cries, and beg to give to those oppressed by him forgiveness, and remission, and deliverance from the sorrowful” [7, p. 472].
The theme of begging for unbelievers and the unbaptized is intensified in the stichera “at litia.”
“...Remember our relatives... those who died alienated by heterodoxy, those who were unfaithful and unbaptized, and pray to Christ God to grant them forgiveness and remission” [7, p. 472, 473].
“Already a plea for the non-Orthodox, who have died for many years... and now pray diligently, O martyr, to deliver from the gates of hell and to free from sorrow the imperishable ones, who... have not accepted the saving generation and have been alienated from the Orthodox faith, hasten then to ask them from Christ God for forgiveness and remission, and great mercy" [7, p. 473].