August: Day 4: The Holy Seven Youths of Ephesus: Maximilian, Exakoustodianos, Iamblichus, Martinian, Dionysios, Antoninus and John

August: Day 4:
The Holy Seven Youths of Ephesus: Maximilian, Exakoustodianos (also known as Constantine), Iamblichus, Martinian, Dionysios, Antoninus and John
 
(On the Resurrection of the Dead)

By Archpriest Grigory Dyachenko

I. The Holy Seven Martyred Youths, who are celebrated today, were the children of renowned citizens of the city of Ephesus, young warriors who lived during the persecution of Christians under Emperor Decius. This was a dreadful persecution. Many Christians were hiding outside the city, in caves. Among them were the seven youths whom the Church remembers today, who, hiding from the persecution, left the city and settled in a cave on Mount Ochlon to prepare themselves through fasting and prayer for their trials for the faith. Upon learning of this, Decius ordered the entrance to the cave to be blocked with stones. Among the stones, two courtiers, secretly professing the Christian faith, named Theodore and Rufinus, placed tin tablets, inscribing on them the names of the seven youths buried alive in the cave. Meanwhile, through His inscrutable decrees, God sent upon them a deathlike sleep and preserved them incorruptible and unchanged for their miraculous awakening in His glory and as a testament to the truth of His word, two centuries later.

The miraculous awakening of the youths who had fallen asleep during the persecution of Decius (around 250) took place during the reign of Theodosius the Younger (408–450), when heretics arose who rejected the resurrection of the dead, despite the proclamation in the Gospel that “the dead will hear the voice of the Son of God and, having heard, will come to life.” During this time of new confusion in the Church, a clear testimony of the truth of the resurrection of the dead proclaimed by Christ appeared.

The owner of a village on Mount Ochlon, where there was a cave that had been blocked up, in which the seven youths had rested two hundred years before, decided to make a fence for his sheep. His servants, while building the fence, took the stones that had once blocked up the cave, the existence of which they had not suspected. While digging stones out of the mountain, they accidentally made a hole into the interior of the cave. At that time, the youths came to life, not knowing that they had awakened not from a simple, but from a mortal sleep.

When one of them went to buy food in the city at dawn, an old coin given to a merchant served as a pretext for discovering an unusual event. A conversation with the youth, who thought that the persecution under Decius was still continuing, finally drew everyone's attention to him, and when word of it reached the bishop, he questioned the youth and discerned in all this the mystery of God and, hearing from him about the other youths who remained in the cave, he wished to see them and went there with the governor, accompanied by a multitude of people. At the entrance to the cave, the bishop, carefully examining its furnishings, found a sealed copper box among the stones and, opening it in the presence of everyone, saw there two tin tablets placed by Theodore and Rufinus, which explained to everyone the enigmatic words of the resurrected youth. Everyone was amazed and glorified God, marvelous in His miracles.

Emperor Theodosius was immediately notified of this event.

The emperor himself arrived in Ephesus with a multitude of believers accompanying him and venerated the holy youths, who, after a satisfying conversation with him, fell into eternal sleep in the presence of the emperor, until the general resurrection. Theodosius ordered seven silver caskets to be made and the bodies of the youths to be placed in them, but they appeared to him that same night in a dream vision and asked him to leave them to rest in the cave, as they had rested before.

The astonishing nature of this event and the subsequent Synod at Ephesus in 431 were the reason why the news of it quickly spread throughout the Christian world. The authenticity of the event is confirmed by strong evidence from many respected writers and witnesses. The writer Saint John the Dwarf (commemorated on November 9), a contemporary of this event, speaks of it in the life of Paisios the Great (June 19). The Orthodox Bishop of Serugh, Jacob of Mesopotamia, who lived in the sixth century, a Syrian writer, left a description of this event; a translation of it was known to Gregory of Tours in the same century.

The Cave of the Youths is still shown near Ephesus, in the foothills of Mount Prion. The fate of their relics has been unknown since the 12th century, at the beginning of which the abbot of the Russian monastery, Daniel, saw them still in the cave.

II. The Holy Seven Youths of Ephesus, who rose from the dead after a miraculous sleep that lasted about 200 years, convince us, brethren, of the truth that after death will follow the resurrection of the dead, that death does not end a person’s life, but only begins an endless one.

a) This great and comforting truth is directly and clearly proclaimed in the word of God. “But I do not want you to be ignorant, brethren, concerning those who have fallen asleep, lest you sorrow as others who have no hope,” wrote the Holy Apostle Paul once to the Christians of Thessaloniki concerning the dead. “ For this we say to you by the word of the Lord... the Lord Himself will descend from heaven with a shout, with the voice of an archangel, and with the trumpet of God. And the dead in Christ will rise first” (1 Thess. 4:13, 16, 18). “Truly, truly, I say unto you, the hour is coming, and now is, when the dead will hear the voice of the Son of God; and those who hear will live” (John 5:25), says our Savior Himself in His holy Gospel. "But someone will say, 'How are the dead raised up? And with what body do they come?' Foolish one, what you sow is not made alive unless it dies. And what you sow, you do not sow that body that shall be, but mere grain—perhaps wheat or some other grain. But God gives it a body as He pleases, and to each seed its own body” (1 Cor. 15:35-39).

b) In general, in the nature visible to us there are many, many images, or likenesses of the resurrection of the dead. The renewal of nature with the opening of spring, the revival of plants, the awakening of animals frozen for the winter from hibernation, the transformation of some animals after freezing into other species, for example, a caterpillar into a butterfly, etc., does not all this point to the possibility of the resurrection of the dead at the end of this visible world, with the influence of the mighty power of God upon them?

c) Even in the Old Testament, one prophet of God was honored to foresee the wondrous phenomenon of the resurrection of the dead by the action of the powerful word of God. “The hand of the Lord was upon me,” says the Prophet of God Ezekiel, “and He set me in the midst of a field, and the field was full of dead men’s bones, and the bones were very dry. And the Lord said to me: 'Son of man! prophesy over these bones and say to them: Dry bones, hear the word of the Lord...' And I spoke as the Lord commanded me, and as I spoke, bones came together, bone to bone, each to its own joint, and sinews appeared on them and flesh grew on them and skin appeared, but there was no breath in them yet. And the Lord said to me: 'Prophesy, son of man, about the spirit and breathe on these dead, and let them live.' And I spoke as I was commanded, and the dead lived and stood on their feet, and there was a great, great assembly” (Ezek. 37:1-11).

d) That all the dead will rise again, for this we have a guarantee also in the fact that Jesus Christ has risen. “Christ is risen from the dead, the firstfruits of them that slept,” i.e. He laid the foundation for our resurrection, says the Holy Apostle Paul (1 Cor. 15:20). After this, is it not madness to doubt the truth of the resurrection of the dead? Christ has risen, the firstfruits of those that have fallen asleep: we too will rise again.

d) Then, the repeated resurrections by the power of Christ serve as a guarantee of this. Thus, Jesus Christ, during His earthly life, resurrected the daughter of Prince Jairus, the son of the widow of Nain, and the four-day dead Lazarus. During the death on the cross of Jesus Christ, according to the testimony of the Evangelist Matthew, “the graves were opened, and many bodies of the saints which had fallen asleep arose, and came out of the graves, and after His resurrection entered into the holy city, and appeared unto many” (Matt. 27:52–53). And the Holy Apostles, clothed with the power of Christ, resurrected the dead; thus, the Apostle Peter resurrected the maiden Tabitha in Joppa (present-day Jaffa).

III. Hundreds, thousands, and perhaps many more years we too shall lie in our graves, like our departed relatives; but the hour will come when all who are in the graves shall hear the voice of the Son of God, and shall come forth from the graves. Therefore we must look upon our cemeteries as upon the sown fields of God; when we lower our dead into the graves, we must think of them as grains of wheat, which we cast into the ground, in the hope that the Lord will give in due time to each seed its own body. But what will our resurrected bodies be like? It will depend upon what those who were buried will be like. From good grains spring up luxuriant, fruitful stalks, but from meager grains, weak, fruitless stalks. The same will happen to us, brethren, at the resurrection of the dead. Amen.

 

Source: A Complete Annual Cycle of Short Teachings, Composed for Each Day of the Year. Translated by John Sanidopoulos.