By Fr. George Dorbarakis
Saint Juliana, according to Saint Joseph the Hymnographer, constitutes a magnet — one that magnetized her very Lord and God. Such were her virtues, and so many, because of the Lord’s heart wounded by love for her, that He loved her for the beauty of her soul and led her into the bridal chamber of His Kingdom. Thus, for the Hymnographer, Saint Juliana belongs to the company of the five virgins of the well-known parable, who “went in with Him to the wedding.” Her virginity was not barren and fruitless, but full of the oil of the grace of God. “You were wounded by the sweetest eros of Christ, O all-praised one,” and “therefore the Lord now loved your beauty and led you into His most radiant bridal chamber.” That is, Saint Juliana understood from a very young age that Christ — if one wishes to feel His power and grace — is not the margin of life, but its center and constant point of reference. Just as He offered us His whole Self, in the same way He asks for our own total offering. “You offered your whole self to God,” notes the Hymnographer.
In this way Saint Juliana experienced personally the fulfillment in herself of the Lord’s promise: that whoever truly loves Him will become His dwelling place and will see Him reveal Himself within their very being. This is what the Church and our saints cry out unceasingly: our faith is not something theoretical, but embraces both body and soul. As soon as one tastes even a little of the love of God, He immediately becomes the indweller of the human soul and body. “You made your soul a most holy temple of God, O glorious one.” Yet the Hymnographer is explicit. He does not wish to leave room for misunderstanding, lest anyone think they have already attained this love. So he continues about the Saint: “ever abiding in the divine temples, with hymns and prayers.” That is: you made your soul a most holy temple of God by always living within the divine temples, with hymns and prayers. In other words, love for God presupposes incorporation into the Church, love for the Church’s services, love for hymns and prayers. Indeed, there is no more immediate and effective way to love God than to immerse one’s whole being continually in whatever constitutes the space of God and the songs of God. Which means that if today love for God has waned, to a great extent the cause lies in the human person’s small — or even negligible — relationship with the worship of the Church.
Saint Joseph, unknowingly, points out something that in our own time seems almost paradoxical: the “blush of virginity.” Speaking of the Martyr, and saying that she turned herself wholly toward Christ, he emphasizes that she made the natural red color of virginity — the blush of modesty and shyness — even more radiant with the blood of her martyrdom. What a beautiful image! What a poetic conception! He invites us to see with the eyes of our soul the Saint full of modesty, her cheeks red with the grace of her virginity. And then to see this red become even more intense after her martyrdom. Her martyrdom, that is, was the continuation of her virginity — the confirmation of her modesty and of the grace that possessed her. Thus the Hymnographer guides us to see also the meaning of virginity: as purity first and foremost of the soul, through its ascent toward the Savior Christ. And this ascent is a kind of martyrdom — the martyrdom of conscience — which can also be extended to the martyrdom of blood, when such is required.
How could the grace of God not act within such a creature? How could Christ not preserve her unharmed from all that her demon-driven persecutors did to her? How could all well-disposed people not be affected when they saw her? And what does Saint Joseph say about this? All those who, through the Saint, found the faith of Christ also became her dowry offered to Him. “Like a precious dowry you brought to the Bridegroom, O glorious athlete, a holy people who believed through the wonders which you accomplished in faith.” Saint Juliana guides us also in this truth: our holy way of life, our consistent path in the footsteps of Christ, functions missionarily — it brings others to Christ. And this is reckoned to us; it constitutes our dowry before Christ. How much such “dowry,” then, will we bring with us? How many people, that is, will we have positively influenced throughout our earthly life, so that this may “count” in our favor at the Judgment of God?
Source: Translated by John Sanidopoulos.
