By Fr. George Dorbarakis
Venerable Auxentios lived during the reign of Theodosius the Younger (5th century A.D.). He came from the East and was a man of learning. He embraced the monastic life and went up to the mountain opposite the region of Oxeia, where he showed the greatest endurance in asceticism and complete Orthodoxy in faith. After long exposing the corruption and delusion of the false teaching of Eutyches and Nestorius and accepting the Fourth Ecumenical Synod at Chalcedon (451 A.D.), he became revered by emperors and radiant in countenance with divine grace for all who approached him, while he continually poured forth springs of miracles and healings for those who came near him. He reposed in peace, and his honorable body was placed in the church he himself rebuilt.
We cannot avoid the temptation to compare what the worldly mentality promotes today (February 14): a “Saint” of doubtful existence and character, Valentine — the so-called “Saint” of romantic love (for Saint Valentine may exist as a martyr, but he has nothing to do with what is usually attributed to him) — with what the Orthodox Church presents: the Venerable Father Auxentios of the Mountain. For both become occasions to speak about love, but in the first case in its human, worldly dimension — that is, as “a child of poverty” according to Plato: the one in love begs and seeks the other’s response, therefore he seeks to satisfy his own needs, and thus it is understood as an expression of selfishness; whereas in the second case love appears in the majestic dimension of divine love, which makes man partake of God and then radiate the rays of God’s love to the whole world, regardless of who receives them and in what condition he is. In this case we have the true nobility of love, offered “in the absence” of the other — that is, without expecting any response.
The hymns of our Church, through Theophanes the Hymnographer, sufficiently emphasize the total transfer of the love of Venerable Auxentios toward God — his heart wounded with affection for Him — which filled him with the gifts of the Holy Spirit and made him “a treasure capable of containing the Holy Trinity,” and afterward a healing presence among people. Before this divine love, the human dimension — without wishing to diminish its importance (for let us not forget that the Lord Himself “implanted loves in human nature,” according to Saint John Chrysostom) — pales and appears as an infant before maturity.
“Wounded by the divine affection of the Master Christ, Father, you turned with all the power of your heart unyieldingly toward Him” (Ode 7)
“You wholly transferred yourself to God; therefore you shook off the weakness of the flesh and received the working of miracles” (Ode 8)
This total turning of Venerable Auxentios toward God was not from the beginning a complete and perfect love. Rather, it was perfect at whatever spiritual level he stood each time. For spiritual ascent has no end. The believer always proceeds “from strength to strength” and “from glory to glory.” And rightly so: God has no end. The more a person directs his powers toward God as the ultimate object of desire, the more the grace of God — that is, His love — increases within him. Saint Theophanes clarifies this, even taking occasion from the Saint’s very name:
“You increased your love toward God, Father Auxentios, and abandoning every affection for the world, God-bearer, you became a treasure capable of containing the gifts of the Spirit” (Ode 1).
“The God-bearing Auxentios, increasing faith and love toward God, was raised to a great height of divine intimacy” (Ode 4).
What made the Venerable Auxentios, already “from infancy,” grow in God and taste ever more richly His graces each time? Which means: what makes a person remain in the love of God and increase it within his being? The question in reality is equivalent to that which every believer promises who enters into the Body of Christ and the Church, becoming a member of Christ through holy baptism: “I align myself with Christ.” I enter the order of Christ — that is, I belong to Him. Our Hymnographer again guides us:
“To the whole Godhead, Father, by your baptism you were joined; and having kept pure the dignity of the image, O blessed one, you approached with gladness the thrice-shining radiance” (Ode 9).
How then does one remain on the side of God? For he himself must also cooperate. What must he do? First of all to understand, Saint Theophanes tells us while viewing the life of the Venerable one today, that life is temporary and that the eternal things are in God. That is, to make death the study of his life, which means to become wise according to God.
“Having made the study of death your life, Father, understanding in a different manner the definition of wisdom, you were transferred to the hypostatic Wisdom” (Ode 6).
And then, seeing that true life is found in God, one must restrain the disorderly impulses of his body and soul — because sin is still at work — by self-control. That is, to show in practice, by the restraint of his passions, that his existence has anchored in Christ: his center of gravity is in Him. This, according to the Holy Hymnographer, constitutes balance of the human person and of his mind.
“With balance of mind you have passed through life, passing over the temporary, and always extending yourself to the eternal” (Ode 5).
For Venerbale Auxentios therefore — as for every saint, that is, every consistent believer of the Church — this self-control, precisely because of its meaning, was not an exercise of repression of the self, in the sense that he did something that removed him from his true self, but an exercise of finding the self, the one that came forth, as we said, from the holy baptismal font. Therefore self-control was his festival and his delight.
“Having delighted, O divinely-minded one, in self-control and bridled the desires of the flesh, you were seen growing in faith and blossomed like a plant in the midst of Paradise, Father Auxentios most sacred” (Kontakion of the feast).
It is not at all accidental, therefore, that our Hymnographer on the one hand compares the Venerable one with the Prophet Elijah and the Righteous Job - “The Mountain was as Carmel to Auxentios, appearing in other things like Elijah save the end” (verses of the Kontakion); “you were shown to us a new Job by your contests” (oikos of the Kontakion), and on the other presents in the overall spiritual portrait of Venerable Auxentios the inscription that his tomb could bear:
“Your life radiant, your faith orthodox, your asceticism wondrous, your word seasoned with grace, O Auxentios.” (Ode 5)
Source: Translated by John Sanidopoulos.
