Homily on Saint Martinian (St. Michael Choniates)

Editorial Introduction

This homily survives in only one manuscript, the Laurentian codex (Λ), folio 104a, but it was found without its beginning, the opening having been lost together with the leaves of the codex that went missing between the end of the address “To Stryphon” and the leaf now bearing the number 104. The missing leaves were probably three in number. The title, being absent in the manuscript, was supplied conjecturally.

Homily on Saint Martinian 

By St. Michael Choniates, Metropolitan of Athens

… though differing in rank of glory, yet all are glorified and shining with purity: virginity is gold, widowhood and marriage silver — second indeed in order and glory to virginity, yet not deprived of splendor, provided they are kept free from the defiling stain that corrupts.

Venerable Martinian in the Hymnography of the Orthodox Church

By Fr. George Dorbarakis

This Venerable one was from Caesarea of Palestine. He began his ascetic life at the age of eighteen, living in deserts and mountains. After he had spent twenty-five years in withdrawal together with many others, he received the following temptation from the evil one.

A certain harlot, appearing as a poor woman, arrived at the mountain where the Saint lived. When night fell, she wept with sobs, claiming that she had supposedly lost her way and would become food for wild beasts. Therefore she begged the Venerable one to receive her into his cell so that she might not be devoured by their teeth.

Since it was impossible to leave her outside, he told her to enter, while he himself withdrew into the inner part of the cell. In the morning, seeing the change in her appearance (for she had dressed herself during the night in garments with which she adorned herself), the Venerable one asked who she was and why she had come there.

She answered him shamelessly, “Because of you.” And after maliciously criticizing his ascetic conduct and adding that all the Righteous of the Old Testament had been with women, she invited him to lie with her.

He, slightly disturbed but already having himself under control and obedience, and considering how, if he committed this sin, he could possibly hide from divine grace, rose up before falling into sin.

What then did he do?

He set fire to a large quantity of dry branches and entered into the midst of the flames, admonishing himself and saying: “If you can endure the fire of Gehenna, since you long for shameful pleasure, obey the woman and go with her.”

Thus he burned himself and humbled the uprising of his flesh. The woman, chastened by what she had seen, he sent to a monastery. And he himself, healed by the grace of God from the wounds of the fire, went with the guidance of a ship captain to a small barren island one day’s journey from the mainland. There he remained for ten years, receiving food from the captain.

But again he arose and departed from there, when a young girl who had survived a shipwreck upon a plank arrived near him. The Venerable one pulled the girl ashore, but he himself left from there also, saying that grass and fire cannot exist in harmony.

He was even brought to land upon dolphins.

Afterward he passed through countries and cities, having as his watchword: “Flee, Martinian, lest temptation overtake you” — for thus he resolved to spend the remainder of his life — and he arrived in Athens. As soon as he reached there, he departed to the Lord and was deemed worthy of a glorious burial by the bishop and all the people.

It is also said of the women that the first, who went from the mountain to a monastery and lived there, was deemed worthy to work miracles; while the other remained patiently on the barren island until the end of her life, clothed in men’s garments brought to her by the ship captain.
 

Prologue in Sermons: February 13

What it Means to Crucify One’s Flesh with Its Passions and Desires

February 13

(Commemoration of our Venerable Father Martinian)

By Archpriest Victor Guryev

The Apostle Paul says: “Those who belong to Christ have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires” (Gal. 5:24).

What does this mean?

The Venerable Martinian became an ascetic and withdrew into the desert at the age of eighteen. Having lived there twenty-five years, he once endured the following temptation from the devil. A certain harlot, putting on beggar’s clothing, went up the mountain where Venerable Martinian lived. Approaching the Venerable one’s cell in the evening, she began to weep and wail and asked the venerable one to save her from wild beasts. Martinian, suspecting nothing, let her into his cell and asked, “Who are you and why have you come here?”

The harlot replied, “Hating you and all monks, and likewise the ascetic life, I have come to tempt you into sin.”

Papa-Tychon and Hatzi-George, Ascetics of Mount Athos, Canonized by the Ecumenical Patriarchate

 

With feelings of deep compunction and spiritual joy, the Orthodox Church welcomes the official recognition of two new Saints.

The Ecumenical Patriarchate, under the presidency of His All-Holiness the Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew, proceeded to the canonization of Venerable Tychon the Russian and Venerable Hatzi-George the Athonite, confirming in the conscience of the fullness of the Church what the faithful had experienced for decades.

Morals and Customs Targeted for Deconstruction

Archimandrite Philip Hamargias,
Protosyngellos of the Holy Metropolis of Messinia

With sorrow and great surprise I read the news:

“An appeal to block Tsiknopempti in schools sent to the Minister of Education by the Federation,” and then the justification of the Panhellenic Federation NEMESIS, which, as stated on the same website, “sent letters to the Ministry of Education asking that a ‘brake’ be put on the now-established school events with grills and souvlaki.” Continuing in the article, we see the same Federation presenting the following reasons:

1) Tsiknopempti is not a school holiday and events of mass meat consumption within school premises are irregular and unlawful, with possible legal consequences for those who organize them,

2) it violates the pedagogical role of education,

3) it creates pressure and exclusion for students with different dietary choices,

4) it conflicts with the principles of inclusion, non-violence, and animal-welfare education.

Tsiknopempti: Hypocrisy Smells Worse Than Charcoal

Every year around these days the same play is performed. The same articles, the same announcements, the same “concerns.” About Tsiknopempti (Barbecue Thursday). About what children are eating. About whether it smells like meat on the streets. About whether it “fits” in schools. About whether it “promotes the wrong messages.” And somewhere there always appears the same protagonist: the morally superior one — usually vegan, automatically animal-loving, permanently annoyed by anything that resembles tradition that hasn’t passed through an activism filter.

Suddenly, Tsiknopempti is labeled a problem. Not because it threatens health or safety, but because it doesn’t fit their ideological mold. Schools, they say, are not taverns. Correct. But neither are they spaces of ideological re-education, nor places where a minority choice becomes the rule for everyone. Nor halls of guilt because a child ate a souvlaki.

Saint Meletios of Antioch in the Hymnography of the Orthodox Church

 

By Fr. George Dorbarakis

Saint Meletios, because of his very great virtue and his pure love for Christ, became so beloved by many that from the very first day of his ordination, when he entered Antioch, every believer, moved by longing for him, invited him into his home, believing that the Saint would sanctify it by his entrance. He did not complete thirty days in the city before he was expelled by the enemies of the truth, for the emperor had then been led astray — and, of course, God permitted this. When he returned after that unlawful persecution, he remained for more than two years in Constantinople. Again the emperor summoned him by letters, not somewhere nearby but to Thrace. Other bishops from many regions also gathered there, called likewise by imperial letters, because the Churches, which had emerged from trials as from a long winter, began to find peace and calm. Then this great Meletios, after being praised by all, committed his soul into the hands of God and rested in peace in a foreign land. This blessed man was also honored with encomiums by the honorable Chrysostom and Gregory of Nyssa.

Two themes occupy the Church hymnography of the day, written by Theophanes the Hymnographer: the orthodox faith of Saint Meletios — something not at all self-evident in Antioch of that time (4th century A.D.) — and his sanctified life.

Indeed, Saint Meletios, though not a great theologian according to patrologists, was a man who quickly embraced the right dogma of the First Ecumenical Synod (325), became a fervent preacher of the truth concerning the Holy Trinity, and prepared the ground for the Second Ecumenical Synod (381). His Orthodox instinct and struggle for Orthodoxy are properly understood when one considers that Antioch in his time was torn by ecclesiastical divisions, which great ecclesiastical figures such as Saint Athanasios the Great and Saint Basil the Great labored intensely to overcome. Thus Saint Meletios preached what Athanasios and Basil had fought to show the Church — the genuine apostolic tradition — something that Saint Theophanes demonstrates extensively in his hymns.

“Having become by grace a son of God, you did not irrationally reduce the Word of God from God to a creature, but you glorified Him as co-eternal and enthroned with the Father, Creator and Maker of all things, O divinely-inspired one.” (Ode 3)

His struggle was therefore also against the heretical distortions of Arius and his followers, who by their ideas essentially abolished the revelation of Christ and the teaching of the Apostles.

“Illumined by divine radiance, you theologized that the Only-begotten Word from the beginningless Father is uncreated and eternal; therefore you confounded the allies and like-minded followers of Arius, fortified by divine power.” (Ode 1)

He may not have been a great theologian in the sense of solving ecclesiastical controversies, yet he possessed a strong Orthodox phronema (mindset), gained both through his holy life and through constant study of Holy Scripture. The Hymnographer even uses his very name — Meletios (“meditation,” a favorite technique of hymnographers) — drawing on the image from the first Psalm about the tree planted by streams of water:

“You meditated, blessed Hierarch Meletios, on the saving law of God, as it is written, and you appeared like the tree planted by the waters of ascetic struggle, bringing forth fruits of virtues by grace.” (Vespers sticheron)

The hymns also emphasize his sanctified life, even comparing him to the Holy Apostles, whose manner of life he sought to follow and therefore inherited their throne:

“Through your virtues you were likened to the Apostles of Christ and clearly received their authority and throne, all-glorious Meletios.” (Ode 3)

One Vespers hymn records nearly all stages of his ascetic life:

“By self-control you withered the impulses of the flesh; you subdued the passions, Meletios, and brightened yourself with the splendor of dispassion; and you ministered to Christ in purity and cleanness.”

Saint Theophanes takes the life of Saint Meletios as a foundation and states axiomatically: no one can minister to Christ — that is, offer his life as a sacrifice to Him with his whole being (remember that all the baptized, not only clergy, share in the general priesthood) — unless he struggles to attain dispassion, the overcoming of sinful passions. And this is achieved through self-restraint.

Especially in view of Great Lent, this is most timely: the self-control emphasized by this blessed period, when practiced in the manner of the Church, leads to mastery over the passions and thus to direct communion with Christ — the liturgical offering of our life to Him.

Source: Translated by John Sanidopoulos.

 

Prologue in Sermons: February 12

The Benefits of Praying for the Dying

February 12

(From a Homily of Saint Gregory, Pope of Rome, about a monk who was given to a serpent as food because of sin, and was delivered by the prayers of the brethren.)

By Archpriest Victor Guryev

All of us, brethren, by Christian love are obliged to pray for one another at all times, as the Apostle says: "Pray for one another" (James 5:16); but our prayer must be especially fervent and heartfelt for those of our neighbors who are approaching death. The dying are in particular need of prayer, and earnest prayer for them frees them from the terrors of the hour of death, and sometimes even brings them recovery.

Saint Gregory, Pope of Rome, relates the following:

“In my monastery there lived a devout monk. One day his brother came to him and also asked to be admitted into the monastery. He was accepted. But alas! the newcomer lived quite differently from his brother. He showed no concern for his soul, did not keep the rule, judged others, dressed finely, and could not bear it when anyone began speaking to him about the life to come and repentance. Several times they intended to expel him, but each time, unwilling to grieve his pious brother, they left him.

Holy Hieromartyr Blaise of Sebaste in the Hymnography of the Orthodox Church

By Fr. George Dorbarakis

Saint Blaise lived during the reign of Emperor Licinius (early 4th century A.D.). He was Bishop of Sebaste and dwelt in one of the caves of Mount Argaeus. On this mountain the wild animals were tamed by the Saint’s blessing and appeared gentle. Because he was also skilled in medical science, he performed many healings, having received from the Lord the grace of working miracles.

However, he was arrested and brought before the governor Agricolaus. He confessed the name of Christ, and for this the governor ordered that he be beaten with rods, suspended on a cross, and torn with iron claws. Then, as they were leading him to prison, seven women followed him; their heads were cut off as well, because they too confessed that Christ is God. As for Saint Blaise, after they threw him into the depths of a lake — without his suffering any harm whatsoever — they eventually cut off his head, together with two infants who were in the prison.

It is said that he was the steward of the decree of the Great Martyr Eustratios at the time of that martyr’s suffering, as Saint Blaise is depicted standing on an old cloth among the five holy martyrs, very near Saint Eustratios, receiving from his hand the scroll of the decree.