Saint Cyril of Jerusalem in the Hymnography of the Orthodox Church

By Fr. George Dorbarakis

Saint Cyril was born of pious parents who professed the right faith, with which he himself was also brought up during the reign of Constantine, (the son of Constantine the Great).

When the Bishop of Jerusalem departed from this life, this blessed man was deemed worthy of the episcopal grace of the city, zealously contending for the apostolic dogmas.

At that time, Akakios, the Bishop of Caesarea in Palestine — who had been condemned by the Synod of Sardica because he would not tolerate confessing that the Son of God is consubstantial with the Father, and who had not accepted his deposition by it but still remained like a tyrant upon his throne — deposed the blessed Cyril from his own throne of Jerusalem and expelled him from it, because he was known to the Arian-minded emperor Constantius and from there derived his authority.

Cyril then went to Tarsus and was with the admirable Silouan. And when indeed a Synod was convened at Seleucia precisely for this reason, Akakios rose up, departed, and hastened to Constantinople. By what he said to the emperor, he provoked him against Cyril, whom he even condemned to exile.

When, therefore, Constantius died and Julian succeeded him in the empire, he, wishing to gain the favor of all the bishops who had been exiled by Constantius, ordered that they return to their Churches. Thus, together with all the others, Saint Cyril also regained his throne. And after he had shepherded well and in a God-pleasing manner the flock entrusted to him by the Church, and left to it as a memorial the Catecheses that bears his name, a little time after his return he reposed in blessedness.

In physical form he was of moderate stature, pale, with abundant hair, with a small nose, with a square face, with straight and even eyebrows, with a beard white, thick, and divided into two, resembling in his whole demeanor a rustic and country man.

Prologue in Sermons: March 18

On Not Judging Monks

March 18

(A Word about Daniel the Monk, who was slandered with adultery.)

By Archpriest Victor Guryev

If the malice of the devil is especially poured out upon anyone, it is upon monks. To be convinced of this, it is enough only to listen to what is said about them. Indeed, in what are they not reproached? What filth is not poured out upon them? What immoral deeds are not attributed to them? Yes, when you listen nowadays to speeches about monks, in most cases you become convinced that here the matter is not of evil men alone, but chiefly of the devil. One man, without the devil, would not invent such blasphemies, such slanders against monks.

What is to be done here?

One of the fathers told about the monk Daniel the Egyptian:

“Once Daniel went out to the marketplace to sell his handiwork. Then a certain young man came up to him and, imploring Daniel, said to him: 'For God’s sake, good monk, come into my house and pray for my wife, that God may loose her barrenness.'

Letter to the Soldiers of Coroticus (St. Patrick of Ireland)

The Letter to the Soldiers of Coroticus is a forceful denunciation by Saint Patrick of a violent raid carried out by a group of British soldiers led by Coroticus, who killed and enslaved newly baptized Irish Christians. Patrick is deeply grieved that fellow Christians committed such acts, especially against recent converts. He declares the perpetrators excommunicated and no longer part of the Christian community unless they sincerely repent.

Patrick defends the Irish believers, insisting that their baptism makes them fully equal in Christ, despite how others may view them. He condemns the greed and cruelty of selling captives into slavery among pagan peoples (likely the Picts and Scots). Throughout the letter, he urges the soldiers to repent, release the captives, and seek forgiveness. He concludes with a warning that failure to do so will bring divine judgment.

Letter to the Soldiers of Coroticus 

By St. Patrick of Ireland

1. I declare that I, Patrick, – an unlearned sinner indeed – have been established a bishop in Ireland. I hold quite certainly that what I am, I have accepted from God. I live as an alien among non-Roman peoples, an exile on account of the love of God – he is my witness that this is so. It is not that I would choose to let anything so blunt and harsh come from my mouth, but I am driven by the zeal for God. And the truth of Christ stimulates me, for love of neighbors and children: for these, I have given up my homeland and my parents, and my very life to death, if I am worthy of that. I live for my God, to teach these peoples, even if I am despised by some.

Saint Alexios the Man of God in the Hymnography of the Orthodox Church

 By Fr. George Dorbarakis

It is not by chance that, while all the saints are saints precisely because they were people of God, the only one who remained in history with this specific appellation is Saint Alexios, the Man of God. The remark of the Holy Hymnographer Joseph is clear: “You alone on earth were called the Man of God” (verse of the Synaxarion). The explanation he gives is convincing: First, because “we have known you to be a man of God not only from your calling but also from your deeds” (sticheron of Vespers). The life of Saint Alexios, according to the Hymnographer, was a continual confirmation of his obedience to the will of God, an embracing of immeasurable poverty, of the narrow and sorrowful way to which the Lord called every believer. For this reason he was filled with virtues, while he was given by God the gift of wonderworking. “You passed along a most narrow way, because from your youth you followed a blameless and holy life” (Ode 1).

March: Day 17: Teaching 2: Venerable Alexios the Man of God

March: Day 17: Teaching 2:
Venerable Alexios the Man of God
 
(Lessons From His Life: 
a. Contempt for Earthly Goods, and 
b. Love For Reading the Gospel)

By Archpriest Grigory Dyachenko

I. You, without doubt, listeners, know how the Venerable Alexios the Man of God lived and was saved. Being the son of rich and noble parents, in the flower of his youth he renounced all worldly joys and pleasures, even the most innocent and sinless; he voluntarily made himself poor, drank, ate, clothed himself as a beggar, lived and associated with beggars, and thus lived for more than 30 years, enduring from all people every kind of insult and offense, mockery and derision, and finding consolation only in the reading of the Holy Gospel.

II. To few people is granted by God the grace of such a life as his; and such people as he, one may say, appear only once in centuries, for our instruction. What can we learn from Alexios the Man of God?

Prologue in Sermons: March 17

 

True Friendship

March 17

(From a Discourse of the Elders)

By Archpriest Victor Guryev

Toward certain people we sometimes feel a special love and enter into a bond of friendship with them. Friendship does not violate the commandment of love toward all without exception. The Lord Jesus Himself loved John, Peter, James, and Lazarus with a special love; and Saint Peter likewise especially loved Saint Mark; while the Apostle Paul loved Saints Timothy and Thekla. Gregory of Nazianzus was a friend of Saint Basil the Great. We need only to be careful in choosing friends and to know how to distinguish true friendship from harmful friendship. The bond of true friendship must consist in mutual encouragement toward progress in faith, piety, love for God, and for one’s neighbor. Christian friends in this case should be like travelers who, walking together along a difficult and slippery road, usually hold on to one another for mutual help and greater safety. A true friend in such a case is an irreplaceable treasure, which all the treasures of the world are not worth.

The Hermitage of Saint Christodoulos in Evia

Limni is a town and a community in the northwestern part of the island of Evia (Euboea), Greece. At the end of the beach of Limni is the Hermitage of Saint Christodoulos. It is the location where Saint Christodoulos lived the last years of his ascetic life at the end of the 11th century.

Saint Christodoulos was the founder of the Monastery of Saint John the Theologian on Patmos. After pirate raids on Patmos, he fled to Limni in the year 1092, together with Patmos monks and residents. He resided in this cave of Limni until the end of his life in 1093. After his death, monks from Patmos took his relics and transferred them to the island of the Apocalypse.

 

The stay of Saint Christodoulos in Evia was, according to scholarly research, of short duration. There is information that a pious and wealthy resident of Euripos offered his luxurious residence to the Saint, who transformed it into a monastery, although the concerns of the Saint—due to the large property of the monastery on Patmos—required his presence not in the desert but near the world. Moreover, in Evia there has always existed a tradition according to which Saint Christodoulos remained practicing asceticism in a cave at the western edge of the town of Limni (Elymnion).

 

During his stay in Euripos, the Saint composed his “Testament” and his “Codicil” (March 1093). In order for this Testament to have legal force, it was signed by seven officials of the episcopal authority and of the city of Euripos (Halkidos), namely: Leon, presbyter and sakellarios of the city of Euripos; John, presbyter and notary of the see of Euripos; Michael … of the see of Euripos; Basil, the humble deacon … and notary of Euripos; and others.

 

More specifically, Metropolitan John of Rhodes, in his work “Life and Conduct of Our Venerable Father Christodoulos,” recounts the stay and repose of Saint Christodoulos in Euripos, which occurred in the year 1093 A.D., as well as the translation of his holy relic and its transfer to Patmos, writing the following:

 

“And the Venerable One arrives there together with the brotherhood, to that place where the water of the sea flows outward and then recedes again, forming a certain narrow strait of the sea, which the ancients called the Euripos strait.

There, having become the object of admiration for all and having been deemed worthy of the proper honor—as though he were an Angel in a mortal body—he exhorted his flock not to grow weary at the frequent relocations, nor to resist foolishly the will of God, who orders all things in wisdom.

But one of the monks, because he could not endure the hardships nor the harshness and toil of virtue, like Judas among the Twelve he departed from the company of the brethren and replaced that spiritual gathering with a garden, which he rented. And just as the devil entered into Judas and drove him to betrayal, in the same way an evil demon tormented the monk who had separated himself from the brotherhood, and the illness of the faint-hearted brother was reported to the Father.

He, being gentle and without malice, giving way to anger, took the holy Gospel and came in the evening to the one who was raging and beside himself. He read the words of the Holy Spirit for the sick, and immediately the condition of the sufferer improved. The sick man no longer desired to occupy himself with planting trees and watering gardens, but became eager instead for cultivating the soil of virtue, thus returning once again to the flock from which he had wrongly been cut off.

After a short time had passed, he prophesied to those who followed him that he would depart to the Lord; that the Hagarenes would not dwell to the end on the islands; and that his close friend would not neglect them, but that as soon as the turbulence of the sea ceased, they would return again to the spiritual fold.

He therefore asked them to take his dead body with them from that foreign land and to place it in the church for which he had labored greatly.

Having foretold these things to those with whom he associated, and having sanctified them all with farewell words, he delivered his spirit to God on the 16th of March.

At the same time, with the fulfillment of the prophecy and the disappearance of the pirates from the sea by the power of the ruler, his good disciples remembered the prophecy of the virtuous shepherd and prepared to set sail.

But when those who inhabited that land heard that they would be deprived of that precious body, they gathered from the surrounding areas and openly declared that under no circumstances would they allow it. For they thought it foolish and utterly senseless to permit others to carry it away wherever they wished, since he had been for them a savior, a physician, and a healer of every illness. For this reason, they guarded the body strictly.

But the prophecy of the blessed one was not to be proven false. Therefore, when night had advanced, escaping the attention of the guards, they lifted the body onto their shoulders, placed it on a ship, and, having obtained calm seas, arrived at the island. There they disembarked the sacred relic with a solemn procession, praising God and filling the air with fragrance.

And now, whole and incorrupt, the relic lies in the church of the Apostle, and it pours forth streams of miracles; and those who touch it with faith perceive a fragrance of myrrh, and by the touch alone are sanctified and delivered from every bodily affliction.”

 

 

Venerable Christodoulos of Patmos in the Hymnography of the Orthodox Church

By Fr. George Dorbarakis

“Great indeed is Anthony, the beginning of the Fathers, and divine Christodoulos is their divinely-inspired end.” (Verses of the Synaxarion)

The wise Hymnographer of the Service of Venerable Christodoulos, the teacher Iakovos Anastasios of Patmos, is distinguished for his deep knowledge of the spiritual life of the Church. This means that he is able with ease to discern the signs of the saintliness of Venerable Christodoulos and to present them to us in the best possible way. The saying of the Apostle Paul applies to him, which states that “the spiritual man who has the Spirit of God can examine all things, yet he himself cannot be judged by anyone who does not have that Spirit.”

Nevertheless, feeling his own smallness, from the very beginning he invokes — as is usually done by hymnographers — the illumination and grace of God in order to hymn the Venerable one correctly and not distort his image (Ode 1).

Prologue in Sermons: March 16

 

One Should Not Be Troubled When We See That Sinners Sometimes Prosper In This Life While The Righteous Suffer

March 16

(From the Words of Saint John Chrysostom: “For whom the Lord loves, He chastens.”)

By Archpriest Victor Guryev

The sorrowful life of the righteous on earth, and the apparently happy life of sinners, often lead us to reflection: why do the former suffer, and why do the latter prosper? Does the Lord really not see the sufferings and virtues of the former? Does He not know of the sins of the latter, and does He have no punishment prepared for them? How, after this, are we to understand the justice of God?

Here is how Saint Chrysostom answers this:

“If,” he says, “you see a sinner healthy and rich, do not be astonished at this; for he has done some small good deed, and therefore he receives his reward for it here. But there, like the rich man in the Gospel, he will hear that voice: ‘Child, remember that you received your good things in your lifetime.’

And when you see a righteous man enduring misfortunes and sorrows, rejoice for him; for through these he is being purified here from sins, and there he will go to great joy.