February: Day 15: Holy Apostle Onesimus

February: Day 15:
Holy Apostle Onesimus
 
(On the Attitude of Masters to Servants)

By Archpriest Grigory Dyachenko

I. In Asia Minor, in the region of Phrygia, there lived a rich and dignified man named Philemon. Having heard the preaching of the apostles, he converted to Christianity, and then he himself was numbered among the seventy apostles. He had a slave Onesimus, later the Holy Apostle Onesimus, one of the seventy, whose memory is celebrated today. Having committed some offense against his master and fearing punishment, he fled to Rome, where at that time the Apostle Paul was preaching the gospel. Onesimus followed him; he received baptism from him and did not abandon the Apostle even in his imprisonment. The Apostle Paul came to love his new follower very much, “our faithful and beloved brother,” as he calls him in his epistle to the Colossians. At the same time he wrote an epistle to Philemon, Onesimus’s master, and asked him to forgive the latter. “I beseech you,” he wrote to Philemon, “for my son Onesimus, whom I have begotten while in my chains... I am sending him back. You therefore receive him, that is, my own heart." This is how the Apostle spoke about Onesimus. Philemon not only forgave Onesimus, but also set him free. Then Onesimus began to serve the Apostle Paul with even greater zeal and after his death he himself began to preach the gospel in Spain, Greece, Asia Minor and, already in his old age, was appointed Bishop of Ephesus after Timothy and John the Theologian.

When the persecution of Christians was raised during the time of Trajan, Onesimus was summoned to Rome for the conversion of pagans and spent 18 days in prison there, and then exiled to imprisonment in Putioli, a city in Campania, Italy. But even there he did not abandon the preaching of Christ, was summoned to trial a second time and in the year 109 was stoned, according to others, executed after torture. The relics of Saint Onesimus are in Constantinople.

II. The treatment of the Holy Apostles Paul and Philemon towards Onesimus, full of Christian love, gives us, beloved brethren in Christ, an incentive to talk with you today about what kind of relationship a master should have with a servant.

a) The relationship between householders and servants should be based, like other family relationships, on the instructions of the word of God, i.e. on moral principles.

Servants, according to the expression of the word of God, are household members. Therefore, masters should not look upon them, and they in turn upon their masters, as people completely strangers to each other and not connected with each other by anything except an external agreement. Drawing closer to each other at the demand of mutual needs, they can and should transform this rapprochement into such a union that would unite their interests, not only material but also spiritual, and would dispose to a kinship participation in each other. This is precisely the relationship between masters and servants, according to the image of the Holy Scriptures, in the lives of the ancient righteous patriarchs. In the law of Moses, the regulations concerning slaves also express a view of them as younger members of the family.

Christianity has fully clarified and confirmed this view. With the spread of the Christian faith, each home that received Holy Baptism received the character of a small church of Christ (Phil. 1:2), and the spiritual connection between all household members imparted a kinship and sincerity to the external relations of these persons; home and family, so to speak, merged, and the last servant belonging to the home already belonged to the family of the householder.

Among our ancestors, despite some dark sides of their domestic life, the relationship between masters and servants was essentially correct, having the character of a family, kinship relationship.

b) Is this so now? Outwardly, the relations between masters and servants are now much more lawful than they were before, because the latter now enjoy the same personal freedom as the former. Every form of slavery has been abolished. There is no longer room for that arbitrariness in the treatment of some people by others, which could and very often did reach the most outrageous violence in those times when the rights of the masters were very extensive, and those who served them had almost no rights. But with all this, now, perhaps more than ever, mutual complaints are heard between masters and servants against each other. Why is this? Of course, there are many private reasons and causes for such complaints on both sides; but is not the root of the evil that there is no moral rapprochement, in the spirit of Christ's love, between one and the other class of people, and therefore there is no living union between them!

The best qualities with which a servant can accurately perform his duties consist in his honesty and devotion to his master; but such qualities depend very much on the personal moral influence of the master on the servant. But if the master treats the servant as only a working force, and does not recognize any other duties to him, except the agreed reward for his work, then what moral influence can he have on the servant and what can he demand from him, except for external correctness?

How little householders think about the Christian treatment of their servants is evident, among other things, from the fact that the most important needs of servants, namely religious ones, are for the most part left without any attention by them. Thus, the excessive intensification of industrial activities in many places destroys the distinction between weekday and holiday time. The ancient commandment of God: "Six days shall you labor, and do all your work: but the seventh day, the Sabbath of the Lord your God," is forgotten. Not only in factories and similar establishments, but also in ordinary households, servants often have no free hours to participate in holiday worship. Through this, a whole class of Christians becomes unaccustomed to the church, is deprived of its beneficial educational influence, becomes coarse, corrupted and wild. It is not surprising if these people seek pleasures of an entirely different kind: crude sensual ones, consisting mainly in drunkenness.

III. Thus, according to the teaching of the word of God, let masters look upon their servants as upon their household members, as upon the younger members of their family, as upon their brothers in Christ. Only then will Christian love for mutual spiritual and material benefit be established between them.  

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