May: Day 11: Teaching 2: Holy Hieromartyr Mokios

May: Day 11: Teaching 2:
Holy Hieromartyr Mokios
 
(What Does the Memory of the Early Days and the Past Fate of the Church of God Teach Us?)

By Archpriest Grigory Dyachenko

I. During the terrible persecution under Diocletian, in the Macedonian city of Amphipolis there lived a priest named Mokios, whose memory is celebrated today. Full of ardent zeal for God and love for his neighbors, he could not indifferently see sacrifices to idols, and loudly exhorted the people to abandon false gods. When the proconsul, or judge of that region, arrived in the city, the pagans brought him a complaint against Mokios: "There is a Christian teacher here," they said, "who deceives the people, persuading everyone to believe in a crucified and dead man, and many listen to him. Thus, if this is not prevented, the whole city will follow him, and the temples of the gods will be abolished."

The proconsul summoned Mokios to him and began to persuade him to renounce Christ; his admonitions were in vain. Then he ordered Mokios to be cruelly tortured; they tore his body with iron claws, but he remained calm and exclaimed: “Master, reigning forever and shining upon us with rays of truth, reveal to Your servants Your Divinity, and grant me the strength to suffer for Your commandments.”

The Lord, having heard his prayer, granted him strength and patience, and, after being tortured, healed his wounds.

Afterwards Mokios endured the most cruel tortures on the wheel, remained unharmed in the fire, and destroyed the idols with prayer. Despite all this, the proconsul did not understand the truth, and execution befell him. The fire lit for the Martyr scorched the proconsul himself and some of his servants.

Mokios was thrown into prison. A new proconsul, named Maximus, who arrived some time later, summoned him and ordered him to worship the gods if he did not want to die. “I will die if, forgetting the blessings of my God, I resort to idols,” answered the Martyr. Again the most cruel tortures began, during which Mokios only glorified and thanked God. They condemned him to be devoured by wild beasts, but the beasts did not touch him; and all the people, amazed by the miracle, began to exclaim: “Let this man go; even the beasts do not harm him, because God loves him!” Then the proconsul sent Mokios to Byzantium, and there they condemned him to death. Brought to the place of execution, Mokios loudly glorified God and heard a voice from heaven: “Rejoice, good laborer; come and dwell in the Kingdom of Heaven; having toiled in the world, in heaven you will find joy and peace!” The Martyr's head was cut off with a sword.

II. The life and sufferings of the Holy Hieromartyr Mokios encourages us to reflect, for the benefit of our souls, on the first days of God's Church on earth. From this we learn what awaits us and our Church ahead, where we are heading and what we must prepare for.

The Savior said of His Church: “I will build my church, and the gates of hades shall not prevail against it” (Matt. 16:18). They will not prevail, but they will still try and exert their strength to overcome it. The enemy of the human race, the devil, will constantly make attacks, invent all sorts of tricks and deceits, instill heresies, sow enmity, stir up unrest in the Church in order to tear away its children from it, and destroy, or if it were possible, overthrow the Church itself on earth. And therefore the Church must constantly withstand and repel these attacks, and every believing son of the Church must constantly wage a struggle with the enemies of salvation - the spirits of evil. “Think not,” says the Savior, “that I came to bring peace on earth: I came not to bring peace, but a sword” (Matt. 10:34). But “our battle,” explains the Holy Apostle Paul, “is not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this age, against spiritual wickedness in high places” (Eph. 6:12).

Trying to vividly depict this struggle of the Church with its enemies, the ancients, especially the first Christians, loved to depict the Church of Christ with its believing sons under the form of a ship with sailors, sailing in the midst of a furious raging sea, constantly ready to swallow and destroy it in its waves, and surrounded on all sides by fierce enemies, trying to overthrow and sink it. The waves of this immense sea, storming the ship, are the temptations of the flesh and this world, with which the sons of the Church wage war, and the visible enemies attacking the ship are false teachers, heretics and schismatics, attacking the Church of God in order to destroy it. Through both of them, one enemy of salvation acts - the devil, the gates of hades attack and wage war.

a) This struggle began in the Church of Christ from the very early times of Christianity, or, more precisely, from the time when the Church of Christ began on earth. From that very time, those who believed in Christ had to begin a struggle with the flesh and the world, since “the flesh lusts against the Spirit, and these are contrary to one another” (Galatians 5:17), and the world hates those who do not belong to it (John 15:19) and tries to corrupt them. From the very first times, the Church of Christ had to wage a struggle with the obvious, open enemies of salvation, first the pagans who persecuted it, tortured and tormented believers in Christ, and then the numerous false teachers and heretics who attacked it, disturbing its peace. This struggle continues uninterruptedly in our native Orthodox Church. True Orthodox Christians constantly and tirelessly wage an active struggle with the flesh, the world and the devil, achieving salvation in this way, and we see clear high images of this struggle in the lives and examples of numerous great Russian ascetics, hermits, and desert dwellers, who began to shine with their high feats of struggle and piety from the very first times of Christianity in Rus'. The Russian Church did not cease to wage a struggle with obvious enemies who openly attacked it. At first, stubborn pagans persecuted and oppressed the first Russian Christians; then the Tatars, who enslaved our fatherland under their yoke, often appeared as torturers of Christians, and many faithful sons of the Church were crowned by them with the crown of martyrdom for confessing their faith; then heresies began to appear and finally, about two hundred years ago, a schism arose, tearing away from the Church whole millions of her sons to their destruction. The Church, thus, making its earthly journey, is constantly at war; its saving ship, sailing to the heavenly harbor and carrying there its faithful sons, is constantly waging a struggle with the disturbances of this world, which overwhelm its sailors, and fights with the enemies of salvation, who are trying to throw them out of the ship and sink the ship itself.

b) But here is what, brethren, we must always keep in mind and firmly hold in our memories: the longer this saving ship – the Church of God – sails on the waves of this world and approaches its heavenly harbor – the kingdom of glory that is to come at the end of this world -, the more and more this struggle must intensify. The enemy of salvation will attack this ship – the Church of Christ – with greater strength and fury, casting off its sailors, drawing them away from the Church and attracting them to himself. There is no doubt that even in our time this struggle is intensifying and becoming more bitter; the enemy of salvation is starting to launch stronger attacks on the Church and act against its sons. All the more vigilantly must we stand guard over our salvation, more attentively must we watch ourselves and the actions of the enemy, so as not to succumb to him, but to repel all the arrows of the evil one aimed at us, protecting our soul and body from their deadly poison. Look how the waves of unbelief are spreading more and more around us, how our faith is cooling, our attachment and devotion to the Church are weakening, how many children are being torn away from it and going into schism! The enemy is spreading his nets wide to catch us with unbelief and lack of faith and to cast us out of the ship that saves us – the Church - and we must constantly be vigilant over our thoughts, firmly protect and preserve our Orthodox faith, kindle it in our hearts, introduce it into our lives, so that it will be alive and active in us, and strong to repel any onslaught of modern unbelief and lack of faith. Look then, how the enemy of salvation begins to act and attack us more and more vigorously through our flesh and the world, how our passions develop more and more, whims increase, vices become more refined, how self-will, unbridledness, disobedience to elders, disobedience to authorities increase among us, debauchery becomes more refined, drunkenness increases, what a thirst for profit seizes everyone from the smallest to the greatest! And how much do we resist these vices? On the contrary, in our concepts the importance of these vices is more and more smoothed over and diminished. We no longer consider many vices to be vices at all, because we have become accustomed to them, and they have become an ordinary thing for us. Such is the sign of our time, when we look into it attentively. How can we, looking at this sign of the times, not recall the prophetic words of the Lord about the time that is to come before the end of the world, when “for the increase of iniquity the love of many will dry up” (Matt. 24:12), “and when the Son of man comes, will he find faith on the earth?” (Luke 18:8). How can we not ask ourselves whether our ship of the saving Church is not sailing within those limits of world existence that are beginning to approach its end, and whether it has not crossed that limiting line beyond which the quiet harbor of the Heavenly Jerusalem begins to be seen in the distance?

III. The more vigilant, beloved brethren, we must be in guarding our souls, the more attentively and carefully we should relate to the matter of our salvation. Above all, we must firmly cling to this saving ship – the Church of God, without which it is impossible for us to be saved from drowning in the abyss of sin and eternal perdition. We must steadfastly preserve and uphold our holy Orthodox faith, overcoming and suppressing any doubts and hesitations therein. We must obey the teachings of the Church as the voice of its Invisible Helmsman – our Lord Jesus Christ, visibly guiding His Church. We must continually struggle against the temptations of the flesh and the world, through which our enemy of salvation – the devil – acts, conquering passions, eradicating lusts, and distancing ourselves from vices that invisibly and imperceptibly enslave us to the enemy – the devil, and cast us out of the ship of Christ's Church. Amen.

 

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