July: Day 18: Teaching 1: Holy Martyr Aimilianos

July: Day 18: Teaching 1:
Holy Martyr Aimilianos
 
(The Voice of Conscience)

By Archpriest Grigory Dyachenko

I. Saint Aimilianos, whose memory is celebrated today, a Slav by birth, was the slave of a nobleman of the Thracian city of Dorostolum. During a feast of the governor of all Thrace (a merciless despot who was entrusted with the persecution of Christians), Capitolinus with the officials of that city, on the joyful occasion that there were no Christians in the city, since, fearing his name alone, they all hid, Aimilianos entered the temple and smashed all the idols with a hammer, overturned the altars, and then, when the accusation of destroying a national shrine fell on a villager who happened to be passing by the temple, Aimilianos, turning to the people who seized him, said: “Let this man go, because it was not he, but I who smashed your soulless gods.”

To the question of Capitolinus directed towards Aimilianos, as to who taught him, and what made him decide on such a misdeed, Aimilianos answered that the Lord God and his soul commanded him to destroy the idols.

The governor ordered the Christian to be stripped and beaten, then condemned him to be burned. The Martyr fearlessly climbed onto the fire, which was laid on the bank of the Danube, and, standing in the fire, crossed himself, prayed, and calmly gave up his soul to God. This was on July 18, 362, during the reign of Julian.

II. Pay attention, brethren, to the words of the Holy Martyr Aimilianos. When the torturer asked him what made him destroy the idols, Saint Aimilianos answered that God and his soul commanded him to destroy the idols; in other words: the voice of God living "in my conscience" commanded me through this action to turn people away from destructive error. Thus the Holy Martyr sacredly obeyed the voice of his conscience, giving us an example of obedience to this saving voice of our soul.

Let us, brethren, look into our conscience, in order to see more clearly what it is and to what end it leads us.

a) Who does not know that conscience is the most incorruptible guardian of truth and the most inexorable judge of human affairs. When we commit some shameful or dishonest deed, and especially a whole series of bad deeds, then we begin to feel in our soul some kind of uneasiness, some kind of heaviness, some kind of unpleasant and painful state (even if no one else knows about our bad deed). Since this state is burdensome and unbearable for us, we would like to stifle it in ourselves, to drive it out of ourselves. But whatever we do, whatever we undertake for this, we cannot stifle conscience and force it to remain silent - we cannot implore it with any requests, we cannot frighten it with any threats, we cannot bribe it with any blessings of this world; conscience will torment and afflict us until we repent, confess our sin and correct our lives. This means that there is a higher spiritual power above man, which rules over him through his conscience – this means that man is in complete dependence on the eternally holy and just God, Who speaks to man in his conscience. That is why the ancient pagans said – “God lives in us.”

b) Here is an example of the painful action of a guilty conscience, recorded in reliable chronicles of ecclesiastical events.

The Greek Emperor Constas had a brother, Theodosius, whom he commanded Patriarch Paul to forcibly tonsure and ordain as a deacon. Afterward, he himself frequently received the Holy Blood from his hands. In the year 659, the emperor ordered him to be killed, likely fearing him as a rival for power, but from that time on, he constantly saw him in dreams: his slain brother appeared to him in dreams with a cup steaming with his own blood and, offering it to the emperor, said: "Drink, brother, of my blood!" Unable to find peace from such dreadful visions, he resolved to move to Rome, and in 662, leaving his wife and children in the capital, he set out westward. Yet, the unfortunate emperor found no rest for his soul anywhere. Only death (violent: by divine allowance he was killed in a bath) brought an end to his suffering. (See "Chronicle of Church Events", Archimandrite Arseny, Volume 2, published in 1870, page 42).

III. Thus you see, brethren, that we can never leave obedience to God and be happy, that is, calm in our conscience and contented; we can be calm and contented, and therefore happy, only when we are in obedience to God. You see that our duty to act honestly and justly is not something that we can arbitrarily distort and pervert, and yet remain unpunished; no, it is an eternally holy law, demanding eternally just retribution. True, in this present life the noise of this world and various earthly interests sometimes drown out the voice of conscience - having done a good deed, we are sometimes not too comforted, and having done a bad deed, we are sometimes not too tormented in conscience. But when we leave this noisy earthly world with its various earthly interests and pass into the afterlife, then everything we have done throughout our lives, beginning with early childhood, will appear clearly before us, then everything we did many years ago will seem to us to have been done only yesterday. And then we will fully know what conscience is! Then we will fully see how little it means to “have honor with people” and how much it means to “have honor with your conscience and with God.” Then it will be for sinners that “undying worm” and “unquenchable fire” spoken of in the Gospel.

Therefore, conscience is either an angel-comforter, or an evil tormentor. People who suffer on earth and are innocently persecuted find inner consolation in it; and people who possess all the blessings of this world and are glorified on earth sometimes find their torment in it. Let us, my beloved brethren, live according to the law of God and according to conscience. 

 

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