By Fr. George Dorbarakis
Saint Philemon, like the Holy Apostles Apphia (probably Philemon's wife), Archippus (perhaps the son of Philemon and Apphia) and Onesimus (Philemon's slave, who escaped and was sent back as a Christian by the Apostle Paul), who are celebrated with him today, lived during the reign of Nero and were disciples of the Apostle Paul. They were martyred in the city of Colossae in Phrygia, near Laodicea. That is, when the pagans were celebrating Artemis in her temple in Colossae, these Apostles were praising God in the most holy church, together with other Christians. From a raid that the pagans made there, the Christians retreated and hid, but the Apostles were left alone, along with Apphia who was also a faithful Christian, because they desired martyrdom for Christ. They were therefore arrested and led to Androcles, the ruler of Ephesus. After being beaten by him, and because they were not persuaded to sacrifice to the idol called Menas, they were thrown into a cistern up to their waists. In this state they were stoned, after having been previously pierced by children with needles.
Two enigmatic paradoxes exist in the Service of Saint Philemon and the Apostles with him, a composition by Saint Joseph the Hymnographer. First, the paradox of historical inconsistency, given that, while these Apostles were brought to the faith of Christ by the Apostle Paul, therefore several years after the Ascension of the Lord, the Holy Hymnographer presents them as “eyewitnesses of the Word and initiates in his miracles,” even belonging to the seventy disciples of the Lord (“and the disciples who composed the Seventy”); second, the paradox of the complete absence of reference to the Apostle Paul’s Epistle to Philemon. It does not seem logical for the Service to have as its “primary subject” Saint Philemon and for the most well-known sacred text about him, the specific letter addressed to him by Saint Paul, to be missing. We cannot give a logical explanation for these paradoxes, and the Service itself does not help in this regard. The only thing we can say about the second paradox is perhaps the absolute priority that Saint Joseph gives to the missionary activity of the Apostle Philemon, to his activity as a preacher of the word of God, to his sacrificial effort to evangelize people. Should we assume, regarding the first, that he deliberately downplays the historical elements, in order to emphasize the immediacy of the relationship of these Apostles with the Lord Himself – something similar perhaps to what hagiography does, which sees all events in the present tense, even if they are of the past or the future?
However, what is indisputable in the Service is the fact that the main concern of the Hymnographer seems to be the preaching activity of the Apostles, and especially of Saint Philemon. He insists on the power of his words, which irrigated the hearts of people, so that they bore fruit with heavenly understandings (“You have ploughed the furrows of your words in the heart and nurtured the heavenly harvest, blessed one, having prepared understanding through faith, Apostle Philemon.). And these heavenly understandings were certainly none other than those that led the erring man to the path of heaven: the love for Christ. (“You have shown the heavenly ways with difficulty to those who have gone astray, like a steadfast guide, Philemon, and you have venerably led them to love the one path, Christ.”). What specifically did the Apostle Philemon preach, according to the poet, so that his words had such power? Certainly what constitutes a timeless preaching of the Church: the promotion of the Passion of Christ and His Resurrection. (“By preaching the passions of Christ and His resurrection, you have raised people as if from the grave of unbelief and death, worthy of admiration Philemon.”) We would not be out of touch with reality if we claimed that at this point there is a "subtle" portrayal of the Apostle Paul as the teacher of Philemon: the Apostle Paul is the preeminent "artist" of the Church's preaching, as the one who proclaimed His Passion and Resurrection.
However, Saint Joseph does not stop only at the work of Saint Philemon as an evangelizer of people. If his word was like a bright lamp that lit the light in the hearts of people extinguished by error (“To those who were previously extinguished and lying in much darkness of ignorance, your word, like a shining lamp, from the light of your heart, rekindled.”), it was because he himself loved the Lord very much, who first loved us (“Having loved Christ, who loved mankind out of compassion”), and because certainly, like the other Apostles, he struggled to purify the vision of his soul and thus become a seer of God. And it is true: no one can speak of love for Christ, having an unclean heart. Love for Him grows in soil that has been cleansed of the weeds of passions. "Having purified your noetic eye, you have attained divine theoptia and turned erring hearts toward knowledge, most sacred ones."
Source: Translated by John Sanidopoulos.
