By Fr. George Dorbarakis
These five martyrs were Cappadocians by origin, in the time of Diocletian, who from their ancestors honored Christ, though in a hidden manner. At a certain moment they confessed their faith openly and with boldness; for this reason they were subjected to many kinds of tortures by the governor Lysias. Three of them died under the tortures, while Eustratios and Orestes survived and were sent to Sebaste, to the administrator of all the East, Agrikolaos, who ordered that they be thrown into the fire in the year 296, where they met their end. Eustratios was a learned man and a master of the art of rhetoric, first among the officials of Lysias and holding the office of chartophylax in his province, an office which in Latin is called scriniarius. In the name of Saint Eustratios is attributed the prayer that is said at the Saturday Midnight Office, "Magnifying, I magnify You, O Lord…," just as to Saint Mardarios is attributed the prayer said at the Third Hour and elsewhere, "Master God, Father Almighty…."
"The five-stringed lyre and five-lighted lamp," according to the hymnographer Saint Kassiani: that is, the five martyrs whom we celebrate today — Eustratios, Auxentios, Eugemios, Mardarios, and Orestes —are characterized by their fervent love for the Lord. This love of theirs, perfect and absolutely steadfast, was the driving force that enabled them to endure the countless kinds of martyrdom they suffered without being bent in the least. And this love they showed, according to their Hymnographer, not only in deed — that is, through their martyrdoms — but also in word: through the confession of their faith and the testimony that Christ is for them whatever can have value in this life. "By words and sufferings and manifold deprivations of life the saints showed the perfect love toward You, O Lord, without being shaken…." And again: "'Christ is everything to me,' cried Mardarios aloud, 'homeland, honor, and name;' for from you, Eustratios, he learned this."
This confession of Saint Mardarios, and of the other Martyrs as well, is deeply moving, since it reveals to us that for the saints Christ is not something in their lives, even something very important, but everything. He is the One who defines their very existence and their whole psychosomatic being. "Christ is everything to me" is the confirmation of what all the holy martyrs proclaimed, who to every question of their interrogator and executioner replied with "I am a Christian," and it is also the consistent continuation of the confession of the Apostle Paul, who proclaimed "Christ is all and in all" and "for me to live is Christ." For Christians, therefore, whatever value life has is value insofar as it is related to Christ, just as their self-awareness and identity depend absolutely and exclusively on Him.
Their love for the Lord, as we said, was also expressed in word. Indeed, the Hymnographers (for there is more than one) of the Service of the Saints return "again and many times" to the God-given gift of their speech, and especially to the philosophical and rhetorical prowess of Saint Eustratios. "With rhetorical words the soldier of Christ astonished the lawless," and "the one who shone forth as a philosopher in divine wisdom and was shown to be a rhetorician by the beauty of his words, the great among the martyrs Eustratios," says Saint Germanos, one of the encomiasts of Saint Eustratios. "More eloquent than rhetoricians," or "the rhetorician Eustratios," another Hymnographer notes elsewhere. This insistence of the Hymnographers is particularly significant, because it reveals — especially for our own age, an age of an inflation of words without substance, and thus of idle and vain talk — that words matter when, on the one hand, they refer to truth itself, which acts like a knife against falsehood ("And seizing from the enemy the knife of words, with it you cut off the objection of falsehood," that is, you snatched from the enemy the knife of words and with it severed the contradiction of falsehood), and, on the other hand, when they are confirmed by life itself, even unto martyrdom. Saint Eustratios, therefore, as did the others, used speech in order to confess Christ. And they annotated their word — and thus the truth of that word — with the marks of their athletic contests. "With rhetorical words he astonished the lawless; with the athletic marks of his struggles he manfully put to flight the powers of the enemy, Eustratios, the glorious and steadfast bearer of the prize."
Thus our Saints showed by their lives that the theology of our Church proceeds not in the manner of Aristote, that is, on the basis of human philosophy, however great it may be, but in the manner of a fisherman, that is, according to what the Martyrs of Christ - the Holy Apostles — preached and taught. The melodic recording of this truth by Saint Kassiani once again in the Doxastikon of the Aposticha of Matins is most beautiful: "The Holy Martyrs preferred the wisdom of the Apostles above the education of the Greeks, leaving aside the books of the rhetoricians and excelling in those of the fishermen; for in the former there is eloquence of words, but in the divine utterances of the unlettered they were taught the theology of the Trinity."
Indeed, the same Holy Hymnographer gives, with one very powerful verse, the mark of today’s Saints and the place they hold in the Church: "Rejoice, the choir equal in number to the wise Virgins," she praises them. We believe that no more direct assessment of their holiness could exist than this parallel with the wise virgins who entered the bridal chamber with the Bridegroom Christ.
Source: Translated by John Sanidopoulos.
