By Fr. George Dorbarakis
Saint Eleutherios was from the city of Rome, very young in age, orphaned of his father, having only his mother, named Anthia, who had been catechized in the faith of Christ by the Holy Apostle Paul. By her he was brought to Bishop Aniketos, and from him the Saint learned the Sacred Scriptures, and he was also enrolled in the order of the clergy. In the fifteenth year of his age he was ordained a deacon, in the eighteenth a presbyter, and in his twentieth year he was appointed Bishop of Illyricum, having previously performed many miracles because of his great virtue.
But since by his teaching he was turning many to the faith of Christ, Emperor Hadrian sent for him and summoned him. And when he proclaimed before him that Christ is the God of all, the emperor gave orders to place him on a bronze bed and to light a great fire beneath it. Then he was to be placed upon a grate that had been exceedingly heated, and again into a red-hot pan filled with oil, tallow, and pitch. Yet by the grace and power of Christ he was preserved unharmed from all these things.
After this, on the advice of the prefect Koremmonos, a furnace was constructed, having sharp spits on either side. Into this furnace Koremmonos himself entered first, having been filled with the Holy Spirit and having confessed that Christ is God. He came out of it unharmed, and they cut off his head.
Afterward he was bound to a chariot drawn by wild horses, but he was loosed by angels, who led him to a high mountain, where he lived together with wild animals, which were tamed as the Saint spoke to them the words of God. Later he admonished the soldiers who were sent to arrest him and baptized them together with others, about five hundred, who believed in Christ.
At a certain time he was led before the emperor and thrown to the beasts to be devoured, but he was preserved unharmed. Then, by order of the governor, he was slain by two soldiers who rushed upon him. His mother Anthia, having embraced the Saint’s dead body and kissed it, was herself slain with the sword.
First of all, before any other remark, we must point out a paradox: the surpassing of every ecclesiastical canon concerning the entry of Saint Eleutherios into the clergy and his advancement through its ranks. What do we mean? Saint Eleutherios was called by the Church to become a deacon at only fifteen years of age. Three years later, at eighteen, he was ordained a presbyter, and at only twenty years old he was elevated to the episcopacy. When one knows that the ages later established for the ranks of the priesthood are far greater, for example, our Church determined that one may become a deacon at the age of twenty-five, one pauses in astonishment. For here one sees that, in the case of Saint Eleutherios, the Church herself acted in a completely free manner, that is, in the charismatic manner determined by the Spirit of God, who “blows where He wills,” independent of any age restriction or other limitation.
This fact moves us deeply, because it reveals that our Church is not bound by any merely regulatory law when it perceives the presence of the Holy Spirit. For our Church the most important canonical principle is the one proclaimed by her very Head: “The Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath.”
Why, then? What was it that led the Church at that time to place a young man, still an adolescent, “upon the lampstand of the episcopacy”? The answer is not difficult and has already been implied: the Spirit-bearing fullness of Saint Eleutherios. As the hymns of our Church note, Saint Eleutherios, “having received from the divine Spirit the wealth of wisdom, was shown forth as an imitator of the Apostles.” His sanctified life, in other words, the fact that from infancy he proved to be a “pure vessel of the Spirit,” was the prerequisite for receiving “the addition of the Spirit” through the priesthood, which, as we have said, he crowned with the crown of martyrdom.
How was the presence of the Spirit of God manifested in his life? First of all, through what the Apostle Paul himself calls the fruit of the Spirit: the virtues. “For the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, long-suffering, kindness, goodness, faith, meekness, self-control.” Saint Eleutherios was full of virtues. The Church’s Hymnographer calls him “the delightful dwelling place of the virtues.” And then there were the countless miracles that he performed — and indeed continues to perform — that demonstrated the boldness he had, and has, before our Triune God, who wished and wishes to bestow His grace through His humble Saint.
Above all, he is regarded to this day as a protector and benefactor of women in childbirth, pregnant women, who have always invoked him so that they might be “delivered” in the best possible way. This truth is also noted by the Church’s Hymnographer: “Caring, O Father, for women in travail, you grant deliverance to those who come to your temple; again you bestow fair sailing upon others who fervently entreat you; and to the sick you grant health, shining forth in miracles.”
How did Saint Eleutherios reach such a state of sanctification, so that he was so richly endowed with grace by God? Certainly through his lawful ascetic struggle. From childhood, “from his youth,” “like Samuel,” he understood that what hinders the presence of God in a person’s life is the passions. Therefore he devoted himself to ascetic struggles for the eradication of these passions — or rather, for their transformation into divinely-inspired passions, that is, into love for God and love for one’s fellow human being.
In this struggle he had as his co-worker the Lord Himself, since without Him “we can do nothing.” Yet he himself oriented his mind and heart entirely toward Him, having learned from the Tradition of the Church that only the one who has transferred the center of gravity of his existence to God can truly find God and make Him a dweller of his soul and body. According to his Hymnographer, “having fixed his mind with irresistible longing upon the most beautiful beauty of the divine Lover, he was wounded by His sweet eros.” Indeed, wavering between God and the world, the “double-mindedness,” as Saint James the Brother of the Lord calls it, constitutes disorder, which brings only turmoil to the human soul. The Lord Himself revealed this: “No one can serve two masters.” Saint Eleutherios, therefore, did not “play” with his faith: he loved the Lord passionately, clung to Him, and for this reason received His power in such abundance — a power that enabled him, without particular difficulty, to transcend his human passions. “Clinging to God with a most pure mind from your youth, you drove away the soul’s carnal mindset and were enriched with the abundant grace of miracles.”
We cannot, of course, fail to note the help he received from his spiritual father and elder, Saint Aniketos, Pope of Rome. If he learned from the Church’s Tradition that the goal of life is to acquire the Spirit of God and that this is achieved through ascetic struggle against the passions, he learned it because he was guided rightly. Beyond the help he received in this from his own mother — herself a disciple of the Apostle Paul — Saint Aniketos was the one who initiated him into this spiritual Tradition. He himself was a bearer of it and therefore able to transmit it to the young shoot of faith, Saint Eleutherios. Thus our Saint was blessed by God to learn the Tradition not from books and lectures, but from a living source, from association with saints. As his synaxarion states: “Saint Eleutherios was brought to Bishop Aniketos, and from him the Saint learned the Sacred Scriptures, and he was also enrolled in the order of the clergy.”
Saint Eleutherios directs us today to the same life he himself lived — the life in the reality of Christ and of the Holy Apostles. And he calls us, interceding for us, to liberation from our passions. As the Holy Hymnographer puts it: “Deliver me now, O Martyr Eleutherios, who am enslaved to the darkness of the passions, by your radiant supplications.” May we, through the intercessions of the Saint, also attain this liberation, which restores our true human dignity and opens to us the Kingdom of God already in this life.
Source: Translated by John Sanidopoulos.
