Homily for the Commemoration of the Holy Great Martyr Barbara
By Fr. Daniel Sysoev
By Fr. Daniel Sysoev
In the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit!
I congratulate you all on the feast day of the Holy Great Martyr Barbara! The life of Saint Barbara is an absolutely stunning account, revealing one side of the Christian faith. When we read the lines of the life of the Great Martyr Barbara, we see that Christianity is an entirely different reality, one that is infinitely more important than anything else. Moreover, in reading Barbara's life, we see that sometimes there is a conflict between what seems to be the highest in this earthly life and the Christian life. Many people in our country, when embracing Christianity in the late 1980s and early 1990s, thought that Christianity was simply about morality. But reading Barbara's life, we see that Christianity is a completely new life that divides all of humanity, even irrespective of familial ties. Saint Barbara was the daughter of the fierce pagan Dioscorus, who, upon receiving a prophecy that his daughter would become a Christian, confined her in a tall tower so that she would be isolated and no one could visit her.
Standing in this high tower, she began to gaze at the sun, the moon, the stars, the sea, and wondered who made all this. Who created such beauty? Who dug the seabed? Who launched the stars? Who controls the rising and setting? And her maids told her that the gods had done all this. She asked them, "Which gods?" Here we see the inquisitive Christian mind, which will never settle on anything but wisdom. A Christian may potentially despise foolishness, as foolishness is a sin.
The maids told Barbara that these were the gods her father worshiped: gold, silver, copper, stone, and wood. She replied: it's strange how they can't speak, breathe, or walk, so how can they create anything? She decided there must be another, greater God who created everything. As the book of Wisdom of Solomon says, having recognized from the beauty of creation the supreme beauty of their Creator, Barbara began to turn to Him. This is true wisdom.
The Lord sent a priest to Barbara, who disguised himself as a merchant, taught her the basics of Christianity, and baptized her. At this point, Diascorus departed, ordering the construction of a bathhouse with two windows — one in honor of the gods of the sea and the other in honor of the gods of the land. However, Saint Barbara demanded that the builders make three windows (in honor of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit). Roman baths are the same as Turkish baths, adopted by the Turks from the Romans. These are enormous structures with a pool in which Barbara inscribed a cross on marble. The marble miraculously softened, and the cross remained. When Diascorus arrived, he began to ask Barbara why the bathhouse had three windows, while the pool bore the sign of the cross. She, like a good daughter, desired her father's conversion to Christianity.
If we love anyone, we must strive for that person to become a Christian. If a wife says she won't tell her husband anything about Christianity, it means she hates him. If a man says he loves his girlfriend so much that he'll marry her even if she's not baptized, it means he doesn't love her at all. Because after death, they are doomed to eternal separation, as all unbaptized people go to hades after death, where meeting is impossible not only between the baptized and the unbaptized, but even between the unbaptized. Barbara tried to convert her father to Christianity, but he, in a rage, attacked her like a beast, wanting to kill her for becoming a Christian.
We see how the words of the Lord are fulfilled: “Do not think that I came to send peace on earth. I did not come to send peace, but a sword. For I came to set a man at variance against his father, and a daughter against her mother, and a daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law. And a man’s enemies will be the members of his own household. Whoever loves father or mother more than Me is not worthy of Me; and whoever loves son or daughter more than Me is not worthy of Me” (Matthew 10:34-37).
Christ, according to Symeon the God-Receiver, became the Sign of the Scandal that separated Barbara from her father. Nowadays, people often turn away from God because they don't want to make a choice. They want to combine both, but it's good to combine both when they are working toward the same goal, when however family relationships conflict, then one must choose God. And Barbara chose God; she fled from her father, who had drawn a sword to kill her. Saint Barbara was miraculously hidden by a mountain, but she was later betrayed by shepherds. Her father dragged his daughter to the judge, where she was tortured, and then the father himself chopped off her head. And this is no accident. A person who has rejected God very quickly descends into hatred of Him, for he knows the evil he has committed, and to justify himself, he tries to erase all traces of God from the face of the earth. Before her death, Barbara asked God that all who turned to her in prayer would be spared sudden death. Her father, however, received his reward from the Lord and was burned to death by lightning immediately after his execution.
We must understand this terrible moment. The Lord clearly predicted that there would be division among people, which is happening, and it cannot be avoided, because the judgment is now taking place, which consists of the Light coming into the world.
“This is the judgment: the light has come into the world, but people loved darkness rather than light because their deeds were evil” (John 3:19). “He was the true Light, which illuminates every man that comes into the world. He was in the world, and the world was made through Him, and the world knew Him not” (John 1:9-10).
We must accept this division, understand that it exists and is inevitable. God created us with freedom of choice, and people make these choices. We can nudge people toward the right choice while they are alive, nudge them with prayer, with unwavering testimony to the truth, with advice, but the final choice is only made by each person themselves. We must certainly abide in divine love for all people, but we must remember that all people will be divided into those who are unimaginably wonderful and those who are unimaginably terrible — there is no middle ground.
This is the will of God, who, even before the beginning of the universe, decided to create a society of humans and angels who possess free will and would voluntarily love Him (for His own sake, not for the sake of His gifts). And by granting this freedom, He took the risk that some humans and angels would just as freely reject Him, hating Him, contrary to common sense, contrary to logic. God planned this before the beginning of time, and He knew it would happen, and we must accept it. This is the deepest meaning of humanity — we can choose. We must watch ourselves, lest we fall away from God, and love Him as Barbara did.
With the weapon of the Cross, we can break free from the nets of this world, scattered by the devil. We can attain freedom only when we love God for His own sake. The Lord awaits our striving for Him. Without choice, love is impossible. How can one love by force? And for our neighbors who have not yet fully made their choice, we will pray, calling upon the love of our Heavenly Father to break their proud stubbornness.
Then we will pass through the gates of death and resurrection, then we will see the blazing world, the most powerful, unshakable Kingdom of God, which will rise on the ruins of this Universe — the Kingdom of Divine Love, which will be entered by those who have come to love not something of God, but God Himself. May God help us in this through the prayers of Saint Barbara!
God bless you!
Source: Translated by John Sanidopoulos.
