By Fr. George Dorbarakis
The month of December is illumined by the commemoration of great and wonderworking saints, both of earlier times — such as Saints Nicholas and Spyridon — and of more recent times, such as today’s Saint Dionysios. The faithful of our Church experience the memory of these saints, endowed with the great gift of wonderworking, as a profound consolation, because above all, by virtue of their boldness before the Lord, they are able to intervene in their lives, offering solutions to their dead ends and healing ailments that are often incurable.
To avoid any misunderstanding, all our saints are wonderworkers, since they possess the power of prayer that activates our Triune God, who in any case is the “One who wills mercy.” And if some saints do not have the reputation of being great wonderworkers — such as, for example, certain great teachers of our Church — it is because they were granted by God the gift of healing the thoughts of people and preserving them from the corruption of heretics. This, perhaps, constitutes the greatest gift of God: right faith in God and, consequently, the true image of the Church are the greatest gifts of God to humanity. For what miracle, for example, of bodily healing could be accomplished, and what meaning would it have, outside the true Church of Christ? Therefore, the miracle of right faith is presupposed before the miracle of healing bodily illnesses.
Saint Dionysios, then, belongs among the great modern wonderworking saints of our Church — indeed, with the grace given by the Lord to work miracles both during his lifetime and after his repose.
“Christ glorified you abundantly with divine signs and wonders, both while you lived and after your departure.”
“Many were your wonders during your life, and frequent your miracles after death.”
The hymns of our Church, of course, explain this gift of the Lord to the Saint. He made himself worthy and suitable to channel His healing grace, because, one might say, he gathered within himself all the virtues of the saints of old, especially the patriarchs and prophets of the Old Testament: Abraham, Jacob, Job, Moses, and David.
“You precisely imitated, splendid one, the virtues of the glorious forefathers: Abraham’s hospitality, Jacob’s guilelessness, Job’s blamelessness, Moses’ simplicity, and King David’s meekness, compassion, and loving-kindness.”
Yet the point at which Saint Dionysios becomes, quite literally, a landmark — a criterion of reference for both believers and unbelievers — is his immense love. Love for one’s neighbor, extending even to the one regarded as an enemy, the fruit of his fervent love for God like a blazing fire — as indeed his Synaxarion notes — was the ground on which his spiritual walk in this world was set. All his virtues, moreover, as we know from the teaching of our Church, had meaning precisely because they culminated in this love. This is the measure; this sets the rhythm. Without love, any virtue bears the harshness of severity and dryness; it becomes repellent. With love, everything finds its proper rhythm and acquires sweetness.
Saint Dionysios, then, had — and still has — this sweetness: the presence of Christ Himself. We draw near to him, and our heart is comforted and moved to compunction. We venerate the austere ascetic, with his great ascetical labors, and yet we feel him gathering us into his embrace, widening the narrowness of our soul. We feel like children held close by their beloved grandfather.
His Hymnographer seems to rejoice in this wide embrace of his, filled with love even, as we have said, for enemies:
“He has not known God, who is love, who does not love his enemy, who is in fact his neighbor.”
“Having heard Christ the Teacher say in the Gospel, ‘By this all will know that you are My disciples, if you have love for one another,’ you showed yourself, at every opportunity, a proven disciple in deed, O most holy Father.”
May the heart of Saint Dionysios, inflamed with love for God and humanity, warm our own hearts, chilled by lawlessness, so that we may feel a little of the grace of God and thus experience — if only in some small measure — true Christmas.
Source: Translated by John Sanidopoulos.
