By Fr. George Dorbarakis
Not long ago we celebrated the great saint, Nicholas the Wonderworker. His wonderworking power, we emphasized, constituted and still constitutes his very epithet, since anyone who even invokes his name will find him a willing helper at his side. The same happens with today’s great saint as well, as his synaxarion also notes: “his epithet is attributed to his wonders.” God adorned him with the same gift, for, as his Hymnographer says, he loved God and his fellow human being with passion, thus becoming a channel through whom the Kingdom of God is revealed. “Wounded by desire for Christ, most sacred one… you became a divine altar.” Such is the gift of the Saint that the Hymnographer, in his Apolytikion, directs our attention exactly to this: “…and you were shown to be a wonderworker, God-bearing Spyridon, our father.”
The Saint does not belong to the Teachers of the Church — those like Saint Athanasios, Saint Basil, or Saint Gregory the Theologian — who, in a moment of crisis caused by some heresy, were enlightened by God to give the needed response. He belongs, however, to her Fathers, whose chief characteristic is the experience of God and therefore the knowledge that comes from that experience. Thus Saint Spyridon, with this empirical, God-given knowledge — stemming from his correct participation in the Apostolic Tradition (“being filled with apostolic teaching”) — was able in his own simple way to contribute to overcoming the crisis of Arianism in his time.
“Radiant with the splendor of the Spirit, the wise Hierarch destroyed the dark folly of Arius; and thus, having simply and faithfully proclaimed the Trinity, he was glorified by the wise and prudent, and confirmed the Synod.”
The incident at the First Ecumenical Synodd (AD 325), where he stood up and performed a miracle with a clay tile to show that the Holy Trinity consists of three hypostases but has one nature or essence, is known to all. His words alone might not have sufficed in terms of demonstrative argumentation, but the truth he lived found a way to express itself: the tile was one, yet it separated into its components — earth, water, and the fire that had baked the clay.
We will not dwell on his virtues — the fruit, as we said, of God’s grace due to his love for Him: his gentleness, his guilelessness, his great humility. These will always be guiding points for the faithful of every age, especially our own, in which anger and irritation, malice, arrogance, and pride abound. What we do not wish to allow to fall into oblivion, however, is one of his miracles, mentioned above and in his synaxarion, which we believe has direct relevance to the economic crisis our nation has been undergoing.
It concerns the scheme of the grain merchants who sought to create an artificial crisis in order to raise the price of grain and thereby increase their wealth at the expense of the poor people. The Saint immediately perceived the merchants’ deceit and intervened: the grain storehouses collapsed, and their wicked plan was destroyed.
The parallel with our own era is obvious: today’s crisis, as has become clear from what has come to light, is likewise artificial. Banks and “economic criminals,” as they have been called, judged that it was the right moment to create such turmoil that, amid the global shockwave that would follow, they could extract enormous profits. And of course the country that “paid the price” — with the help, naturally, of many Greeks who, with a lax moral conscience, believed that their own moment for easy wealth had arrived — was our homeland.
This crisis, which simultaneously revealed the moral and spiritual crisis we are living in, is ongoing, with no immediate escape route in sight. Yet our Church has other weapons beyond economic theories: the weapons of faith, the “heavy artillery” of our saints. And Saint Spyridon is one such weapon. What could hinder the Saint, with the boldness he has before God, from helping us overcome the crisis? Nothing — except one thing: the faith and repentance of the Greeks themselves. The miracle he could work could be blocked only by that. Which means, ultimately, that a solution exists — on another level, as we said — and it is found within us.
We firmly believe that if we Greeks become aware of this dimension and turn to God in repentance, we will see God and our saints intervening from where we least expect it. The corresponding examples from history are countless. But the question remains open: do we have the willingness to repent? Do we have the humility to believe that the solution lies outside our own “rational” hands or our supposedly “clever” plans?
Source: Translated by John Sanidopoulos.