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By Fr. George Dorbarakis
Saint Sylvester was ordained Bishop of Old Rome on account of his great virtue, succeeding the previous bishop Miltiades, who had died. He performed many miracles and was the one who guided the great emperor Constantine to faith in Christ. Through Holy Baptism he cleansed him of the passions of his soul and body, and he proved that Christ is the One foretold by the Old Testament. He also restored to life a bull that a Jew had killed by means of magic and was, of course, unable to bring back to life himself. The Saint became the cause of the salvation of many people and departed to the Lord in deep old age.
Saint Sylvester, although he belongs to the Fathers of the Western Church, is honored by universal Orthodoxy. This is because he lived at a time when the West was united with the East, that is, in an era when the schism of the Western Church had not yet distanced it from the truth of the faith. And not only this: in his own time, and also throughout the ages, he was a Father and Teacher of Orthodoxy, to such an extent that he championed it by struggling against the deviations of heresies. He powerfully revealed the one nature of the Triune God, yet in three hypostases — Unity in Trinity and Trinity in Unity. Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, yet one divinity.
The hymns of our Church emphasize strongly his struggle on behalf of the true faith, as well as his effort to show that heresy — the distortion of the faith — constitutes darkness that removes a person from God Himself.
“Father Hierarch Sylvester, illumined in a sacred manner by the light of the priesthood, you enlightened the faithful with radiant teachings, to revere the tri-hypostatic essence as one in nature; and you drove away the darkness of heresies.”
The Sacred Hymnographer’s emphasis on heresy as darkness should not easily escape our attention. He underscores something that today many people — unfortunately even believers who call themselves “Christians” — tend to minimize. Namely, that the dogmas of the faith are not merely theoretical propositions that matter only to certain theologians and priests. Dogmas constitute the revelation of the true image of the Triune God and of Jesus Christ as the incarnate God. This means that any diminishment of them or deviation from them automatically leads to an ontological distortion of the human person himself and to the loss of salvation as a real relationship with God. In other words, dogma determines a person’s ethos and life; this is why the Church has always struggled “unto death” for the truth of her faith. Such a father and teacher of the faith, then, was Saint Sylvester, and this is what his Hymnographer primarily brings to the fore.
The Hymnographer himself, Saint Joseph, does not confine himself only to presenting Saint Sylvester as a fervent teacher of Orthodoxy and a fighter against heresy. He also focuses attention on the Saint’s personal prerequisites for receiving such divine illumination. Saint Sylvester, although a bishop — and indeed of Old Rome, which at that time held the primacy of honor — or rather precisely because of this position, was a great ascetic, who strove for his personal sanctification through keeping the evangelical commandments and thus through overcoming blameworthy sinful passions.
“With noble-minded resolve you mastered the passions, and by ascetic disciplines you subjected the flesh to the Spirit, O wise one; having manifestly become a divine dwelling place of the Trinity, you gloriously humbled the spirits of wickedness by your hymns.”
The Hymnographer proclaims what is self-evident: no one can be a true teacher of the Church — and especially a cleric — unless he follows an ascetic way of life and keeps the commandments of the Lord. Otherwise, he becomes a counterfeit teacher, who will soon lose even whatever theoretical training he may have in matters of the faith. The illumination of the nous, that is, coexists not only with the study of the texts of our Church, but also with an ascetic manner of life.
Source: Translated by John Sanidopoulos.
