By Fr. George Dorbarakis
“On the same day we commemorate all the venerables, men and women, who shone forth in ascetic struggle.”
Gently and gradually, through the previous feasts, the God-bearing Fathers — after instructing us and preparing us to be ready for the spiritual arena — and after removing us from luxury and excess and setting us on the path of fear of the coming judgment, and likewise through the week of Cheesefare properly pre-cleansing us, wisely placed between them the two fasts, in order little by little to encourage us toward it.
And now they add in the midst all those who lived in holiness with many labors and struggles, men and women, so that through their memory and their contests they may make us stronger for the arena of Great Lent, having their lives as a kind of outline and guide. Thus, with the alliance and assistance of these venerable saints, let us enter into the spiritual contests, reflecting that they too possessed the same human nature as we do.
Just as generals — once the armies are drawn up and standing face to face — exhort their troops with words and examples and with remembrance of men of history who excelled in war and showed courage, so that their own army may advance into battle wholeheartedly strengthened by hope of victory; in the same way now the God-bearing Fathers act with similar wisdom: they encourage men and women toward spiritual struggles by the examples of those who lived holy lives and guide them likewise to enter the arena of fasting.
So that we also, regarding them as archetypes and seeing their life not as bad but as good, may practice the virtues as each is able: first of all love, and modest abstinence from shameful deeds and actions, and fasting itself — not only from foods, but also fasting of the tongue, of anger, and of the eyes, and in short withdrawal and estrangement from every evil.
For this reason the Holy Fathers appointed today this present commemoration of all the saints, presenting those who pleased God through fasting and other good and virtuous works. They urge us through their example toward the arena of virtues, so that we may courageously arm ourselves against the passions and demons, and in a certain way they tell us that if we show the same zeal as they did, nothing will prevent us from doing what they did and from being counted worthy of the same rewards. For they too had the same human nature as we.
Concerning the week of Cheesefare, some say that Emperor Heraclius instituted it, whereas previously it had been a week of meat-eating. For when he campaigned against King Chosroes and the Persians for six years, he prayed to God that if he should defeat them he would establish it and place it between the fasting period and the non-fasting period — which he did.
But I think, even if this occurred, that the Holy Fathers devised this institution as a kind of preparatory purification, so that we would not be distressed by the sudden change from meat-eating and unrestricted eating to extreme abstinence and thus suffer bodily harm. Rather, gradually and gently withdrawing from fatty and pleasant foods, we would accept the bridle of fasting through restriction of food, as also happens with wild horses.
In other words, what the Fathers did in matters of the soul using parables, the same they intended also for the body: they cut away little by little the obstacles to fasting.
Our Church, with today’s feast commemorating all the ascetic saints — men and women, and ultimately all the saints — wishes to emphasize what constitutes its deep conviction: that all the saints in essence are martyrs. If not of blood, as happens with very many of them, then of conscience.
For what did all the saints do except struggle to live contrary to their fallen human nature in sin, choosing to anchor their heart and soul in the will of Christ God? And this choice truly constitutes a martyrdom throughout time. For the man of sin desires one thing, and the man of God another.
“The flesh lusts against the Spirit, and the Spirit against the flesh.”
“No one can serve two masters.”
Therefore a saint is the faithful person who, though carried by the law of sin against God, turns toward Him by force — and certainly by the grace of God — living within his conscience a martyrdom.
“Continuous violence against nature,” says Saint John of the Ladder, depicting the venerables and every saint. This is what the Lord revealed:
“The Kingdom of God suffers violence, and the violent take it by force.”
The believer — the saint — stands constantly in an unrelenting spiritual war, in an inner tension, in order to be where his Lord is, namely in His holy commandments.
This truth — the “mapping” of the inner journey of the venerable one, of every saint, man and woman — is the crucial point on which the Holy Hymnographer frequently focuses our attention. He speaks of the venerable saints but does not remain at a superficial or external description of their struggles. He is interested in their depth, because this he wants to present as archetype and model for all the faithful.
Indeed the doxastikon of Vespers clearly shows the life in Christ of the venerable and holy:
“Having preserved the image sound and unharmed by sin, and having established the mind as ruler over destructive passions through your ascetic struggles, as far as possible for man you ascended to the likeness. For with courage of soul you forced (your sinful) nature (which inclines toward evil), hastening to subject the worse to the better and to enslave the fleshly mind to the Spirit.”
Is not this path the “way of the Lord” as He revealed it? With the results He Himself promised: the in-Christification of man, his identification with Him, his entrance into His Bridal Chamber — that is, the entrance of the faithful into the Kingdom of God already from this life.
Another sticheron of Vespers vividly presents the supernatural Christian life:
“Let us cleanse ourselves, brethren, from every defilement of flesh and spirit. Let us make the lamps of our souls shine through love for poverty, not devouring one another by slander. For the time has come when the Bridegroom will come to render to each according to his works. Let us therefore enter with Christ and the wise virgins into His Bridal Chamber, crying aloud with the voice of the thief to Him: Remember us, Lord, when You come in Your Kingdom.”
Thus it is evident that the venerable — those who lovingly follow Christ crucified with Him — are those who on the one hand already live all that the Lord said would be the inheritance of His faithful, those things the Apostle Paul described:
“What eye has not seen and ear has not heard and has not entered into the heart of man, God has prepared for those who love Him.”
But on the other hand they also have boldness to intercede for us in all the dangers we face and for our strengthening in the daily spiritual struggle and in view of the Fast of Great Lent.
As the Hymnographer records among other things: the Holy Hierarchs and Ascetics and Hieromartyrs and Venerable Women “despised corruptible and temporary things, truly regarding them as spider webs and rubbish, in order to gain Christ and His Kingdoms, and those divine things which no human eye has seen nor ear ever heard” (Praises).
And:
“Holy and glorious Fathers whom we have commemorated, and also you unknown to us, save us from dangers, we who celebrate your memorial with longing” (Ode 6).
Source: Translated by John Sanidopoulos.
