By Fr. George Dorbarakis
Saint Theodore lived during the reign of Emperor Licinius (the first decades of the 3rd century AD). He came from Euchaita, but resided in Heraclea of Pontus. He surpassed most people in the beauty of his soul, the stature of his body, and the power of his speech. For this reason, everyone sought to gain his friendship. For the same reason Licinius greatly desired to meet him, even though he had heard that Theodore was a Christian and abhorred the so-called gods. Therefore, from Nicomedia he sent several men of the same rank as Theodore and ordered them to bring the martyr to him in a courteous manner. When they returned saying that the blessed Theodore had objected, stating that the emperor should rather come together with his greater gods, the emperor immediately came to Heraclea.
Saint Theodore, who willingly agreed to meet Licinius after a nocturnal vision sent to him by God, when he learned that the emperor was approaching, mounted a horse, went out to meet him, and honored him as was fitting. The emperor then extended his right hand and warmly greeted Theodore. He entered the city, and after sitting upon an elevated platform, urged the blessed Theodore to offer sacrifice to his gods. The Saint asked to take the statues of the most prominent gods to his own house, to offer his prayers there first, and afterward to make public libations to those gods. The emperor agreed and gave orders that the golden and silver statues be handed over to him. The Saint took them, and in the middle of the night shattered them, broke them into small pieces, and distributed them to the needy and the poor.
On the following day, when Maxentius the commentariensis reported that he had seen the head of the great goddess Aphrodite being carried about by a beggar, Licinius gave orders, and immediately the Saint was arrested by the emperor’s guard. First they stripped him naked, stretched him out held by four men, and flogged him with whips made of ox sinews: seven hundred blows on the back, fifty on the belly, and blows with leaden balls to the nape of his neck. Then they scraped him until blood flowed, burned him with torches, and rubbed his swollen and burned wounds with shards, after which they threw him into prison, fastening his feet in a wooden vise.
He remained in prison without food or water for seven days. They brought him out again and nailed his hands and feet to a cross, and there they drove a spike through the lower part of his body, reaching his entrails. Around him stood even children, who shot arrows at the Saint’s face and eyes, and from the arrows that struck his eyes the pupils fell out. Others cut off his genital organs, making transverse incisions. He spent the night upon the cross, and Licinius thought that he had already died. But he was mistaken. For an angel of the Lord released him from his bonds, and he became completely whole and healthy, and he sang and blessed God.
At dawn Licinius sent orders for the body of the martyr to be taken down and thrown into the sea. But when the emissaries arrived and saw that the Saint was still alive and entirely healthy, they believed in Christ — about eighty-five men in number. After them, another three hundred soldiers also believed in Christ, led by the proconsul Cestus, who had been sent to kill the former group. When Licinius saw the city in turmoil, he ordered that the Saint be beheaded. But vast crowds of Christians stood in the way and hindered the soldiers. Only when the Saint calmed them and prayed to Christ did they cut off his head, and thus the course of his martyrdom came to an end. His body was transferred from Heraclea to Euchaita, to his ancestral home, according to the instructions the martyr had previously given to his secretary Augaros. Augaros, who had been with the Saint throughout the entire period of his martyrdom, wrote the martyrdom account of the Saint in full detail — namely the questions posed to him and the answers he gave, the various kinds of tortures he endured, and the manifestations and help granted by God.
The mind of Saint Theodore, set aflame with divine longing, is the key that explains his endurance amid the many torments he suffered, as well as his power first to transcend all the offers made by the emperor himself. One must have one’s mind entirely turned toward God and be inflamed with love for Him in order to despise the friendship of a king — especially one wielding such authority in that era — and to scorn tortures that shatter the human body. This is precisely what the Church continually seeks for the faithful person: not merely to restrain him with certain commands and rules — for that would be a Judaization of her spiritual life — but to orient him toward love for God, the first and great commandment that God has given to humanity. “With your mind set ablaze by divine longing, with courage and great boldness you advanced to death by fire,” notes the Saint’s Hymnographer in the Kathisma of Orthros. “Your longing for God erased every impassioned attachment to earthly things, O all-blessed one, the pleasure of glory, wealth and luxury, and the famed height of universal recognition” (Ode 4).
The Hymnographer Nicholas, who wrote for Saint Theodore, emphasizes his beauty and bearing: Saint Theodore was “a handsome young man, of rare beauty, distinguished for the beauty of soul and body.” Yet human beauty, according to the Hymnographer — as we see in our Saints such as the one commemorated today — lies chiefly in the beauty of the soul. “A handsome youth you were shown, exceedingly comely, fittingly radiant with the beauty of soul and body, beautified by the loveliness of virtues and adorned with the marks of martyrs” (Ode 3). Indeed, for our faith, bodily beauty is a good, but because it is perishable it does not have primary importance. Old age comes, and what is often a source of pride for the possessor of this good disappears — without even taking into account possible injuries, illnesses that disfigure a person, or the all-destroying death. True beauty lies, as the Hymnographer says of the Saint, in the acquisition of the virtues. When the human soul is clothed in virtues, when the grace of God overshadows a person, then even one considered outwardly unattractive acquires a sweetness and a “radiance” that captivates and draws everyone. “A glad heart makes the face shine,” we hear the word of God say in this regard. In Saint Theodore, of course, both elements coexisted: the beauty of the body and the beauty of the soul. But for the Saint the priority was clear — the beauty of the soul, and not only through virtues, but above all through the sufferings he endured, for they clearly placed him in the footsteps of Him who is “fairer in beauty than all the sons of men,” Jesus Christ.
Through the martyrdom of Saint Theodore, however, we also have a kind of confirmation of the resurrection of the bodies that will come with the Second Coming of the Lord. That is to say, when the Lord, through His grace and by means of an angel, restored the body of the Saint — dismembered by tortures — making it once again completely healthy as it had been before his beheading, He gives us with great clarity an image of the re-creation of bodies that will take place. For there are Christians who ask: how will bodies dissolved by death, burned by fire, or devoured by beasts be raised? The answer, of course, is simple: God will bring about a new creation of them. He who created all things “out of nothing” will again create what has become corrupt and dissolved. And here precisely, in the martyrdom of Saint Theodore, we receive an image of this future creation: by a single act of His will, and indeed through His angel, the body is restored. “You were shown victorious, completely whole, after the crucifixion and every other cutting off and mortification of your members, you who conquered the world; for Christ, the Prince of Life, by the hand of an angel, restored you to life” (Ode 5).
Source: Translated by John Sanidopoulos.
