By Fr. George Dorbarakis
“Having given to the earth his earthly flesh, Hilarion dwelt in the blessed land of the blessed” (Verses of the Synaxarion).
Venerable Hilarion served as abbot of the Monastery of Pelekete in Trigleia and was distinguished for his ascetic ethos, his love of God, his gift of almsgiving, and his spiritual struggles. For this reason, God granted him the gift of foresight. The Saint reposed in peace in the year 754.
We do not have many details from the life of Saint Hilarion the New, beyond the fact that he was abbot of the Monastery of Pelekete, a monastery whose foundation dates to the eighth century and whose name is related to its location upon a steep rock. The actual name of the monastery is that of Saint John the Theologian, which is situated near present-day Trigleia, in medieval Bithynia. The monastery, whose ruins from the Byzantine period are preserved even today, was, according to historians, a center of the Orthodox who struggled against the heresy of the iconoclasts; for this reason the monks suffered many tortures from their iconoclast persecutors, to the point that many of them became martyrs for their faith. Saint Joseph the Hymnographer therefore quite naturally emphasizes also the persecutions that the Venerable Martyr and Abbot Hilarion suffered from these heretics: “Precious was your death before God, most sacred Father,” he notes, “for you honored His Icon and endured, being afflicted, the persecutions of the tyrants; thus you were shown to be a martyr” (Ode 8).
Saint Hilarion, however, defended steadfastly the faith of the Church concerning the holy icons — a faith which revealed the truth about Christ as the incarnate God — because he himself “bled” inwardly in order to preserve intact the image of God within his being. His struggles for the faith were a continuation of his struggles for the integrity of his inner disposition. And it is precisely on these inner spiritual struggles that the Holy Hymnographer dwells at length. In every way he highlights the intensity of the Venerable Abbot, so that his mind might behold only the beauty of the Heavenly Father. The eyes of the Saint were constantly turned toward the Lord, according to the Psalm: “My eyes are ever toward the Lord,” and “I foresaw the Lord always before me,” something which revealed that he was literally aflame with love for Him who was the source of his life. “You gave wings to your nous,” he says, “having illumined your heart with sacred ascents, in order that you might behold only the beauty of God and be illumined by the rays of His light” (Ode 4).
And it is well known in our faith that this “cleaving” to God presupposes the pain of detachment from the egocentric worldly mindset, which operates in every human being who comes into this fallen world of sin. The Saint, from his youth, “from childhood” (Ode 1), turned toward the Lord, and therefore, with the power and grace of God, he took up the cross of self-restraint and supplicatory prayer so as to overcome whatever passions he had. “From childhood you were found on the path of holiness, O Father, and you took up the cross of following Christ. Therefore, through self-restraint and your continual prayers you withered the passions of the body” (Ode 1). The result is thus well known: the tears of compunction that held him fast also made him worthy of the great consolation which the Lord grants to His faithful, according to the well-known beatitude: “Blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted” (Ode 8), to such an extent that he became spiritually, in the literal sense, an “emperor”: “You made your mind an emperor over the passions and reigned like an excellent commander” (Ode 7).
For this reason, the Lord made him a gentle teacher of men, because he followed the proper pattern of teaching, which presupposes first "practice" and then "word" — that is, first illumination from Him who gives true knowledge (Ode 4), and then the transmission of this knowledge to others. “The sweetness of your words brought joy to the hearts of those who came to you. For by practicing what you taught, you made your word to be received with goodwill by others” (Ode 4) — a great lesson for clergy, educators, parents, and anyone engaged with youth and the teaching of others!
Such a person, certainly, with so many gifts from God because of his personal struggles — “compassion, love and humility, almsgiving and simplicity, true faith and hope, a modest life and the uprightness of a guileless mind” (Ode 9) — was also endowed with the gift of working miracles. The rays of his miracles (Ode 9), both in his own time and in later times, healed many people, calmed troubled hearts, and brought the fragrance of the Holy Spirit into the lives of the faithful (Ode 9), as in the case recorded by the Holy Hymnographer: “You dissolved, venerable Father, through your prayers, the frustration of the fishermen who labored without success, and you filled them with fish where previously they had failed” (Ode 8) — a fact that recalls Galilee, with the risen Lord and His fishing disciples!
Source: Translated by John Sanidopoulos.
