April: Day 22: Teaching 2: Venerable Theodore the Sykeote

April: Day 22: Teaching 2:
Venerable Theodore the Sykeote
 
(Go to the temple of God with special delight.)

By Archpriest Grigory Dyachenko

I. The Venerable Theodore, whose memory is celebrated today, having been born in Sykeon, from his early years loved to visit the church. At eight years of age he began to attend school, and, returning from school, he always went in to pray in the church. Not only by day did Theodore visit the church, but even at night; when all those at home were sleeping a deep sleep, at the first glimmering of dawn he would leave the house unnoticed and go to the temple of God. For his nocturnal visits to the church his mother sometimes punished Theodore and even began to bind him to the bed; but Saint George appeared to her and commanded her not to hinder her son from going to the house of prayer. Thus passed the childhood and youthful years of Theodore.

II. The childhood of Theodore presents many lessons for you, brethren. Do not be lazy to go to church. He who from childhood has become accustomed not to omit, without need, the Sunday and festal divine service, will not abandon this pious habit even in mature age.

a) With special delight all of us must go to the house of God for God.

By this expression we wish to say not that God has need of our going to His house, or that our going to His house could in any way increase His blessedness: we can add nothing to His blessedness. He is all-blessed and all-sufficient in Himself. But we ourselves have need to go to the house of God for God, in order thereby to show our pure faith in God, and also our most living gratitude to the Trihypostatic God, Who so greatly loves us and so exceedingly benefits us. He who does not go to the house of God — there is in him no pure faith, no true love for God, no living and true gratitude toward Him.

b) With special delight every Christian must go to the house of God for himself.

Saint Chrysostom says: “The church of God is a spiritual marketplace and a hospital for souls; therefore one must, like those who come to a marketplace, return having gathered many precious things, and like those who come to a hospital, depart having taken a remedy suitable for their illnesses.” Indeed, in the house of God Christians can receive everything necessary for the true health or salvation of their soul.

The house of God is a house of instruction, of understanding, of awakening and inspiration; here we rightly come to know our God, the Creator and Savior; we come to know our duties toward God, toward our brethren and toward other beings; we come to know ourselves, our spiritual needs and illnesses.

In the house of God, at every liturgy, the celebration of the great mystery of the New Testament is renewed, and the death of Jesus Christ, the Son of God, which He accepted for our salvation, is brought to remembrance. What Jesus Christ did at the Secret Supper with His disciples, and what He afterwards suffered on the Cross — all this is depicted and mystically accomplished during the liturgy.

c) Finally, with special delight each of us must go to the house of God for our neighbors.

Our faith requires of us that we strive not only for our own salvation, but also for that of our neighbors. Each of us is obliged, according to his strength, to act for the spiritual good of his neighbor: to teach him, to edify him, to turn him away from evil, to incline him to good, and to strengthen him in good. Each of us is obliged to give others an example of piety, and by our example to arouse all to piety and to the glorification of our common Heavenly Father. “Comfort one another,” wrote the Holy Apostle to the Thessalonians, “and edify one another” (1 Thess. 5:11). “Let us consider one another to provoke unto love and to good works,” wrote the same Holy Apostle to the Hebrews. “Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly in all wisdom; teaching and admonishing one another in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs” (Col. 3:16). “With one mind and one mouth glorify God, even the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ,” he wrote to the Romans (Rom. 15:6). But where can such edification of neighbors take place better than in the house of God? Here most fully and without hindrance is manifested the disposition of our heart toward our Heavenly Father; and therefore here especially we can produce in our neighbors the same truly filial dispositions toward Him by which we ourselves are inspired — such as reverence and love toward Him, hope in Him, and zeal for the glorification of His name.

III. Let us value time, and go to the house of God as often as possible and with all delight. In the future life no one enjoys that which he did not love in the present life: where there will be unending, only communal divine worship; there, as the seer Apostle John saw, all the holy people and all the holy angels day and night eternally “worship God, saying, amen; blessing and glory and wisdom and thanksgiving and honor and power and might be unto our God unto the ages of ages” (Rev. 7:11). Amen. 

(Compiled according to the Menaion and “Discourses or Homilies for all Sundays and Feast Days” of Gregory, Archbishop of Kazan and Sviyazhsk, vol. III, pp. 192–202).

 

Source: A Complete Annual Cycle of Short Teachings, Composed for Each Day of the Year. Translated by John Sanidopoulos.