By Fr. George Dorbarakis
The Holy Martyrs were from Corinth and were arrested during the reign of Decius (249–251), because they boldly confessed their faith in Christ. They were brought before the proconsul Tertius, who was governor of Greece. The ruler subjected these athletes of the faith to dreadful tortures, and all of them received the crown of martyrdom. Saint Victorinus, Saint Victor, and Saint Nikephoros were thrown beneath a large cylindrical stone which crushed them. The executioners cut off the hands and feet of Saint Claudius, the head of Saint Sarapinos (or Serapion), and threw Saint Diodoros into a red-hot furnace, while Saint Papias was drowned in the sea. It is possible that they are the same martyrs as those commemorated on January 31.
These Holy Martyrs may be unknown to most of the faithful, yet they are nonetheless characterized by our Church, through its Hymnographer, as “Great Martyrs” (Sticheron at Vespers). And this is because, for the sake of their faith, they endured every kind of torture that the demon-driven heart of their persecutors could devise: “the piercing of their eyes, the cutting off of their fingers, the slashing of their sides, their hanging, the crushing of their bones, their dismemberment by the sword” (Sticheron at Vespers). In reality, their martyrdom was for them also “an imitation of the holy Passion of Christ Himself” (Sticheron at Vespers, Ode 9), which means that the poetic cause of all they endured was their love for Him (Ode 3). For this reason, Saint Joseph the Hymnographer notes the result of this grace-filled state, as a continuation of the redemption brought by the Crucifixion of the Lord: “You dissolved all the schemes of the evil devil” (Ode 3), while “you shone like stars by the grace of the Holy Spirit beyond gold” (Ode 3).
It is noteworthy how insistently our Hymnographer presents the Holy Martyrs as truly radiant and luminous people. Not only in the above observation, but in many hymns he shows this same concern: that the Holy Spirit illumined them (see also Ode 1), that their brightness surpassed even the radiance of the sun itself (Kathisma of Orthros, Ode 9), that they were revealed indeed as “luminaries of the faithful” (Sticheron at Vespers, Ode 9). And why is this? Because he wishes to emphasize what is self-evident in the Christian faith: that the one who is possessed by the love of Christ and who keeps the eyes of his mind continually fixed on Him (Kathisma of Orthros, Ode 5), cannot but live within His light. This is a truth that we Christians often forget, and for this reason we are dominated by the darkness of our worldly mindset. We mean what Saint John the Theologian points out, in harmony with the word of the Lord: “Whoever loves God and his neighbor abides in the light of God.” And this means that, while for the fallen human being tortures are the worst thing that can happen to a person, for the martyrs themselves they are the best thing they can attain in their life: they lead them directly into the light of Paradise (Ode 6).
This is another logic, one that is outside this world — the logic of the faith of Christ — which we also observe in another kind of martyrdom: that of conscience, that is, the struggle against the passions through the practice of self-control, fasting, and the other ascetic disciplines. Most people hear of fasting and self-restraint and their face “darkens.” Those Christians who understand, hear of fasting and self-restraint and they shine. Why? Because they know: they are walking the path that leads them out of darkness into the open brightness of eternal sunlight. Harsh winter is the life far from God. Sweet spring and sunshine is the life with Him. Because it is life with our Father and Creator, who is always an open embrace toward us!
Source: Translated by John Sanidopoulos.
