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By Fr. George Dorbarakis
These most divine martyrs, who were gathered from various places and came to Kyzikos, put the ruler to shame by the courage of their mind and rejected with abhorrence the delusion of the idols. For this they were subjected to various tortures, without of course being persuaded to change. On the contrary: they offered themselves as a living sacrifice to the true God, whereupon they were put to death by the sword.
The Holy Nine Martyrs who contended in Kyzikos depict the nine immaterial ranks of the angels. This means: just as the angels unceasingly glorify the Triune God, always being ready in obedience to His all-holy will, in the same way these also: while they lived in this life, they obeyed the will of the Lord, and indeed they offered even their very life for His sake; therefore they were granted by Him to glorify Him together with the angels unceasingly in heaven. The Verses of the Synaxarion of the Saints, as well as many troparia from the odes, present this truth.
“An image of the nine immaterial angelic ranks, are the nine men whose heads were cut off.”
“By divine laws, being strengthened by the might of the Spirit, you cast down the counsels and the snares of the lawless; and having struggled lawfully, you attained glory.” (Ode 3).
Saint Joseph the Hymnographer, from the beginning, emphasizes what our Church, based on the holy word of the Lord, continually proclaims: no one receives the crown from God unless he struggles lawfully, that is, according to the will of God. “No athlete is crowned unless he competes lawfully” (Apostle Paul). Whatever a person does, whatever course of life he chooses to follow, he will never have a real relationship with God if he sets aside His holy commandments. “Walk by means of the commandments” is the constant exhortation of our Holy Fathers and of our Church, which means to walk in Christ. “Walk in Him” (Apostle John).
The Holy Hymnographer, beyond the above truth which constitutes the essence of the holiness of the nine martyrs — and of all the saints — dwells also on something that is a proof of the right course of life of the nine: their unity. The Saints, although nine in number and indeed coming from different regions, had one soul and one heart. What the Evangelist Luke notes for the first community of Jerusalem in the Acts of the Apostles — that is, that the Christians “had all things in common, because they all had one heart and one mind” — what our Church prays for, following the command of her Head, Jesus Christ, “that they all may be one,” this exactly we see in the nine heroes of the faith today. They may have been nine bodies, but one was their mind, because of their common faith and love for Christ. And from this point of view, wherever there is division and enmity and hatred, even if the same faith is confessed, Christ is not present there.
“Having one mind in your different bodies, you together received the crown of martyrdom, O martyrs” (Ode 4).
And elsewhere:
“Six youths together with three others, having acquired one mind in many bodies, quenched the furnace of delusion, being piously refreshed by the dew of the divine Spirit” (Ode 7).
This unity in faith and love, a manifestation of the presence of Christ in their life, culminating also in their common martyrdom, made them, according to the Hymnographer, act in the world on the one hand as rain that refreshes the faithful, and on the other as a force of dryness for the delusion of atheism. In other words, the greatest offering of a believer, in order to help his fellow men find the way of living faith and to strike a decisive blow against demonic and corrupting atheism, which dries up life, is to live himself in Christ, ready even to sacrifice his life for his faith. Saint Joseph also guides us in this:
“Mystical clouds, raining upon the faithful with the showers of your blood, you were shown to be, O wise and most admirable athletes, and drying up the delusion of atheism by grace; therefore we bless you” (Ode 1).
“With the streams of your revered blood you truly dried up the sea of idolatrous deceit, and you watered the Church of Christ, O martyrs, God-minded ones” (Ode 6).
Source: Translated by John Sanidopoulos.
