By Fr. George Dorbarakis
1. This Apostle of the Lord, after traversing as though having wings the whole inhabited world, uprooted from the foundations every delusion by his preaching concerning Christ, having also as follower of him the all-wondrous Junia, who had already been deadened to the world and lived only for Christ. The result of their activity was that they drew many people to the knowledge of God, thus causing the destruction of the idol temples. Wherever they went they built divine churches, drove away unclean spirits from people, and healed incurable sufferings. In the end, as human beings, they departed from this life. These apostles the Apostle Paul remembers in the Epistle to the Romans. "Greet," he says, "Andronikos and Junia my kinsmen, who also before me became Christians."
2. The kinship of the Apostle Paul toward the apostles celebrated today, Andronikos and Junia, as also their before-him entry into the Church as members of Christ, is among the points which the Holy Hymnographer Joseph strongly touches upon, because he sees them being projected by Paul himself as proofs of the important position of these in the Church. The Apostle Paul, that is, by mentioning particularly Saints Andronikos and Junia in the Epistle to the Romans, shows that these are apostles who hold official position in the Church. “As distinguished indeed among the Apostles the blessed Paul proclaims you in the Church, O blessed ones” (Ode 5). “As kinsman of Paul and as having become before him a disciple, together with him now we honor you, having gathered in faith, O Andronikos” (Ode 5).
And it is understandable: if a great saint and great apostle like the Apostle Paul extols some people, it means that these certain people are not random persons. Only a saint with sharpened spiritual criteria can see the spiritual condition of others, as in the present case Paul concerning Andronikos and Junia. The Apostle Paul himself has said it: “the spiritual man judges all things, but he himself is judged by no one.” The spiritual man, that is, he who has the Spirit of God, can discern and examine all things, but he himself cannot be examined by any non-spiritual person. This therefore is also what Saint Joseph emphasizes: “Paul the divine Apostle, extolling you most brilliantly with divine praises, presents to the faithful your nobility, saying that before him you proved to be disciples of God the Word” (Vespers Sticheron).
This reverential attitude of the Apostle Paul toward his kinsmen Saints Andronikos and Junia, an attitude which extends also to the whole fullness now of the faithful, is obviously due on the one hand to the fact that these holy apostles truly were saints as “obedient ones of the Word” (Vespers Sticheron), since “you directed all the movements of your mind, O most sacred one, toward fulfillment of the wills of God, rejoicing, O Andronikos” (Ode 1) — this is the saint: the faithful one who refers his whole self to God and to the keeping of His holy will — and on the other hand to the fact that Andronikos, but also Junia surely, “having deadened your members by struggles, you were deemed worthy to behold the life of the living, namely Christ our God bearing flesh upon the earth” (Ode 3), just as also they became partakers of the fire of the Holy Spirit which blew also upon them during Pentecost, a fire which afterwards they carried about in the exercise of their missionary ministry. “You became fire-breathing of the divine Spirit with your pure mind, O apostle, carrying about the warmth and burning the thorn of delusion” (Ode 3).
The estimations of Saint Joseph that the Saints “deadened their sinful mindsets in order to see Christ” and that “they carried about the warmth of the flame of the Comforter” have particular significance also for our own life. No one, that is, can see Christ — not of course “bearing flesh upon the earth,” but perceptibly in Spirit within his heart — if he does not make a struggle, certainly with the grace of Christ and within the Church, for deadening his sinful mindset, because “no one can serve two masters,” just as also no one can claim that he truly received this Christ within himself, if his heart is not in warmth toward God and neighbor. A frozen heart, that is, a heart which does not have love, consequently warmth of the Holy Spirit, even if there exists confession of faith, does not have Christ either. Christ exists always and only where the warmth of the flame of the Spirit of God, the living love, is carried about.
Source: Translated by John Sanidopoulos.
