The Martyrdom of the Saints as Life in Christ and the Overcoming of Death
By Metropolitan Hierotheos of Nafpaktos and Agiou Vlasiou
By Metropolitan Hierotheos of Nafpaktos and Agiou Vlasiou
(Transcribed sermon delivered on the feast of Saint Christopher, in Agrinio, on 9 May 2024)
Your Eminence Metropolitan Damaskenos of the Sacred Metropolis of Aetolia and Acarnania, beloved holy Hierarchs in Christ, honorable Presbyterate, Diaconate of Christ, most honorable civil authorities, blessed and chosen people of the Lord.
First of all, I would like to express my warmest thanks to your Eminence, your shepherd and our beloved brother in Christ, Damaskenos, who invited me to come to this city on the day when its patron saint, Saint Christopher, is celebrated. It is in this city that, as Your Eminence mentioned both yesterday and today, I grew up and laid the foundations for my later development in ecclesiastical life and, of course, in my theological formation.
I give thanks to God because in this city, besides completing my secondary studies, I came to know the then-Protosyngellos, Archimandrite Kallinikos Poulos, who, when he was elected Metropolitan of Edessa, Pella, and Almopia, invited me to join him, and I remained with him for fifteen years. Now he is a Saint of our Church, and to him I owe very much — indeed, the whole ecclesiastical and theological life which God counted me worthy to live within the Church.
1. Martyrdom as the Overcoming of the Fear of Death
Today we celebrate the memory of the Holy Great Martyr Christopher, once again, the patron saint of this city. Yesterday, during Vespers, His Eminence Metropolitan Justin of Nea Krini and Kalamaria briefly presented to us the life of Saint Christopher, which is truly wondrous. He also spoke about the work he accomplished, how God glorified him, and of course about the blessed name that he received.
What I would like to present to your love, since your shepherd, His Eminence, gave me the blessing for this Eucharistic sermon, is one aspect of the Saint’s life: his martyric end, his martyric death, and his beheading.
Saint Christopher belongs to the category of the great saints of our Church, the Great Martyrs. He endured unimaginable tortures, which he faced with great patience and endurance, and finally he was beheaded for the love of Christ.
What many people ask me, when they read such events as the martyrdoms of the saints, is this: what was it that made these saints give everything for Christ? Above all, what was it that made them sacrifice their biological life, not fear death, and not feel pain during their martyrdom?
We know from experience that even for a small medical procedure on our body — even if we simply go to the dentist for a minor operation on a tooth — anesthesia is needed, because we cannot endure physical pain. Imagine someone advancing toward martyrdom, while the torture unfolds, while they beat him, place him on the wheel, tear his flesh apart, and yet he glorifies God. One wonders: “Does this person not feel pain, since he has a body? Is he superhuman? Why does he not show this pain, why does he not express this sorrow, and why does he have such longing and burning love to suffer martyrdom for the love of Christ? Why is he not afraid of death?” There is, of course, a theological answer to this question.
First of all, I want to say that death is something terrible. We all know this from experience. After the ancestral sin of Adam and Eve, death entered human existence. This means that from the very moment we were conceived in our mother’s womb — from the first fertilized ovum, the first cell — among the 25,000 genes it contains, there are also the genes of aging, that is, the genes of death. Furthermore, they say that among all these genes in every cell, a certain number are genes of disease.
This means that from the first moment of his conception, before the embryonic stem cells differentiate to form the human body, before tissues are formed, before organs are formed, and even before the body itself is formed during approximately the first two and a half months of gestation, already within the human body, within the cells, there exist the genes of death, which remain within us throughout our entire life.
And of course, as a person grows older, he sees death upon himself through illnesses, aging, and the various signs upon his body. He sees himself advancing in age and moving toward old age and toward the end of biological life. Naturally, this increases the anxiety of death.
There is no greater problem than the fear and anxiety of death. We tremble before death; we tremble before the awareness and consciousness of death. I think that the greatest social problem is not what we usually imagine — salaries, employment, or something else — but the greatest social problem existing in our society is the fear of death.
Observe this in your own life. From a young age, because there lurks within man the awareness that he will grow old and that the moment will come when he will no longer have strength, he tries to satisfy all passions: the pursuit of pleasure, the passion for glory, greed for money so that he may gather wealth for his old age and for death.
The problem of death is immense, because when a person realizes that the years are passing and that he is approaching the end of biological life, he is seized by fear of death. He understands that he will be separated from the people he loves. He possesses the consciousness of death, because only man has consciousness of death, whereas animals do not possess such awareness.
Then he is overtaken by anxiety about what the final hours of his biological life will be like, when he stands at the threshold, at those borderline moments — as the existentialist philosophers used to say — between life and death. He is filled with anguish concerning that hour when the soul will depart from the body. And afterward he is consumed by anxiety concerning the unknown state of life after death. He wonders what will happen then. These are questions people often ask, especially during funeral services: “Where does the soul go after it leaves the body? Does the soul still understand and perceive then?” And man becomes overwhelmed by this anxiety and anguish of death when he thinks that his body will decay in the earth, and wonders where the soul will be.
Many answers are given to these questions, according to the various philosophical systems, ancient and modern alike. So you see that death, together with the anxiety and fear of death, dominates our life.
The saints transcend all these things. You see Saint Christopher not possessed by fear of death. They lead him to martyrdom; he knows what martyrdom means. He knows what it means for the whole body to be wounded without anesthesia. He knows what it means that the moment will come when he will part from all those whom he knew. Yet he has no fear of death; he has transcended death. Why? Because he is strengthened by the grace of the Risen Christ, but also because he is filled with the joy of meeting the Risen Christ.
2. The Interpretive Key to the Overcoming of the Fear of Death
But how is this fact explained? What is the interpretive key by which a person — the Saints and Great Martyrs — at that moment transcends the fear and anguish of death?
We know from the studies conducted by molecular biologists on cells that there exists what is called cellular memory, the so-called mnemonic cellular system. That is, the cells, up until the fourteenth day after human conception, multiply while remaining undifferentiated, and on the fourteenth day after conception, after fertilization, they begin to differentiate. Some of the cells become the heart, others nervous tissue, others blood, and so on, in order for the entire human body to be formed.
Thus, within every cell there exists this so-called memory, this mnemonic cellular system, since each cell “knows” what it is going to become. And, of course, there also exist the genes of aging and disease, as I mentioned previously. This is the biological explanation of the matter.
However, from a theological perspective, we know that beyond the memory of the cells, the so-called cellular memory, there also exists the memory of the heart, the memory of the nous, since the nous is connected with the heart, and this memory refers to God.
Man therefore possesses two memories: from the bodily perspective he has cellular memory, and from the spiritual perspective he has the memory of the heart. This is what Christ said: “Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God” (Matt. 5:8). And, of course, in ordinary human matters we have the memory of reason and we think and remember, but from the Orthodox tradition we know — and this is emphasized especially by all the hesychast Fathers — that there exists the memory of the noetic energy, the memory of the heart, within which is found the remembrance of God.
Thus, when this noetic energy develops — the memory of the heart, the memory of the nous — man has within himself the Grace of God and possesses unceasing remembrance of God. The body and the cells do what they are programmed to do, what they know how to do, but the spiritual man possesses within himself another world, another center which has remembrance of God. This is what the Apostle Paul says: “Pray without ceasing” (1 Thess. 5:17). How is it possible for someone to pray unceasingly while his mind is occupied with various matters? It is the memory of the nous, the noetic energy within the heart.
When the human heart is purified, then this nous appears, this particular mnemonic system, and it continually remembers the name of God. And when someone remembers the name of God — especially with his heart — then he receives the uncreated energy and Grace of God, God Himself, and experiences what is called the illumination of the nous. And sometimes this illumined nous — not an illumined intellect, which comes through worldly education — but the illumined nous, is raised to theoria and beholds God.
This explains how, during the martyrdoms of the saints, while their bodies were receiving tremendous pressures and tortures, nevertheless through their noetic energy they had experiences of God: they saw angels, they saw saints, they saw Christ Himself. In this way the Grace of God came upon them, and this was the greatest anesthetic, the spiritual anesthetic. And although the body suffered pain, they did not perceive the pain, because the Grace of God has greater power.
We see this in Saint Perpetua, who was placed in the middle of the arena, and the wild beasts came and threw her down. She was wounded and blood was flowing, but she rose up and wondered why the beasts had not yet come to devour her. She possessed divine eros; she was intoxicated with sober intoxication.
There is an intoxication that comes from material foods and drinks, and there is another, spiritual intoxication, which is called divine intoxication. This is what happened with Saint Christopher. Read the life of Saint Christopher and you will see that an angel of the Lord appeared to him. How can one behold the angel of God? Through this illumined noetic memory.
3. Divine Experience
It is written in his Synaxarion: “They nailed him onto a bronze instrument of torture, and underneath they lit a fire, and yet he remained living in ease and repose.” Why did this happen? Because he was possessed by this sober intoxication; he was drunk with the Grace of God. And whoever is drunk with the Grace of God does not perceive outward things.
Something else astonishing is written in the Synaxarion of Saint Christopher, something which few people notice and interpret:
“Then the blessed one said that he saw a man tall in bodily stature and beautiful in face, clothed in white, and the rays shining forth from his face overcame and covered the brightness of the radiant sun itself. Upon his head there was a shining crown, and around him stood fiery soldiers — the angels — against whom certain others, black and hideous, fought, but appeared to have been defeated.”
This, then, is the interpretive key to martyrdom: that they did not feel pain, that they had transcended the fear of death, and that they rejoiced. This mnemonic system had been activated, this noetic energy. The bodies of the martyrs endured their sufferings, but the martyrs themselves saw Christ, the Panagia, the angels, and the saints. In this text which I read, it is evident that Saint Christopher saw the Risen Christ. And when someone beholds God, then he partakes of the glory of God, which means that he attains deification by grace.
Saint John of Damascus uses, for the union of the two natures in Christ, the example of red-hot iron. Iron placed in the fire remains iron — it does not lose its material nature — yet it takes on the energy of the fire. Analogously, this also happens with the saints: the body remains, but it burns with the uncreated Grace of God.
Thus Saint Christopher too was a man aflame at the hour of his martyrdom. For this reason he counted nothing else of importance; he loved Christ and did not feel pain, and he was led joyfully toward martyrdom. To what was this due? To the Risen Christ and to participation in the Resurrection of Christ, which he experienced through his activated noetic energy.
This, therefore, is the interpretive key by which we overcome all the problems and all the difficulties of our life, as well as fear itself, the anguish and anxiety of death.
“Christ is risen from the dead, trampling down death by death, and upon those in the tombs bestowing life.”
Source: Translated by John Sanidopoulos.
