By Fr. George Dorbarakis
For your athletic struggles, O Kodratos, and your preaching,
You receive many prizes in the heavens.
On the twenty-first, Kodratos found a crown through his struggles.
For your athletic struggles, O Kodratos, and your preaching,
You receive many prizes in the heavens.
On the twenty-first, Kodratos found a crown through his struggles.
1. Saint Kodratos was a wise and highly learned man. He too was one of the disciples of Christ, one of His Seventy Apostles, and, having been enriched by the fiery grace of the Holy Spirit, he was ordained Bishop of the Athenians. He converted many pagans to the true faith of Christ, while those regarded by the Greeks as wise men, who took great pride in their wisdom, he silenced and put to shame by the grace of God and by the power of his words. For this reason he was punished by the persecutors of the Christians with stones, with fire, and with many other tortures, and was driven from his province and his flock. He departed for the city of Magnesia, where there too he dispelled the darkness of delusion through his teachings. And afterward, during the reign of the Emperor Hadrian, called Aelius, in the year 117, he received the crown of martyrdom. His holy relic is in Magnesia of Asia Minor and, like a spring, heals every illness in all those who approach it with the faith of Christ.
2. The Holy Hymnographer Joseph directs our attention to three things from the magnificent life of the Holy Apostle Kodratos: the power of his teaching, his miracles both while he was alive and after his martyrdom, and the purity of his soul. It is understandable that all three are most intimately connected with one another, since purity of soul is the prerequisite for the presence of Christ in the existence of a believer: “Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God,” He Himself said, so that, illumined by this presence, he may preach His gospel with power and perform miracles, both while living and after his repose, radiating the all-powerful energy of the Triune God. Indeed, it is striking how much Saint Joseph, “dazzled” by the luminous personality of the Apostle, emphasizes the radiance of the light of Christ within the sanctified existence of His Apostle. Not once or twice, but countless times, at Vespers and at Matins, he points to this reality, as though the Apostle were truly a luminous pillar rising from the earth to reach heaven, and yet also the reverse: being completely radiant in heaven, he becomes an instrument of Christ, so that through his prayers he may illumine the darkness of the people who remain on earth.
“You became completely radiant with the splendors of the heavenly gifts,” he says, for example, already at the beginning of Vespers, “and you appeared in the world, O Kodratos, as a sun offering joyful rays of the divine preaching to all.”
“With your divine teachings you illumined many, for you became a minister of the Light of Christ, which illumined the ends of the earth, O Hierarch Kodratos, with His divine radiances” (Ode 3).
“Illumining those darkened by delusion with the lamps of your words, you burned up every deception like dry brushwood” (Ode 4).
And what was the cause of his luminous presence? The fact that he became a dwelling place of God Himself. “The most pure God found your pure soul to be a dwelling place of His glory, and through you He therefore purifies souls defiled by terrible transgressions” (Ode 4).
What was it that Saint Kodratos did that caused the holy Triune God to look upon him with such favor? Or, in other words: what did the Apostle do in order to preserve his soul pure? The Holy Hymnographer tells us repeatedly: “You walked, O glorious Apostle, along the straight path of the commandments of Christ; therefore you saved those who had gone astray from the difficult paths of impiety and unbelief. Therefore we, the faithful, glorify you as a man who is free from error, and as a guide and mediator of our reconciliation with God” (Vespers, Aposticha). The interpretive word of the hymnographer, Saint Joseph, concerning Saint Kodratos is perfectly clear and stands wholly within the tradition of the Lord, the Apostles, and the Fathers of the Church: no one can find God outside the path of His commandments. With His help, the believer places himself, even by force, where the will of God indicates that he should be, with the result that he becomes attuned to Him, since God “hides within His commandments.” Having God within his being, literally becoming a dwelling place of the Almighty, on the one hand he himself lives his salvation, and on the other he offers the world this salvation that he lives, that is, Jesus Christ.
Source: Translated by John Sanidopoulos.
