By Fr. George Dorbarakis
1. Saint Mamas was from Gangra, a city of the Paphlagonians. His parents were Christians, and they were arrested for their faith in Christ and thrown into prison. There, in the bonds of imprisonment, the Saint was born. Because his parents died in prison, the infant was taken in by a Christian woman named Ammia, who raised him. The Saint continually called this foster mother of his “Mama,” and for this reason he was named Mamas. When he was fifteen years old, he was arrested as a Christian and beaten with rods; afterward they hung a heavy weight of lead around his neck and threw him into the sea. But by the power of God he was saved from the danger and hid in a cave, being nourished on the milk of deer. Yet again they arrested him, threw him into a furnace, and cast him to the wild beasts. Finally, they pierced him with an iron trident, and thus he departed from this life.
2. The grace possessed by Saint Mamas is threefold. First, because he was the child of martyrs, from whom, even though he never knew them, he surely received the continual blessing of their bold prayers before the Lord. Second, because he was brought up as a Christian by a devout woman, who imparted to him the streams of the Christian faith and surely never ceased speaking to him about his sanctified parents. Third, and most importantly, while still a child he himself became a confessor and martyr of the Christian faith, belonging to that distinguished company of the holy child-martyrs.
Our Church brings this particular grace of Saint Mamas before us especially through his service, as it compares him, because of the correspondence between their martyrdoms, both with the Three Holy Children in Babylon, who were cast into the fire because of their steadfastness in the faith, and with the Prophet Daniel, who endured the ordeal of being confined in a den of lions.
Moreover, the Holy Hymnographer sees him as a continuation of the righteous Abel as well. Just as Abel, as a shepherd of sheep, offered God the best that he had from his flock and thereby received the crown of spiritual combat, so too Saint Mamas: living among animals when he was shut up in the cave, he ultimately “offered himself as an acceptable sacrifice to Christ through his martyrdom.”
Among the other things we point out about Saint Mamas, what is important is the fact that he did not reject, but on the contrary made full use of, the grace that had been offered to him. What we mean is that the young Saint, a descendant of martyrs and raised as a Christian, did not react against this special grace that was given to him; that is, what we might call the “natural” rebelliousness of adolescence, as it is viewed today, did not operate in him.
For very often we observe that children of devout parents, when they enter adolescence, begin to rebel against their parents’ principles and values because they want to shape their own distinct life within a framework of freedom and therefore, in their view, outside the “oppression” of the faith handed down to them. And certainly, up to a point, it is natural for things to develop in this way, just as it is natural eventually to see these “rebellious” young people return to the traditions of their family as soon as they regain their balance after the storm of adolescence has passed.
In Saint Mamas, however, we do not see this “natural” course and development. He displays such exceptional maturity from childhood onward that he becomes a model not only for young people, but for all people of every age.
The hymnographer, evidently unable to understand rationally the astonishing wisdom and maturity of the child Mamas for one so young, attempts to explain it by attributing it to a special grace which God gave him, because He foresaw both the good disposition of his soul and the entire sanctified course of his life:
“The Word, who foresaw the nobility and perfection in every way of your mind, O Mamas, filled you with wisdom from your swaddling clothes, and adorned you in manifold ways with the thoughts of good things, O most renowned martyr and bearer of the prize.”
We do not wish to comment on this manner of God’s action - for who, after all, can become His counselor? — but we can all take example from Saint Mamas, trying, insofar as possible, not to become rebellious against the good things handed down to us by previous generations.
At some point, we all need, as individuals, as a society, and as a state, to become serious, choosing the maturity of accepting what is good rather than continually the immaturity of rejection. At some point, we need to leave behind the rebelliousness of adolescence and become adults.
Source: Translated by John Sanidopoulos.
