Holy Martyrs Probos, Tarachos and Andronikos in the Hymnography of the Orthodox Church

By Fr. George Dorbarakis

1. These Saints lived when Diocletian was consul in Rome and Flavian was governor. Tarachos was advanced in age, Roman by birth, and a soldier by profession. Probos was from Side in Pamphylia, while Andronikos was from the city of Ephesus in Ionia. During the persecutions that had broken out against the Christians at that time, all three were arrested.

They crushed Tarachos’s jaws and neck with stones, burned his hands with fire, and suspended him on a wooden frame amid suffocating smoke. Next, they poured vinegar into his nostrils and seared his breasts with red-hot spits. They cut off his ears with a razor, flayed his head, and threw him to the beasts. Finally, after cutting him into pieces with a knife, he offered his soul to God.

The valiant Probos was first beaten with rawhide thongs. Then they burned his feet with red-hot irons and suspended him on a wooden frame. There they seared his back and sides with red-hot spits, and pierced his shins with other spits. Finally, after cutting him to pieces with knives as well, he reached his blessed end.

The divine Andronikos was suspended on a wooden frame, his shins slashed with sharp irons, and his sides pierced through. Then the executioners rubbed salt into his wounds, cut off his tongue and lips, and, after cutting nearly his entire body to pieces with knives, he too surrendered his spirit into the hands of God.

2. We think that if a film were made depicting the martyrdom of these three holy martyrs, admission would be prohibited to minors. Even reading about the tortures they endured shocks every human soul that retains even the slightest trace of humanity and sensitivity, as we say. The terrible executioners of Diocletian, the most ruthless of all the emperors who persecuted Christians, must have exhausted their imaginations in devising all these punishments for the holy martyrs. What did they not use in their efforts to break the martyrs’ resolve and punish their “insolence”? They refused to obey the emperor’s orders and would not acknowledge him as a “god.”

All this revealed, on the one hand, the demonic nature of the persecutors. Only instruments of the devil, guided by him, could do such things. On the other hand, it revealed the grace-filled strength possessed by the martyrs of Christ. Only someone who possesses His grace can endure such terrible and numerous tortures and yet continue, as we shall never tire of emphasizing, to love even his enemies! As the Apostle Paul bears witness: “For unto us it is given not only to believe in Him, but also to suffer for His sake” (Philippians 1:29).

This grace of Christ was active in the hearts and bodies of the holy martyrs. It gave them the strength to endure their sufferings without diminishing their love. This is the “secret” of the life of every Christian martyr, and indeed of every Christian. No one can be a Christian without living by this grace, whether in peaceful times or in an age of persecution. We mean that if someone claims to be a Christian but does not live by the grace of love for God and for his fellow human being, even his enemy, then he is not a Christian. He belongs to those commonly described as “Christians on paper.”

It should be self-evident by now that it is not the name or title that makes someone a Christian, but the way one actually lives. “Not everyone who says to Me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the Kingdom of God, but he who does the will of My Father who is in heaven,” the Lord said (Matthew 7:21). A Christian is one whose heart burns with the love of Christ. His life is devoted to Him, and from Him he receives the strength to overcome every adversity. How did the Apostle Paul put it? “Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or danger, or the sword? … Nothing shall separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus” (Romans 8:35, 39).

This is what the Hymnographer of the three holy martyrs emphasizes today. Their greatness, their heroism, and their unconquerable resolve can be explained only by their ardent love for Christ:

“Burning with longing for Christ, O glorious victorious martyrs, you proved unconquerable. Neither the sword, nor the furnace, nor the fury of tyrants, nor the torments of punishment, nor death could frighten you.”

The truth that there can be no Christian life without the love of Christ at work in the Christian’s heart and body also provides the criterion for our own age. What has always been true remains true today, because the word of God is eternal. Our faith does not change with the passage of time or with external changes in society. “Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today, and forever” (Hebrews 13:8).

What does this mean? Amid life’s difficulties, its frequent tragedies, and one setback after another, a Christian cannot find an excuse to deny Christ, that is, to deny love for God and for his fellow human being. There is no justification, no pretext, for grumbling against God, blaspheming Him, or blaspheming His image, which is every human being. Nor can we be ready to cast into the fire anyone who perhaps creates a problem for our comfortable way of life.

We emphasize this: love for our enemies and persecutors is the defining characteristic of our Christian life. Perseverance in this love is the only thing that attunes us to our God. Just as we cannot tune in to a television or radio station without tuning to the frequency on which it broadcasts, so we cannot tune in to God, to experience Him in our very being, unless we attune ourselves to where He broadcasts. And our God continually and ceaselessly broadcasts love, for “God is love” (1 John 4:8).

If we do not understand this, then at the very least we should have the realism to acknowledge that we are not living as Christians. But in that case, “To whom shall we go?” Who else has “the words of eternal life” (John 6:68)?

Source: Translated by John Sanidopoulos.