By Fr. George Dorbarakis
“She who was once ensnared by the serpent was revealed as a snare for him, restraining his dominion and trampling upon his cunning, by the power of God” (Ode 6).
The first part of the life of the Venerable Pelagia is well known: she lived in licentiousness, steeped in sins. And this was because of her ignorance of the true God, which causes a person to walk as one blind, making choices in which the only one who rejoices is the wicked devil. Just as the Apostle Paul says as early as the first chapter of his Letter to the Romans (1:24ff.): “God gave them up” (those who are ignorant of God) “to their vile desires and allowed them to dishonor their own bodies. For they exchanged the truth of God for the lie, and they revered and worshiped creation instead of the Creator.” “She was ensnared by the devil,” the Hymnographer of her service also observes.
But what happened? Because there was ignorance and she was a well-intentioned person, God therefore brought her into an encounter with Saint Nonnus, the Bishop of Antioch where Pelagia also lived. He catechized her in the Orthodox faith, and she was converted and earnestly repented, with the result that she was baptized in the name of the Lord and began a way of life that even the greatest ascetics, and even the Holy Angels, would have envied! A new Venerable Mary of Egypt! Now enclosed, wearing rough garments like Saint John the Forerunner, she remained until the end of her life on the Mount of Olives, in a cave, truly attaining great heights of holiness.
What is the important point here that the profound theologian, Saint George the Hymnographer, emphasizes? Pelagia, now possessing the power of God through her repentance, becomes the... terror of the evil one—from being ensnared by him, she herself became a snare for him! This is a truth confirmed, beyond the Lord and the Holy Apostles, of course, by all the Fathers of the Church, and especially by those called the Neptic Fathers. The one who speaks above all about this is Saint Anthony, but equally characteristically Saint John of Karpathos, who emphasizes precisely this: The devil ensnares us, but “we too, if we are not asleep, will be able to set greater and more dreadful snares and nets and ambushes for him. For prayer, the psalms, vigil, humility, service toward our neighbor and mercy, thanksgiving, and the hearing of the divine words become an ambush and a snare and a pit and scourges and a gallows and nets for the enemy”!
Source: Translated by John Sanidopoulos.
