By St. Luke, Archbishop of Simferopol and All Crimea
(Delivered on April 23, 1947)
(Delivered on April 23, 1947)
"The souls of the righteous are in the hand of God, and no torment will ever touch them." (Wisdom of Solomon 3:1)
How was this torment not felt by the Holy Great Martyr George the Trophy-Bearer? How were the torments not felt of multitudes of martyrs?
From the lives of the saints it is known that there were many martyrs, including Saint George the Trophy-Bearer, who did not feel their torments.
This may seem paradoxical, impossible to you, but it is a fact that does not only concern the martyrs. This fact is quite well known in history: when in the Middle Ages they subjected to torture the unfortunate women, whom they considered to be witches, then it was often observed that during the torture these unfortunate women fell into a state of bliss. At first they cried out, they were tortured, they suffered, then when the tortures intensified, when they became unbearable, their faces lit up with the feeling of bliss, they did not feel the tortures.
