August: Day 1: Teaching 4: The Holy Maccabean Martyrs

August: Day 1: Teaching 4:
The Holy Maccabean Martyrs
 
(On Standing Firm For One’s Holy, National Faith)

By Archpriest Grigory Dyachenko

I. Today, brethren, the Holy Church solemnly celebrates the feast day in memory of the Seven Maccabean Martyrs, their mother Solomone, and their teacher Eleazar. They lived nearly two hundred years before the birth of Christ, yet despite this, the Christian Orthodox Church continues to joyfully celebrate their memory to this day. What have they done to deserve this? What actions and feats have they accomplished to earn themselves eternal remembrance in prayer? To understand this, let us turn to the history of the time in which they lived.

Esteemed Church, the Holy Maccabean Martyrs lived during the reign of the Syrian king Antiochus Epiphanes. This king, having plundered Jerusalem and slaughtered many thousands of Jews, initiated a wicked persecution of their faith, seeking to eradicate it entirely in order to subject them more securely and swiftly to his rule. To this end, he commanded the Jews, under threat of death, to "cease burnt offerings and sacrifices and libations in the sanctuary, abolish Sabbaths and feasts, establish pagan altars and groves and shrines, and to sacrifice swine and other animals that are abominable to the pagans, to leave their sons uncircumcised, and generally to change all previous religious beliefs, institutions, laws, morals, and ancestral customs" (1 Maccabees 6). It was a difficult time for the Jews. To change the faith and customs of their ancestors meant to change their nationality; it meant to lose everything – both faith and nationality. However, being faithful to the law of God and the covenants of their forefathers, the Jews disregarded the threats of the wicked king. For them, death was preferable to betraying their faith. Holding on to their beliefs, they feared neither severe tortures nor death, to which the tormentors subjected the Jews.

Euphemia, Theophano and Solomone

 

By Metropolitan Evangelos of Perge

Three fragrant women sleep in coffins
the sleep of the saints in the right aisle
for centuries spinning deification into grace, into light and into life,
Euphemia, Theophano and Solomone.

Three sealed women with Tomes and Scepters
from Synodal and Royal definitions
are kept in a position of temporary burial
lamps of time and the throne,
Euphemia, Theophano and Solomone.

The Fasting Maccabees (Demetrios Panagopoulos)

By Demetrios Panagopoulos (+ 1982), Preacher

If you open your Synaxarion to August 1st you will find a mother with seven children. It is Saint Solomone. She is the mother of these children, the so-called "Maccabees". She had entrusted her children to a teacher named Eleazar.

And do you know why these children were all sacrificed? Because they refused to eat pork. It was a law then in the Old Testament that pork was forbidden.

Are you listening? Who told them about this? This is not a simple task, but it came from someone who by deed and word instilled it in them.

Homily on the Holy Seven Maccabees - Our Faith is True (Metr. Augoustinos Kantiotes)

 On the Holy Seven Maccabees

Our Faith is True

By Metropolitan Augoustinos Kantiotes of Florina

(Delivered in the Church of the Holy Trinity, Ptolmaida, 

on Sunday August 2nd, 1987)

We will speak, my beloved, on the Holy Maccabees. They are a constellation of nine stars, one being their teacher Eleazar, the second was their mother Solomone, and the other seven are her brilliant children of this large family.

These heroes lived in the 2nd century before Christ, during the reign of the King of Syria and Judea, one of the successors of Alexander the Great, Antiochus Epiphanes (175-163 BC). This man, a fanatical idolater, had endless hatred for the Jews, who were the only ones who believed in the true God. He tried with his whole being to uproot from their hearts their faith which had been given to them by Moses. And he slaughtered, slaughtering like a wild beast, more wild than a tiger or a lion. A beast might eat three or four people, but can't eat more. He, however, slaughtered 80,000 Jews, and blood poured through the streets of Jerusalem like a river.