Lives of the Saints
1. HIEROMARTYR CLEMENT, BISHOP OF ANCYRA
Clement was born in the year 258, in the city of Ancyra of a pagan father and a Christian mother. His pious mother Euphrosyne prophesied to her son a martyric death and left this world when Clement was twelve years old. Her companion Sophia took Clement into her house as a son, and aided his upbringing in the Christian spirit. So renowned was Clement for his virtuous life that he was chosen as Bishop of Ancyra in the twentieth year of his life. In his young years he acquired the wisdom of old age, and by great abstinence subdued and conquered his body. He fed himself only on bread and vegetables, and ate nothing that had been slaughtered and bloody. In the time of Diocletian he was tormented so terribly "as never anyone from the creation of the world." He spent twenty-eight years in torments and in prisons and eleven different tormentors tortured and tormented him. When they once struck him on the face, spat on him and broke his teeth, he called out to the tormentor Dometian: "You are honoring me, O Dometian, and not tormenting me, for the mouth of my Lord Jesus Christ was beaten thus and His cheeks were slapped, and behold, I the unworthy am now deemed worthy of this!" When he was brought before Emperor Diocletian in Rome, the emperor set on one side various instruments of torture and on the other gifts, honors, garments, money—everything that an emperor can bestow, and then told Clement to choose. Christ's martyr looked with contempt upon all the emperor's treasures, and chose the instruments of torture. And he was tormented unspeakably: piece by piece flesh was torn from his body, so that the bones gleamed white beneath the flesh. Finally he was slain by soldiers, in the year 312 in the church in Ancyra, when as hierarch he was serving the Divine Liturgy. The miracles of Saint Clement are countless.
2. THE SIXTH ECUMENICAL COUNCIL
It was held in Constantinople, the first time in 681 and the second time in 691. This Council condemned the Monothelite heretics, who falsely taught that in Christ there was only the divine will without the human. It also made several canons concerning order and discipline of the clergy.
3. SAINT PAULINUS THE MERCIFUL
Paulinus was first a Roman senator and afterward bishop in Nola. He followed the example of his friend Saint Ambrose and received baptism, after which he withdrew to Spain to the Pyrenees Mountains where he practiced asceticism. But as no lamp can be hidden, so also Saint Paulinus was found and chosen as Bishop of Nola. He was a good and merciful shepherd. He reposed peacefully in the year 431. His relics rest in Rome in the Church of Saint Bartholomew.
“You are honoring me, O Dometian, and not tormenting me, for the mouth of my Lord Jesus Christ was beaten thus.”
Hymn of Praise
O infinite Creator, with my soul I bow to Thee,
When I speak Thy name, I diminish Thee,
And with every thought I diminish Thee with my own—
What can the mind think before Thy abyss?
What can the tongue say when it must be silent
Before the awesomeness of Thy mountains and chasms?
Before Thy measureless height, breadth,
Flatness, steepness, depth, distance
And nearness. O God, yes—and nearness!
And most wondrous of all—Thy humble lowliness!
Thou as man didst descend into our lowliness,
Didst descend and confine Thyself in the valley of death,
That Thou mightest raise the valley to heaven's roof,
And turn the withered creation into new.
Of all attributes, Thy lowliness
Halts my thought, binds my lips!
What can I think, what can I say
Of a hungry and thirsty and crucified God?
What shall I even say to Thee, O Richest One,
Who for my sake became the Poorest?
Let the tongue be silent, let the tear speak:
By mercy save what by mind Thou didst create!
“Let the tongue be silent, let the tear speak: by mercy save what by mind Thou didst create!”
Reflection
Mercy has always been the mark of true shepherds of Christ's flock. Saint John Chrysostom in his glorious sermons emphasized and praised nothing so strongly as mercy. Saint John the Merciful, Patriarch of Alexandria, wept every day when he was not given an opportunity to show mercy to someone. Saint Paulinus was deservedly called the Merciful, for he was truly merciful in the full Christian sense of that word. Once when the Vandals plundered Nola, they led at the same time many people into slavery. A certain widow, whose only son Prince Rigo of the Vandals had taken into captivity, came to her bishop and weeping asked him for money to pay the ransom for her son. Having nothing anywhere, Bishop Paulinus dressed himself in the garments of a simple man and told the widow to lead him to the prince in exchange for her son. The prince released the widow's son and took Paulinus and led him to Africa where Paulinus served as the prince's gardener, until by God's Providence he was freed and returned with the other slaves back to Nola.
Contemplation
Contemplate the Lord Jesus as healer, namely:
1. As healer of bodily diseases;
2. As caster out of evil spirits from the insane;
3. As healer of the human spirit and mind by the light of divine teaching;
4. As my own healer from all torments and evils.
Homily
on the angelic state of the saints
But they which shall be accounted worthy to obtain that world...neither can they die any more: for they are equal unto the angels (Luke 20:35-36)
Thus speaks He who knows, who has seen, and who cannot be deceived. What have we to doubt any more, brethren? This testimony is clearer than the summer noon, and harder than diamond, and more precious than all the treasures of this world; and that testimony is, that those who are deemed worthy of that world and of the resurrection can no longer die, but are immortal like God's angels.
And what are the angels like? Those same angels who appeared in the time of Abraham and helped people, those same ones appear and help today also. They have not died but are alive; and they have not aged but are young. Those same ones beheld Adam in Paradise, and will behold the final resurrection, the Judgment and the kingdom of the saints.
The righteous are like unto the angels. The Apostles and prophets, saints and martyrs, live even today, and will live forever, and can no longer die. Hundreds and thousands of years pass but they neither die any more nor age, but are like the angels.
That the righteous will be crowned with immortality, the Lord has witnessed to us by the above words, and shown by His own resurrection, and proved through the glorified saints.
O my brethren, let us awake, and let us strive only to be deemed worthy to obtain that blessed world!
O Lord, resurrected and immortal, help us to be deemed worthy of Thy immortal kingdom, in which Thou reignest with the angels and Thy saints forever and ever! To Thee be glory and praise forever. Amen.
“Those who are deemed worthy of that world can no longer die, but are immortal like God's angels.”