The Lives of the Saints
1. THE HOLY MARTYRS CYRUS AND JOHN
These holy martyrs are celebrated on January 31. Under that date their life and suffering are described. On June 28 the translation of their relics from Canopus to Menuthin is celebrated, along with the many miracles that occurred through their relics. Saint Cyril, Patriarch of Alexandria, prayed fervently to God to destroy the idolatrous impiety in the place of Menuthin, where there was an idol temple and where demonic power reigned. Then an angel of God appeared to the patriarch and told him that Menuthin would be cleansed from impiety if he transferred to that place the relics of Saints Cyrus and John. The patriarch immediately did so: he transferred the honorable relics of the martyrs to Menuthin and built there a church in the name of Saints Cyrus and John. From the relics of these martyrs there were healed: Amonius, the son of the Alexandrian city governor Julian, of scrofula; a certain Theodore of blindness; Isidore of Majuma was healed of liver disease; a woman named Theodora of poisoning; a certain Eugenius of dropsy; and many others of other diseases and afflictions. All this occurred in the year 412.
2. THE VENERABLE SENOUPHIOS THE STANDARD-BEARER
A great ascetic and wonderworker from the Egyptian desert; a contemporary of Patriarch Theophilus and Emperor Theodosius the Great. He was called the Standard-Bearer because by his prayers he once helped Emperor Theodosius win a victory over an enemy army. When the emperor invited him to come to Constantinople, he replied that he could not come, but he sent him his own poor monastic robe and a staff. Going to war, the emperor put on the robe of Senouphios and took the staff. And he returned from the war victorious.
3. THE VENERABLE PAUL THE PHYSICIAN
A Corinthian by birth. After his schooling he withdrew to a monastery and became a monk. He had a great battle with the impure spirit of fornication. When by the power of the Cross he drove it from himself, the spirit arranged malice against him by inducing a certain dissolute woman to say that she had borne a child by Paul. Then the heretics dragged him out of the monastery, put the child in his hands, and drove him through the city for the people to revile him. The child was only a few days old. Saint Paul prayed fervently to God and said to the people: "Behold, let the child itself say who its father is!" And the child stretched out its hand from the swaddling clothes, pointed to a certain blacksmith, and said: "This is my father, and not Paul the monk!" The opponents of Paul were put to shame, and God gave Paul great healing power, so that when he laid his hands upon the sick, they were healed. In old age he peacefully reposed, having pleased God with his life on earth. He lived in the eighth century.
Hymn of Praise
The elder Senouphios fasts in the desert,
His passionless body like dry bones,
But as once water from the dry rock,
The grace of the Holy Spirit flows from him.
In a dead body a mighty spirit hides —
This the glorious Emperor Theodosius heard.
And when the emperor wished to go to war,
He sent word for the elder Senouphios to come,
To give his blessing, that the emperor might crush the foe,
The emperor promised him many treasures.
Tears struck the elder Senouphios;
He sends a message to Emperor Theodosius
That he cannot come, the roads are far,
And his prayer he must not cloud with cares.
He thanks the emperor for every gift
And sends him his monastic robe, old and worn,
And with the robe he sends an old staff —
These were the gifts from the monk to the emperor!
Let the emperor take the staff and don the robe,
And he shall vanquish all enemies in war.
Clad as a monk the emperor went to war —
A glorious victor he returned from war.
A victory pillar the emperor raised in the city,
At its top he placed his image dressed as a monk,
That the world might remember the faith of Emperor Theodosius
And the miraculous power of holy Senouphios.
“Clad as a monk the emperor went to war — a glorious victor he returned from war.”
Reflection
Protestants have denied God's power to work through material things. They thought thereby to spiritualize the Christian faith; however, they precisely thereby impoverished and disfigured it. They denied the action of God's power through icons, through the relics of saints, through the Cross, and finally, some of them, even through Communion. If they were to go consistently along that crooked path, they would have to deny also the miracles that occurred from the living body of the Lord Jesus, for His body too was material; likewise the miracles from the touch of the apostolic and saintly hands, for those hands too are material — not to mention the staff of Moses, the robe and belt of the Most Holy Theotokos, the towel of the Apostle Paul, and so on. In this denial the Protestants stand in opposition to the entire ancient Church. Here is one of thousands and thousands of proofs that God acts through things, especially when He wishes to glorify His saints: in Alexandria there was erected a tall pillar with a statue of Emperor Theodosius in a monastic robe and with a monastic staff in his hand, as a memorial to the emperor's victory which he, clad in the robe of Saint Senouphios and with his staff in hand, won over the enemy. When God wills it, even one robe of a saint conquers mighty armies of unbelievers. Who dares limit the action and the means of action of the power of the Almighty God?
“When God wills it, even one robe of a saint conquers mighty armies of unbelievers.”
Contemplation
Contemplate the miraculous healing of the ten lepers (Luke 17:12), namely:
1. How the Lord by His powerful word healed ten leprous men who besought Him,
2. How the Lord can also heal me, spiritually and morally leprous, if I cry out to Him.
Homily
On Holiness
But as He which hath called you is holy, so be ye holy in all manner of conversation (I Peter 1:15)
Holiness, brethren, is the virtue that encompasses all other virtues. Therefore a saint, brethren, is a man adorned with all virtues. For if a man is prayerful but not merciful, he cannot be called holy. Or if someone endures but without faith and hope, he does not belong among the saints. Or if someone is very merciful but without faith in God, truly such a one is not counted among the saints. A saint is a perfect man, such as Adam was in Paradise; or better yet: such as the New Adam was, the Lord Jesus Christ. He is the Saint of saints. He is the sower of holiness on earth and the cultivator of saints in history. He has called us to the dignity of saints. He has shown us the example of a true saint. He is the prototype of a saint, just as He is the archetype of man. A true man, brethren, means nothing other than a saint. Saint and man — that is one and the same. He has shown us what it means to be a man, or what it means to be a saint. And His Apostle Peter commands us: Be ye holy in all manner of conversation! A saint is not a saint by one part of his life but by his whole life. In every part and particle of our life we must be holy, in order to be counted among the holy, that is, among men, according to the prototype of the saint and the archetype of man, the Lord Jesus Christ.
O All-Holy Lord, to Thee be glory and praise forever. Amen.
“A saint is a perfect man. Saint and man — that is one and the same.”