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On the Feast of St. Sergius of Radonezh

Today we are celebrating the venerable Sergius of Radonezh, a great among the saints, and that is why we read from the Gospel about beatitudes. The Lord is calling us to a higher perfection. He says: “Be perfect as your Heavenly Father.” And today’s Gospel shows what that means – “blessed are the poor in spirit,” blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, blessed are those who weep over their sins. When a person climbs on those steps of blessedness, he reaches perfection.

“Blessed are the poor in spirit.” An average person usually thinks he is good, or at least better than most. But the one who feels that way cannot achieve spiritual life. Its basis is spiritual poverty. A person does not only have to consider himself worse than other people, but worse than all creation. And not because he is imagining something or he is prone to self-suggestion. No, this awareness comes when he is given spiritual sight.

Really, let’s take any person and compare him to an insect. Of course, an insect does not commit such sins like a human does. He acts exactly according to the commandments given by God: he feeds on the things God provided for him; he eats as much as he needs; he multiplies the way he was ordered by God. All his life can serve as an example. Man is a lot worse than an insect: what disgrace he commits, how he deforms his own nature, how he harms himself. That is, in order to lift oneself up to the level of an insect, one needs to go through a very complex path of spiritual development. And an insect does not inherit the Kingdom of God.  And many people are truly good, they don’t do evil to anyone, and they even do some good to some people (to their children, relatives, to a colleague), but they will also not inherit the Kingdom of God, because that awaits only the holy.

Holiness – this means a person has received God’s grace. Only God is holy. So, if a person has God’s light inside him, he is holy. And how does one feel God’s grace in his heart? When a person starts leading a spiritual life, how is that manifested? Apostle Paul says: “The fruit of the spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control.” That is, when a person aspires toward a spiritual life, then he bears those kinds of fruit. And if this lacks, then there is no spiritual life.

Further the apostle says: “Those who are Christ’s have crucified their flesh with its passions and lust.” There are all kinds of passions nesting in our flesh: envy, greed, vainglory, avarice. And the one who is Christ’s, i.e. holy, he crucifies his flesh. The Lord has given us the example. He voluntarily, having taken our sins unto Him, crucified his flesh on the Cross, thus showing how we are supposed to crucify our flesh. There are things you want. There are things you consider necessary. But one should act the way God commands. And his sinful desires have to be crucified – then you will be Christ’s.

“If we live in the spirit, let us also walk in the spirit.” If a person is spiritual, he acts spiritually –  he lives according to the Gospel, according to God’s commandments, i.e. he submits to God, who is a Spirit. And if a person contradicts God, he does not live a spiritual life.

“Let us not become conceited, provoking and envying each other.” If a person is angered, if he dwells in anger, if he has envy, vanity, that means he has not spiritual life. But if he has vainglory, anger, and leads a continuous battle with these manifestations of his soul, that means he is leading a spiritual life. God’s spirit is opposed to the spirit of sin, the spirit of demons – and the person tries to destroy the sin in him with his spirit. The person who continuously opposes the sin that lives in him, is God’s co-warrior. Christ has come to overcome sin – that’s why everyone who ceaselessly fights with sin is Christ’s pupil, a warrior of Christ.

Unfortunately, our spiritual lives, as in all the novices, is black and white: we are either sinners of saints. We got up, said our prayers, started working. While everything is going well, we haven’t forgotten about God. But if we have to do something for our son or grandson against our will, we want to bang, yell, and that often happens. If we persevere in our temptation, if we don’t commit anything bad, even though it’s boiling in us and we are ready to kill the guilty party (how familiar we are with that feeling!), if we, in spite of everything, act according to the spirit of meekness, then we are fulfilling Christ’s law. As Apostle Paul calls on us: “Brothers, if someone is caught in a sing, you who are spiritual should restore him gently.” And if we give in to our sinful feelings, that means we are submitting to the devil who is sitting inside us. We will fall again, and our whole day will go down the hill, because only those “who endure till the end will be saved.” Saved from sin…

When an irritable person during an entire day, a week, month, year, decade, the entire life does not let  a word of anger come out of his mouth, that anger will disappear in him. The passion goes away, he smothers that passion. Fire can be extinguished with water and it can be covered with a blanket – and without oxygen it will be put out right away. It is the same with any passion: if you don’t give it free will, it will gradually diminish, diminish, and then it will be completely extinguished. But unfortunately, we sometime smother the passion, and sometimes give it free reign, we lift up that blanket again, and it starts burning with new power, and we have to do it all over again.

And the Lord says: “I will judge you in the state I find you.” When we die, where will the Lord find us, in what part of that black and white picture – in sin or in holiness? That does not depend on chance. In the process of life, a person grows either in sin or in grace. A third state is not given: it does not happen that he stops at a certain level, and he stays that way. A person either struggles, cultivates in him good deeds with perseverent labour, and through falls, temptations, and spiritual hardships increases the good inside him. Or it’s the opposite: his spiritual life increasingly weakens. For instance, he starts praying to God and he is fighting with constant thoughts, with absent-mindedness, he is straining his mind. A year goes by, the strain weakens, the person gets used to praying absent-mindedly, and he just starts reading the prayers. He’s read them – and that’s it, finished; and nothing has remained in the head. The question arises: what happened, the life is gone and it has passed you by.

For that reason one should practice every good deed; then the Lord, when he comes, will find us at the moment when we are in good spirit. The Lord says it thus: the good servant doesn’t know when the master of the house will come, he is always at work, and the lazy servant is asleep. How much labour do we invest in order to clean up the apartment, prepare a meal, arrange our earthly live in general, and we don’t even think about the heavenly life, everything passes us by. And one should do that too, of course, but not leave the other thing either. For spiritual life is heavenly life – it is a lot more important; here we live a short moment and over there we will live permanently.

Here is what Apostle Paul further says: “Do not be deceived: Lord is never put to shame. A man reaps what he sows. The one who sows to please his sinful nature, from that nature will reap destruction; the one who sows to please the Spirit, from the Spirit will reap eternal life.“ The person who has not tasted of God’s grace, even if he is thrice good, if he is the most likeable person on earth, he will never enter the Kingdom of God. The Kingdom of God was given to murderers, the adulterers, the bandits, the princes and the beggars – perfectly various people, of various states of the soul, but they were all saints. The crimes some of them have committed! But when they came to themselves and started a new life, they managed to overcome the sin in them and they acquired God’s grace.

A saint – that does not mean sinless. A saint – that’s the person who is ceaselessly fighting with sin. Sometimes, having received God’s mercy, sin completely leaves a person, but this happens with God’s chosen ones, who have great resoluteness and a great love toward God. And for us, ordinary people, this fight against sin has to be part of all our life, starting with our first steps and finishing with death bed. Otherwise, even though we have possibly never killed anyone, robbed anyone, we will not see the Kingdom of God, because we are not doing anything to deserve it. It’s as if we don’t need it, we are just trying really hard to organise our earthly life. But even if we perfectly arrange everything here, we will have to die anyway, and we will have to leave our perfectly organised setup. And spiritual life has permanent continuation. That is why it is stupid and futile to live in sin.

“If anyone thinks he is something when he is nothing, he deceives himself.” This is again about humility. If God would set up everything justly, and if he would hold us responsible for every sin, we would not live a single hour on earth. According to our sins, we simply don’t deserve anything good. And if we are still alive, and the sun is shining, and we can buy bread in the store – that’s a miracle and God’s unspeakable mercy. It is simply remarkable how the Earth still produces bread, because when the earth is sown, it is not watered with prayer and tears, but with curses. We don’t sow bread our selves, with don’t reap it, we only eat it – isn’t that a miracle? We don’t weave, sew our shoes, yet we are clad and we have shoes – isn’t that a miracle? We are given everything, even though we haven’t deserved it at all, we haven’t made it, we haven’t earned it. Someone, uncles and aunts, are doing that for us, and we even judge it: yeah, this is bad, this is not good. If it’s bad for you – sew it, weave it yourself. We receive everything for free: we have received our life for free, and our faith too. According to our sins, we haven’t deserved to walk in our underwear and rubber boots, and we all have apartments, clothes, shoes, food. We are morally a lot lower than the insects, and we live in luxurious conditions, yet we are still not satisfied: you see, there is a draft here, you see, there’s no water, the elevator is broken.

And why are we dissatisfied with everything? Because due to our stupidity, lack of understanding, blindness and pride we think we deserve better. That’s why we ceaselessly demand – from our children, from grandchildren, from bosses at work, from residential circumstances. We are always dissatisfied, irritated. So, if we want to step on the path of holiness, on the path of acquiring God’s grace, we have to look first of all for humility. One has to consider himself not worthy not only of the Kingdom of Heaven, but also to go to church, even to open a prayer book, and in general to live among people. And if we don’t acquire humility, our life will turn out to be futile. If we instead of humility have pride and vainglory, then all our good works will be harmful.  Even if you make the whole world happy, even if a million people are indebted to you – it is not worth it. “What use does a person have if he wins the world and harms his own soul?” Humility is that basis of spiritual life without which salvation is impossible.

How does one look for humility? Primarily through long-suffering. One has to long-suffer through one’s anger, one’s dissatisfaction and always remind oneself that he is worse than everyone else. And in order to see oneself in that light, you have to ask God: Lord, reveal my sins to me. And when the Lord shows you your sins, you will not judge others anymore, you will not be angry with anyone. For how is it possible to be angry with a person when you are worse than he or she is. We will simply be wrong to be angry, and anger will truly leave you. Humility is medicine for many, many passions and sins. That’s why we have to try hard to acquire it.

Since we are evil according to our nature, we have to try to do good. And, as Apostle Paul calls on us “let us not grow weary of doing good, for in due season we will reap a harvest if we do not give up.” So, one should finish the work begun. Let’s imagine a person who has taken in a cripple, and for sixty years has washed, clad and fed him, and then he said: no, Lord, I can’t do it any longer, I will give him to someone or I’ll take him to the street from where I took him. Will that person receive the reward? No, he will not and all those sixty years will be lost in vain. Because if we ironed the shirt, and the collar remained dirty, will someone say that the shirt is clean? Of course not. Or a chandelier has hung for twenty years, and then fell and broke into a thousand pieces – that’s it, it’s not a chandelier anymore. If a person was holy all his conscious life, and then fell, has to start from the start if he wants to return all that is lost.  For that reason every spiritual work has to be finished. It is very important to keep that loyalty to God until the end, and not to despair when we are doing good works. And in order not to despair, humility is needed again. One should consider him/herself worse than everyone else and deserving of a worse fate all the time.

Then everything else can gradually be cultivated: trying pray, going church more often, reading the Gospel more often. If one has the opportunity to do something good to someone, the opportunity mustn’t be missed, but used with joy. For those who have just started going to church, usually the question arises: where do I start? Someone has given a book, the other gave a prayer to the Holy Virgin to be read. Went to the cathedral, over there they said to do prostrations – three hundred a day. And a person is usually confused. In the Gospel we read today, the Lord says: one shouldn’t poor new wine into old wineskins. Because the new wine will ferment, boil, and it will make a hole in the old wineskin. We understand better the other story , which the Lord said at the same time: put an old patch on the old clothes, because if we put a new patch on the old clothes, the new patch will tear the old clothes, and the hole will be even bigger. That story teaches us we should not take on things we are not capable of bearing. Before new wine of God’s grace is poured into us, our soul has to be prepared with struggles in order to make away with passions, with the old self. For that reason, spiritual labour has to be gradual. There is an old monastic rule: if you see a young monk aspiring with all his strength toward heaven, grab him by the legs and pull him down to earth. For if a person who cannot fly, goes too far up, he can fall from there and smash into smithereens.

Progress in spiritual life has to be gradual, from the simple to the complex, and one should never take up more unto himself than one can accomplish. And a lot of people take on a lot, and then drop everything, and they can’t do anything anymore. Do that which you have grasped, what you have adopted, what you have already tested. If a year has passed and works have become an easy habit, you can add a bit. And thus in everything: in fast, in prayer, in Bible reading, and in good works. In everything a measure is needed, and we, due to our pride, vainglory, misunderstanding, stupidity still aspire somewhere. They are reading the Psalms in turns – I’ll do it too. I was given a praying rope – that means I will pray with the rope. I read a chapter from the Gospel, and I found out someone has been reading five – that means I will read as many. Someone has taken a trip – I am going there too. And as a result the person does not accomplish anything.

A tree cannot grow from the top, but from the root, gradually. At first a green bud, then it is covered in bark, then it grows for a long, long time, while it doesn’t acquire fruit. Look how long an oak tree grows until it starts bearing acorns. It is the same with a Christian. We shouldn’t wonder why our prayers are absent-minded, why we can’t reach anything, why we trip and fall. Many say: look how much time has gone by, and I haven’t budged. What’s strange about that? We are only beginning, we haven’t understood anything, we haven’t created anything. This process has to be gradual. If it comes out differently, a crack is due to appear and the wine will be spilled – the young wine of God’s grace will tear our sinful, old flesh.

For that reason holy fathers have said: if someone starts theologising or aspiring toward a pure prayer not having freed his heart from passions – that’s the road to insanity. It’s not that Jesus’ prayer leads to insanity – no, it cannot lead to insanity – but to an incorrect way of life. Let’s say, a person reads “Our Father” every day: “And forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors.” And there he gets offended at someone and cannot forgive him. He had just told God: forgive me my sins the way I forgive – and you haven’t forgiven. That means he puts himself in such a position not to be forgiven by God. And what does that mean? That means that the sin he has committed will stay with him. And under the burden of sins the person very quickly falls and then wonders: what is the matter? And the matter is that he is supposed to be praying and pleasing god, and in reality he is not living the way God has commanded.

So, if we go to church, we take the Holy Sacrament of Christ, and our life does not change, we continue to live in our sins, do not fight with them, we are preparing a horrible fate for ourselves. For the one who does not know and does not do will be beaten, and the one who knows and does not do will be beaten even harder. From us, the faithful, the demand is a lot greater, because we know, we read, we listen. That is why it is necessary to try hard to experience that graduate movement toward sainthood, toward the grace of God, to always have that spiritual labour in our souls. Then everyone – not like the venerable Sergius, but at least according to one’s effort – will achieve grace and will manage to reach the Kingdom of Heaven. In the Kingdom of Heaven there are many rooms, everyone has his own: Sergius has one, Seraphim another, the Mother of God has a room even higher. Let us have one somewhere on the edge, at least the last one, but at least it would be there, for between the Kingdom of Heaven and the underworld there is a vast abyss no one can cross. For that reason it is better to be last, yet there, in the Kingdom.

And if we prove faithful to God, if in spite of tiredness, of our ignorance, the weakness of the soul we still show zealousness, if we aspire toward Kingdom of Heaven, struggle for it, the Lord will help us because of his mercy. He knows our weaknesses better than we do. Moreover, He wants to save us all. And for every person who is born on earth there is a room in heavens. Only because of his own love toward sin man does not enter it. And the Lord then waits for a new person to appear on Earth: maybe he will inherit that room. All mankind lives only to fill that tenement created by the Lord.

For that reason everyone who struggles enters it, and who is lazy for the spiritual goes to the underworld, to Hades. They are building a house, bringing material, cutting planks, making the floor, the roof, walls – and only scraps are left. What should be done with them? They are cut, dried and then burned because they are not good for anything else. And the person who has not struggled for the grace of God – he, strictly speaking, is not good for anything. He has only sin and rotten flesh, and that’s it. You can only throw that into a furnace, nowhere else. So, it is not surprising the burning Hades exists. Everything good, everything nice is already used up for the house, for the construction of human salvation. And what is rotten, what cannot be used, what has destroyed itself – that has to be cut of, dried and burned.

We are not planks, we are not logs, we are live beings. And each one of us can either know his place in that house prepared for him by the Lord, or rot – and then only the furnace is left. So, each one of us decides his fate by himself. The venerable Sergius decided his fate – he left the world, started praying to God and purified himself from sin. He became “the struggler of virtues,” he acquired all the possible virtues. And he didn’t only save himself, but he saved hundreds and hundreds of people. A great number of his pupils became saints, and the pupils’ pupils became saints. He filled Russia with his holiness. He covered Russia with monasteries, he gave it back the spiritual pivot. For that reason Russian managed to free itself from the Tartars. And if it weren’t for that, everything would have rotted, we would have turned into Tartars’ serfs.

That’s what we have to do, like Sergius. And around us there is evil, curses, hatred, envy, empty chatter, judgments, cries. Why is that? Because we are burning in that cauldron. And if we would shine with God’s grace, people would be turning into saints around us, right here on Earth. For it is impossible to utter a bad word in front of a holy man, because the presence of God’s grace has the power to regenerate a person. Recently I was told: a priest came to visit a woman in the hospital. And her roommate in the hospital somehow felt he was a priest. And it’s interesting how it made an impression on her. She went right away to her husband, who was lying in the same hospital and with whom she had an argument – and she asked for forgiveness. No one told her anything, no one talked her into anything, but God’s grace itself came into her and see how effectively influenced her.

God’s grace regenerates a person, it makes him do good. So, if there are arguments in our family, fights, curses, other disorders – this doesn’t happen because all people are bad, they don’t listen, don’t understand, but because we don’t have God’s grace, there is no power that can regenerate everything. If in the world, a city, a building around us there is only evil, scandals, drunkenness, it’s because we have lost strength, we don’t have enough grace even for ourselves, not to mention children, grandchildren, relatives. So, it is not surprising we have non-believing children. Faith comes from grace, and if we don’t have, like those women in the Gospel, enough to lighten ourselves – we live in the dark, in sin, in envy, in evil, in judgment, in anger, in fornication – we cannot even mention someone else. What words can convince us? No, words do not convince, only grace convinces. So, no matter how well you speak, even if you are the greatest orator, it’s all in vain. Only grace is the true witness. So, the goal of our life is acquiring grace. Then we will be holy. And if we are saints – we will reach the Kingdom of Heaven. Amen.

Church of the Elevation of the Cross, October 8, 1986.

St. Nikita was born and educated in the city of Pereslavl Zalessky, found about a 100 miles north-east from Moscow. From the early age he was characterised by cruel and aggressive nature, he often offended people and participated in robberies with his disreputable friends. Once he came to church and during vespers he heard the following words by Prophet Isaiah: “Your hands are full of blood; wash and make yourselves clean. Take your evil deeds out of my sight!” Terror overcame Nikita when he heard those words, and he spent the entire night thinking about them. The next day, he went to see his friends, as was his habit, and in their company he forgot the words he heard. He invited his friends to his home, and went to the market to buy meat. Upon coming home, he told his wife to prepare dinner. When she started washing the meat, blood started flowing out of it, and when she put it into a pot to cook it, a bloody foam appeared, and a human head, an arm and a leg came out to the surface of the boiling water. The wife, in horror, told everything to her husband, and he came to see it himself. When he saw the sight, he was overcome by terror, and he exclaimed: “Woe is me, for I am unclean.”

After those words, he came out of his house crying, and walked to the monastery of the great martyr Nikita, outside of the city walls. There he fell on the ground in front of the abbot’s feet and said: “Save the perishing soul.” Surprised by such a strange change in Nikita, the abbot told him to reexamine himself and to stay in front of the monastery’s gate, crying and confessing his sins in front of everyone coming in and out of the monastery.

Nikita did just that. For three days he cried and prayed, confessing his sins in front of everyone he saw. On the last day, next to the monastery he saw a muddy pond with a lot of insects hovering above it. He took off his clothes, sat into the mud and started praying to God. Since three days had passed, the abbot sent a monk to see what Nikita was doing. Not having found him in front of the gate, the monk started looking for him, and finally found him lying in the pond. The mosquitoes and other insects gathered above him. He returned to the monastery and told the abbot what he saw. The abbot came out with other monks, and, seeing Nikita’s bloody body, cried to him: “My son, what are you doing to yourself!” Nikita kept repeating the same words: “Father, save the perishing soul!”

The abbot took him to the monastery, tonsured him and gave him a cell, where Nikita started spending sleepless days and nights in continuous prayer. The devil started frightening him with various apparitions, but he protected himself with the sign of cross, calling the great martyr Nikita for help. Soon, he made himself a hole in the ground near the church, where he spent all his time in silence, and a tunnel leading to the church where he would occasionally come to take part in the service. For these struggles, he obtained from God the gift of miracle working, so many sick people started coming to him, and he healed them.

At that time, the pious Prince of Chernigov, Michael, became ill and, having heard about Nikita’s healing powers, set out to Perslavl to seek him out. On the road, a demon met him in the form of a monk, and told him that Nikita is a deceiver, and then a little later in another form telling him the same thing. Michael was saddened by this, but he continued his trip nevertheless. When the prince made a camp in front of the monastery and sent out a messenger to announce his arrival, the demon acquired a form of an undertaker who told the messenger Nikita had died and he had just buried him. The man understood the demon’s deception, approached St. Nikita’s hole and told him about the prince’s illness. Nikita send his scepter to Michael, and the prince, having taken it, stood up completely cured. He then came to Nikita’s hole, took the saint’s blessing and told him about the demon’s deception.

One night Nikita’s relatives came to him to ask him to pray for them, but having seen the saint’s heavy chains, which shone after long attrition, they thought them to be made out of silver. They entered the hole, killed Nikita and took his chains. In the morning, the monks found the saint’s body still warm and emanating a sweet smell. Singing psalms, they solemnly buried him in the church of the Great Martyr Nikita next to the altar. At that time, all the ill people who were present at the service were healed.

When Nikita’s murderers reached the Volga, they looked at their loot and realised that it was made out of iron, not silver, so they threw it into the river. That night, a monk from the nearby monastery of St. Peter saw three glowing columns connecting the earth with heavens.  Many people came to the place where the light was shining from, and found the chains of St. Nikita floating above water. They took it to the church, healing many sick on the way. Soon afterward, Nikita appeared to the monk who found his chains and told him they should be taken to his grave. They have been healing people in the glory of Christ God ever since.

Tryphon, Christ’s glorious martyr, was born in the village of Campsada, near Apameia, the largest city of Phrygia in Asia Minor. His parents were very pious, so they raised their son in Christian spirit. As a child, the blessed Tryphon was already filled with the grace of the Holy Spirit. He had a gift of healing and exorcism; the demons would disappear at the mere mention of his name.

In 224, the daughter of the Roman Emperor Gordianus, Gordiana, became possessed. The demon entered the girl, tortured her and tried to kill her. Her parents tried to cure her with herbs and summoned all the best known physicians of the age, all in vain. One day, the demon cried through the girl’s mouth: “No one can drive me out of my dwelling except Tryphon!” After hearing this, Gordiana’s parents sent envoys across the land to find and bring the boy. Many with that name were brought, but none could heal the emperor’s daughter.

Some of the emperor’s envoys, having arrived at Campsada, saw the seventeen-year-old Tryphon keeping geese by a lake. They would have probably passed by him, if he, enlightened by the Holy Spirit, had not told them: “I am the Tryphon you are looking for.” The delighted soldiers took Tryphon to the capital. When they were a mile away from Rome, the demon in Gordiana sensed that the servant of God Tryphon would expel him, so he started violently tormenting the girl, crying, “Woe to me, in three days Tryphon, who has the power to drive me out of this dwelling, will come. I can’t live here anymore. I cannot bear his proximity anymore.” So the demon left the girl and ran away.

When Tryphon arrived in Rome, Emperor Gordianus prepared a warm welcome to Tryphon. Certain that he is the very Tryphon who healed his daughter, he asked the boy to summon the unclean spirit so everyone could see him. Knowing that demons, according to word of the Lord, are only expelled by fast and prayer, Tryphon spent six days fasting and praying. On the seventh day he called the unclean spirit in the name of Lord Jesus Christ to show himself. When the people present saw the demon in all his ugliness, they were all frightened, and many abandoned idolatry and started believing in Christ Lord. The emperor thanked the blessed Tryphon and awarded him with gold, all of which the young man gave away to the needy on his way back home.

When Emperor Decius soon came to power in Rome, he ordered all the Christians who refused to worship idols to be murdered. The young Tryphon was slandered to the local Roman commander Aquilinus, and the soldiers immediately started looking for the holy man. Tryphon surrendered to the imperial troops, and he was taken to the commander. Aquilinus first asked him about his name, fatherland, faith and fate. The saint answered, “My name is Tryphon, I was born in Campsada, and I don’t believe in fate, because it does not exist. I only believe in God’s Providence and His wisdom. Christ is my faith and my glory!” When the commander warned him that he is to be convicted if he does not bow to pagan gods, Tryphon, rejoicing in his heart, told him that he is ready to suffer for the love of Christ. Furious, Aquilinus ordered Tryphon to be tortured.

The saint was first hanged on a tree and pierced by swords, then tied to a horse and dragged around, trampled by the horse, and finally thrown into a dungeon. He suffered broken bones, deep lacerations and severed toes. Aquilinus then took him to a trial in Nicea, but Tryphon confessed his faith in Lord Jesus Christ again. Then nails were driven into his legs, he was beaten and burned.  While he was being tortured, the saint was suddenly illuminated by a divine, blinding light, and a wreath of unearthly beauty was lowered on his head. The tormentors dropped to the ground from fear, and Tryphon started joyfully glorifying the Lord.

When the commander, relentless even after witnessing this miracle, saw that all the tortures and words are useless and Tryphon will not be converted to idolatry, he ordered the soldiers to take him out of the city and behead him. When he was brought to the place of execution, St. Tryphon turned his thoughts and heart to Heaven, thanked the Lord for letting him endure the tortures until the end, prayed for the inheritance of the Kingdom of God, and for help to anyone who prays for his intercession. He thus gave his spirit to Lord Jesus Christ before he was beheaded. The year was 250.

After his blessed repose, the saint appeared to the faithful and told them to take his body and bury it in Campsada, where numerous miracles soon started taking place next to his holy remains.

St. John Chrysostom, the light to the world, the column and foundation of the Church, the preacher of repentance, was born near Syrian Antioch around the year 347. His father, Secundus, died when he was still a boy, and he was raised by his mother, Anthusa, who remained a widow and dedicated herself to teaching the boy Christian truth and purity.

John first went to study rhetoric and philosophy with the sophist Libanius and the philosopher Andragaphius, and then, when he turned eighteen, he traveled to Athens to master those same studies. He still wasn’t baptised then because at that time people were baptized at a ripe age. In Athens, he learned all the Greek books and sciences and became a wise philosopher and a skillful orator.

The philosopher Anthimius, who was envious of St. John’s abilities, once, during a dispute with St. John, started cursing our Lord Jesus Christ, and a demon started torturing him, making him shake and spit foam. The witnesses started asking John to forgive the philosopher and heal him, and St. John answered: “If he doesn’t repent and start believing in Christ God, whom he cursed, he won’t be healed.” Anthimius declared his faith in God witnessed by St. John, and he was immediately healed. Anthimius then went with a large number of other people to the bishop of Athens to be baptised, and when the bishop heard what happened, he sent for John to be brought because he wanted to offer him his own seat after his death.

Despising glory of this world, St. John decided to leave the world and become a monk, but his mother asked him to stay with her until her death.  He started spending more time in prayer and studying the word of God. The Antioch bishop, Meletius, baptised him and made him a reader in the Church.  After three years, John’s mother died, and he gave away all his possessions to the needy and went to live in a monastery in the mountains near Antioch.  He wrote his first books there.

Soon, John’s divine gifts were revealed to an old, clairvoyant monk living with him in the same monastery, Hesychius. In this dream, Christ’s apostles John and Peter visited John and gave him Christ’s revelation and the keys to the Holy Churches, respectively. Hesychius told the other monks about the dream, but warned them not to reveal it to anyone, so John wouldn’t leave them and deprive them of his valuable company.

John spent four years in that monastery performing many miracles. Then he retired to a deserted place to dedicate himself completely to prayer and ascetic practices. After two years he fell ill, however, and he had to return to Antioch. The holy patriarch Meletius made him into a deacon there, and he spent six years serving in the church and writing a new set of theological works. When Patriarch Meletius died in Constantinople, where he went to participate in the ordination of St. Gregory Nazianzen as a Patriarch of Constantinople, John returned to the same monastery, spending three years in complete silence.

The new patriarch of Antioch, St. Flavian, was told in prayer one day to go bring John back to Antioch and ordain him into priesthood, since John was the vehicle chosen by God to convert many to the true faith. The angel appeared to John at the same time and told him to go with Flavian. When the Patriarch put his hand on John’s head during his ordination, a white dove appeared and flew over John’s head. All the people present were amazed, and the news quickly spread over entire Syria.

As a priest, John preached a few times a week, sometimes even several times a day. His sermons were filled with such power that the people listened to him in utter amazement. Because of his influential sermons and skill with words, he was named Chrysostom, “the Golden Mouth.” During that time, he healed many sick people, among which the wife of a commander of an Antioch fortress, who was a member of the Marcionite heresy. After that event, many Marcionites were converted to Orthodoxy.  The ones who did not perished in their temple during an earthquake.

After the death of St. Nectarius, the patriarch of Constantinople, his heir could not be found for a long time. Then Emperor Arcadius heard about John, and summoned him at once to the capital of Byzantium.  The people of Antioch did not want to let their favorite preacher leave, but Chrysostom was secretly driven out of the city. When he came to Constantinople, the entire city went out to meet him. He was ordained on February 26^th, 398. During his first speech as the Patriarch, he healed a possessed woman and everybody present rejoiced and praised the Lord for having given them such a great healer of body and soul.

As a Patriarch, he worked hard at strengthening Orthodoxy in and around the Byzantine Empire, converting Celts and Scythes among other pagan nations living in Europe at the time. He built homes for the needy and travelers, hospitals for the sick, and lead the church in praising virtue and condemning evil in people. He talked the Emperor into exiling the supporters of the Arian heresy, thus rooting out the blasphemers from the Holy capital.

At that time, a celebrated and powerful imperial military commander, Gainas, formerly a ruthless Barbarian, asked the Emperor for an Arian temple in the city as a reward for his military success and prowess. The Emperor was afraid to refuse him because of Gainas’ ill temper, so he called St. John for help. John told him he would be present when Gainas comes to officially ask for an Arian place of worship. When the general came, John told him to remember how poor he was when he lived as a Barbarian on the other side of the Danube, having only bread and water to eat and drink, and dressing himself in rags, and how he has received all the honour and gold for his courage and success in fighting for the Eastern Roman empire. “Be thankful and keep loyally serving the Greek Empire, and do not ask Godly prizes for worldly merits.” This quieted down Gainas for a while, but after a year he gathered a large army contingent and started marching on Constantinople. Not wanting to spill any blood, the Emperor sent John to appease Gainas, and the Patriarch boldly met the ruthless commander, turned the wolf into a sheep with his words, and reconciled him with the emperor.

While living in the world and in such great dignity, the blessed hierarch never abandoned his monastic struggles with the flesh, but spent all his time away from his pastoral duties either in prayer or reading spiritual books. He ate only barley bread and water, and slept very little in a standing position. He never went to any celebrations and feasts, and he continued writing theological works and interpreting the Holy Scriptures, especially St. Paul’s epistles.

Once, a question came to Chrysostom whether his work is pleasing to God, so he prayed to the Lord to give him an answer. God heard the prayer of his servant and gave him the following sign: Once, John was writing in his cell under the candle light. His assistant wanted to ask him something, but looked through the crack in the door first to see what the Patriarch was doing. He saw him sitting and writing, and he saw another man behind his back telling him something softly in his ear. He witnessed the same scene for the next two nights, and finally gathered courage to ask the Patriarch with whom he was conversing at night. John told him he had been alone in his cell. Then his assistant told him what he saw through the crack in the door, described the man and said that he looked exactly the way St. Paul was painted on the icon that hung in the Chrysostom’s cell. St. John then realised that the man his assistant saw was the Holy Apostle himself, and he fell to the ground thanking God for giving him the answer. From that time on, he dedicated himself even more fervently and conscientiously to writing divine books.

Chrysostom had a lot of envious enemies among the clerics in Byzantium, but the worst of all was Empress Eudoxia. She hated the patriarch because she interpreted John’s condemnation of avarice and the love of gold in sermons as directed at her. Once a local commander in Alexandria, Paulicius, who was also greedy, heard a widow had a lot of money, and he made her pay five hundred gold coins. Since she didn’t have that kind of money, the widow had to borrow from other people. Soon Paulicius was summoned to Constantinople to answer for his unjust deeds, and the poor widow came with him, telling the Emperor what happened. The mayor of Constantinople, who conducted the investigation, acquitted the Alexandrian commander, and the desperate widow turned to the Empress. The money-loving Eudoxia was happy for the opportunity to acquire additional wealth, so she imprisoned Paulicius until he paid her 100 liters of gold. She then gave the widow only 36 coins and kept the rest for herself. The poor widow then heard about the protector of the offended – St. John, went to see him and told him everything that happened. St. John summoned Paulicius and asked him to return the money he took from the widow. Paulicius told him that the Empress received a lot more from him, but John answered that does not absolve him from the foul deed. When the empress heard that John is holding Paulicius in the church, she sent the guards to tell him to release him, because she had taken enough money from him. The Patriarch told the guards that if the empress wants Paulicius to be released, she should send the money he took from the widow. Furious, Eudoxia sent two guards to bring Paulicius back to the court by force, but they encountered an angel with a sword in front of the church, and they came back to the court in terror. Seeing that the empress would not help him, Paulicius sent home for five thousand gold coins, returned them to the widow, and then left for Alexandria.

At another occasion, Eudoxia took a widow’s vineyard and refused to give it back to her after John’s request, throwing the Patriarch out of the court by force. St. John then refused to allow her to enter the church when she came to participate in a great church feast. Reacting to the empress’ fury, a soldier in her retinue attempted to strike the church door with his sword, but his arm immediately dried up. After crying for help and repenting, he was let in the church and Chrysostom healed the soldier’s arm.

Eudoxia was not the only powerful enemy St. John had. The Patriarch of Alexandria, Theophilus, who persecuted some god-fearing monks living in the Egyptian Nitrean desert because they fled from his unjust rule, was angry with St. John for offering the runaway monks refuge in Constantinople. Then the empress talked the emperor into organising a Church synod to condemn John of heresy. The unlawful synod, presided by Theophilus, accused John and ordered him to be exiled. Chrysostom refused to come to the synod, and the faithful crowd defended him from the emperor’s armies. Avoiding violence, St. John surrendered secretly, and he was then taken to a near-by island.

When the news about Chrysostom’s exile spread in the city, huge protests were organised, and a lot of people were killed in demonstrations. Running away from the mob that wanted to stone him to death, Theophilus fled back to Alexandria. After a strong earthquake that destroyed part of the imperial palace, the emperor and the empress were so afraid that they sent at once for St. John. On his way back to the city, the good hierarch was met by thousands of people who covered the entire sea with their boats.

St. John did not stay at his high post for a long time, however. The Empress, offended by the words of one of the Patriarch’s sermons, talked her husband into exiling him again. A church synod was called again, this time without Theophilus who was afraid to return, and St. John was told to leave the church.  “I received the Church from Christ the Saviour, and I cannot leave it on my own accord, only if I am exiled by force,” he answered the emperor’s messengers. Arcadius did not dare to take John out of the church by force, but there were two attempts at his life in a short period of time. The intended murderers were thwarted in the last second by the faithful people who guarded Chrysostom.

When John received a message from the Emperor that he will be responsible for spilling blood if he does not leave the city, Chrysostom said goodbye to his closest associates, and again secretly surrendered to the soldiers. He was then taken on a long journey. After Chrysostom’s departure, there was a large fire in which the palace where St. John was condemned burned to the ground.

The journey of the exile through the entire Asia Minor was long and arduous. The Patriarch had to travel all day long on an unsaddled donkey, suffering constant derision from the soldiers who escorted him. He was not given any food, and the money he took for provisions was taken away from him. He wasn’t allowed to enter any church either. When he came to the city of Cucusus in Armenia, he was welcomed by the bishop Adelphius, who was honored to receive the holy man. Chrysostom’s glory quickly spread around the area and people started coming to see him and to listen to his comforting words. The news of St. John’s glory, albeit from a distant place, bothered his enemies in Constantinople, so the word was sent to exile him even farther, to a deserted place on the Black Sea. The soldiers escorting him were ordered to exhaust him by not giving him any shelter from the rain, the day’s heat and the night’s cold.

One night at a prayer, St. Peter and St. John appeared to St. John for the second time, telling him to rejoice because the end of his earthly life is nearing and he is going to join them in the Kingdom of Heaven. They also told him that his tormentors are going to die of horrible death. The apostles said the food they are giving him was to be his last. St. John soon reached the city of Komani in present-day Georgia and the Church of St. Basilisk the martyr, who appeared to Chrysostom at night telling him they would be together the next day.

In the morning, St. John asked the soldiers to let him enter the church of St. Basilisk, but he wasn’t allowed, and they left the place on a boat. After a full day of rowing, the boat came back to the same place, and the soldiers, aware of the divine intervention, let St. John enter the Church. Chrysostom put on the priest’s clothes, served the Liturgy, and having taken the purest and life-giving body and blood of Christ, he lay down, pronounced “Glory to God for everything,” and gave his soul to the Lord.

After Chrysostom’s repose, the two priests and a deacon who followed him in his exile traveled to Rome and told everything to the Roman pope Innocent I. Full of grief, Pope Innocent related the story of the Patriarch’s exile and last days to the Western Roman Emperor Honorius, Arcadius’ brother.  They both wrote to Arcadius accusing him of a terrible crime, comparing him to Cain who killed his brother, God-pleasing Abel. Persecuted by guilt, Arcadius imprisoned and killed all the people who participated in the plot against Chrysostom, and locked up his wife. The Lord also exacted a revenge on the enemies of his beloved servant John.  Eudoxia’s flesh started rotting, emanating a horrible stench that the finest perfumes could not mitigate. Realising the cause of her suffering, she returned everything she took away unlawfully, but still died without receiving any relief from her unbearable pain and dishonour.

Bishop Adelphius, having heard about St. John’s repose, started praying with tears in order to find out about the Patriarch’s present dwelling place. In a trance that soon followed, he was taken by a boy to a bright place and shown all the holy teachers of the church, but St. John was not among them. When the boy asked him why he was sad, Alelphius answered it was because he didn’t see John. The boy answered, “A man in a body cannot see him because he is next to God’s throne, surrounded by cherubims  and seraphims.” Having received this news, the bishop rejoiced and thanked God who revealed him this secret.