6th SUNDAY AFTER PENTECOST — Tone 5. Holy Seven Youths (“Seven Sleepers”) of Ephesus: Maximilian, Jamblicus, Martinian, John, Dionysius, Exacustodian (Constantine), and Antoninus (250).
Tone 5 Troparion (Resurrection)
Let us, the faithful, praise and worship the Word, co-eternal with the Father and the Spirit, born for our salvation from the Virgin; for He willed to be lifted up on the Cross in the flesh, to endure death, and to raise the dead// by His glorious Resurrection.
Tone 4 Troparion (St. Nicholas)
The truth of your deeds has revealed you to your flock as a rule of faith, an image of meekness and a teacher of self-control; your humility exalted you; your poverty enriched you.// O Father Bishop Nicholas, pray to Christ God that our souls may be saved.
Tone 4 Troparion (Holy Youths)
Your seven holy martyrs, O Lord, through their sufferings have received incorruptible crowns from You, our God. For having Your strength, they laid low their adversaries, and shattered the powerless boldness of demons.// Through their intercession, save our souls!
Tone 5 Kontakion (Resurrection)
You descended into hell, O my Savior, shattering its gates as Almighty, resurrecting the dead as Creator, and destroying the sting of death. You have delivered Adam from the curse, O Lover of man,// and we cry to You: “O Lord, save us!”
Tone 3 Kontakion (St. Nicholas)
You proved yourself to be be a holy priest, O Nicholas. You served God in Myra and lived the gospel of Christ. You offered your life for your people, And rescued the innocent from death. Therefore God has glorified you as a trustworthy guide of things divine.
Tone 1 Kontakion (Holy Youths)
The Seven Holy Youths renounced the perishing comforts of this world, preferring the eternal things of Heaven. They were incorrupt after death and rose from the dead and buried the snares of the devils!// O faithful, let us then honor them, singing a hymn of praise to Christ.
Tone 6 Kontakion (Steadfast Protectress)
Steadfast Protectress of Christians, Constant Advocate before the Creator; despise not the cry of us sinners, but in your goodness come speedily to help us who call on you in faith. Hasten to hear our petition and to intercede for us, O Theotokos, for you always protect those who honor you!
Tone 5 Prokeimenon (Resurrection)
You, O Lord, shall protect us / and preserve us from this generation forever. (Ps. 11:7)
V. Save me, O Lord, for there is no longer any that is godly! (Ps. 11:1a)
Romans 12:6-14 (Epistle)
Having then gifts differing according to the grace that is given to us, let us use them: if prophecy, let us prophesy in proportion to our faith; or ministry, let us use it in our ministering; he who teaches, in teaching; he who exhorts, in exhortation; he who gives, with liberality; he who leads, with diligence; he who shows mercy, with cheerfulness. Let love be without hypocrisy. Abhor what is evil. Cling to what is good. Be kindly affectionate to one another with brotherly love, in honor giving preference to one another; not lagging in diligence, fervent in spirit, serving the Lord; rejoicing in hope, patient in tribulation, continuing steadfastly in prayer; distributing to the needs of the saints, given to hospitality. Bless those who persecute you; bless and do not curse.
Tone 5
Alleluia, Alleluia, Alleluia!
V. I will sing of Your mercies, O Lord, forever; with my mouth I will proclaim Your truth from generation to generation. (Ps. 88:1-2)
V. For You have said: Mercy will be established forever; Your truth will be prepared in the heavens. (Ps. 88:3)
Matthew 9:1-8 (Gospel)
So He got into a boat, crossed over, and came to His own city. Then behold, they brought to Him a paralytic lying on a bed. When Jesus saw their faith, He said to the paralytic, “Son, be of good cheer; your sins are forgiven you.” And at once some of the scribes said within themselves, “This Man blasphemes!” But Jesus, knowing their thoughts, said, “Why do you think evil in your hearts? For which is easier, to say, ‘Your sins are forgiven you,’ or to say, ‘Arise and walk’? But that you may know that the Son of Man has power on earth to forgive sins” – then He said to the paralytic, “Arise, take up your bed, and go to your house.” And he arose and departed to his house. Now when the multitudes saw it, they marveled and glorified God, who had given such power to men.
7 Holy Youths “Seven Sleepers” of Ephesus
The Seven Youths of Ephesus: Maximilian, Iamblicus, Martinian, John, Dionysius, Exacustodianus (Constantine) and Antoninus, lived in the third century. Saint Maximilian was the son of the Ephesus city administrator, and the other six youths were sons of illustrious citizens of Ephesus. The youths were friends from childhood, and all were in military service together.
When the emperor Decius (249-251) arrived in Ephesus, he commanded all the citizens to offer sacrifice to the pagan gods. Torture and death awaited anyone who disobeyed. The seven youths were denounced by informants, and were summoned to reply to the charges. Appearing before the emperor, the young men confessed their faith in Christ.
Their military belts and insignia were quickly taken from them. Decius permitted them to go free, however, hoping that they would change their minds while he was off on a military campaign. The youths fled from the city and hid in a cave on Mount Ochlon, where they passed their time in prayer, preparing for martyrdom.
The youngest of them, Saint Iamblicus, dressed as a beggar and went into the city to buy bread. On one of his excursions into the city, he heard that the emperor had returned and was looking for them. Saint Maximilian urged his companions to come out of the cave and present themselves for trial.
Learning where the young men were hidden, the emperor ordered that the entrance of the cave be sealed with stones so that the saints would perish from hunger and thirst. Two of the dignitaries at the blocked entrance to the cave were secret Christians. Desiring to preserve the memory of the saints, they placed in the cave a sealed container containing two metal plaques. On them were inscribed the names of the seven youths and the details of their suffering and death.
The Lord placed the youths into a miraculous sleep lasting almost two centuries. In the meantime, the persecutions against Christians had ceased. During the reign of the holy emperor Theodosius the Younger (408-450) there were heretics who denied that there would be a general resurrection of the dead at the Second Coming of our Lord Jesus Christ. Some of them said, “How can there be a resurrection of the dead when there will be neither soul nor body, since they are disintegrated?” Others affirmed, “The souls alone will have a restoration, since it would be impossible for bodies to arise and live after a thousand years, when even their dust would not remain.” Therefore, the Lord revealed the mystery of the Resurrection of the Dead and of the future life through His seven saints.
The owner of the land on which Mount Ochlon was situated, discovered the stone construction, and his workers opened up the entrance to the cave. The Lord had kept the youths alive, and they awoke from their sleep, unaware that almost two hundred years had passed. Their bodies and clothing were completely undecayed.
Preparing to accept torture, the youths once again asked Saint Iamblicus to buy bread for them in the city. Going toward the city, the youth was astonished to see a cross on the gates. Hearing the name of Jesus Christ freely spoken, he began to doubt that he was approaching his own city.
When he paid for the bread, Iamblicus gave the merchant coins with the image of the emperor Decius on it. He was detained, as someone who might be concealing a horde of old money. They took Saint Iamblicus to the city administrator, who also happened to be the Bishop of Ephesus. Hearing the bewildering answers of the young man, the bishop perceived that God was revealing some sort of mystery through him, and went with other people to the cave.
At the entrance to the cave the bishop found the sealed container and opened it. He read upon the metal plaques the names of the seven youths and the details of the sealing of the cave on the orders of the emperor Decius.
Going into the cave and seeing the saints alive, everyone rejoiced and perceived that the Lord, by waking them from their long sleep, was demonstrating to the Church the mystery of the Resurrection of the Dead.
Soon the emperor himself arrived in Ephesus and spoke with the young men in the cave. Then the holy youths, in sight of everyone, lay their heads upon the ground and fell asleep again, this time until the General Resurrection.
The emperor wanted to place each of the youths into a jeweled coffin, but they appeared to him in a dream and said that their bodies were to be left upon the ground in the cave. In the twelfth century the Russian pilgrim Igumen Daniel saw the holy relics of the seven youths in the cave.
There is a second commemoration of the seven youths on October 22. According to one tradition, which entered into the Russian Prologue (of Saints’ Lives), the youths fell asleep for the second time on this day. The Greek Menaion of 1870 says that they first fell asleep on August 4, and woke up on October 22.
There is a prayer of the Seven Sleepers of Ephesus in the Great Book of Needs (Trebnik) for those who are ill and cannot sleep. The Seven Sleepers are also mentioned in the service for the Church New Year, September 1.
On Judgment
By Dr. Herman Middleton
This week I was reminded of the following account from The Sayings of the Desert Fathers (a book I can’t recommend highly enough!):
The Holy Fathers were making predictions about the last generation. They said, “What have we ourselves done?” One of them, the great Abba Ischyrion replied, “We ourselves have fulfilled the commandments of God.” The others replied, “And those who come after us, what will they do?” He said, “They will struggle to achieve half our works.” They said, “And those who come after them, what will happen?” He said, “The men of that generation will not accomplish any works at all and temptation will come upon them; and those who will be approved in that day will be greater than either us or our fathers.”~ The Sayings of the Desert Fathers.
There are a variety of similar accounts in The Sayings of the Desert Fathers, the gist of which is: the spiritual situation of future generations will be more challenging than that of our own, and so God will judge those generations differently. Was this simply humility on the part of Abba Ischyrion? Perhaps, but likely not. A similar sentiment can be found in other patristic texts (I’m thinking, in particular, of St. Dorotheos of Gaza’s account of two twins separated early on, and raised in very different environments – St. Dorotheos says that God will judge each twin differently based on the opportunities they had been given).
This should be a reminder that it is never our place to judge, but also that at the heart of Orthodox Christianity is the Spirit of God Who is in all places and fills all things, and that it should be the goal of every Orthodox Christian to acquire the Spirit of God so that we may know how to act every moment of every day. This is not to negate the commandments of God, but to realize that we live in a unique time in history and that wisdom is not found in simply reading the Fathers and trying to implement their teachings, but firstly to discern the Spirit behind their words and to seek to acquire this Spirit so as to understand how to fulfill God’s commandments in our own day.
I wrote Precious Vessels of the Holy Spirit: The Lives and Counsels of Contemporary Elders of Greece because of my conviction that our contemporary Saints are the most powerful witnesses to the vibrancy and truth of the Orthodox Christian path in the 21st century. When one begins to acquire the Spirit of God, one discerns that the ancient Fathers were saying the same things as our contemporary Fathers, they were simply doing so according to their own (ancient) reality.
One of the difficulties in discerning the true Orthodox path is that there is always a healthy tension between the spirit of the law and the letter of the law. Christ did not come to abolish the Law, but to fulfill it (Matt. 5:17), but it is the work of each generation of Orthodox Christians to acquire and to discern the Spirit of God so as to know how to fulfill the Law in a salvific way.
May God grant us the wisdom to acquire and to discern the Spirit of God!
In Christ our Lord,
Herman
Sunday Bulletin July 28, 2024