November: Day 27: Teaching 4: Holy Martyr James the Persian

November: Day 27: Teaching 4:
Holy Martyr James the Persian
 
(What is the Reason for the Apostasy of Modern Christians?)

By Archpriest Grigory Dyachenko

I. During the reign of the Persian King Yazdegerd, in the fourth century, there lived a good Christian named James, whose memory is celebrated today. He was rich and noble, and held an important position at the court of the king, who loved him very much. But suddenly Yazdegerd began to cruelly persecute Christians, demanding that they renounce Christ; and James could not resist the threats and the fear of losing all his privileges, and agreed to perform the pagan rite required by the king.

When James's mother and wife learned of this, they were deeply grieved, for they were both zealous Christians. They were not with James at the time, but wrote him a letter in which they severely reproached him for his apostasy.

This letter greatly perplexed and disturbed James. "If my mother and wife turn away from me," he thought, "what will become of me when the Lord comes to judge the living and the dead and rewards each according to his deeds?" Repentance and deep contrition awoke in the soul of the apostate. He shed hot tears, and thought continually of how to atone for his crime. Constant prayer and hope in the Lord encouraged James, and when, after some time, the king asked him about his faith, he firmly answered that he believed in Jesus Christ. The king began to threaten him with death. "This does not frighten me," answered the Christian; "death is only a temporary sleep from which all will rise."

The king ordered that all his limbs be cut off one by one. But even this terrible sentence did not shake James's firmness; he rejoiced that the Lord was giving him the means to at least somewhat atone for the sin of his apostasy, and he prayed to God only for patience.

The terrible execution began, which made all those present tremble; they cut off the fingers of one hand after another from the Martyr, then the other; then his hands and feet; he only glorified the Lord and paid no attention to the admonitions of his friends, who begged him to save his life. The execution lasted a long time; but the Martyr's steadfastness did not waver for a moment; already barely alive, he found strength to glorify God, and exclaimed: “Holy, Holy, Holy are You, God Almighty, praised by the heavenly powers; look upon me, God of the living and the dead, and hear my prayer. Already all my members are taken away, and my body is almost dead; I have no legs to stand before You; I have no hands to lift them up to You, my Creator; I have no knees to fall down and worship You; I am cast down before You, my Lord, like a house in ruins and a tree deprived of branches. I pray You, do not abandon me to the end and mercifully lead my soul out of prison." He had hardly finished his prayer when they dealt him a mortal blow; Christians honorably buried the body of the Holy Martyr.

So deeply did the Holy Martyr James realize the sin of his temporary apostasy from the holy faith, forced to do so by the threats of the king and the fear of losing his earthly well-being and life itself, and who atoned for it with marvelous Christian patience in enduring the most terrible sufferings.

II. Brothers and sisters in Christ! Let us ask ourselves: are there not among us also apostates from the holy faith and the Church, but not temporary and repentant apostates, but constant and stubborn? We, Christians, who in Holy Baptism gave vows to Christ, who partook of His gracious gifts, we Christians, born and raised in the bosom of our Mother the Holy Church, we, who have long since come to Christ, do we not apostatize from Him by our unfaithfulness? By the grace of God, there are many chosen, true children of the churches; but are there not many in our times Christians only in name? Are there not many Christians infected with unbelief, and therefore, if not open, then secret apostates from God?

What is the reason for our apostasy from God? We are not persecuted and not given over to terrible torments for Jesus Christ, as the Holy Martyr endured. The main reason for this is the depravity and corruption of the heart, which has a strong influence on our mind. "For out of the heart," according to the word of the wise man, “spring the issues of life” (Prov. 4:23), that is, the source from which thoughts, desires, feelings and impulses flow; from it not only flows, but is also directed the moral activity of all the powers of the soul, so that as the heart perceives objects, so they appear in the mind, will, imagination and feelings. That is why one of the Fathers of the Church (Saint Gregory the Great) calls the heart "the dwelling place of the mind," and another remarkable ascetic (Saint Makarios the Great) depicts the mind "acting in the heart," likening the mind to sunlight, and the heart to the eye in which the light of the mind is concentrated, which is why this light is reflected by the property of the heart. And as in the body, if the bodily organ - the heart - is not damaged, the blood flows correctly and the body is healthy, and if the heart is damaged, the whole body is subject to corruption, so it is in the soul: if the spiritual eye - the heart - is bright and pure, then the mind is pure and bright, and vice versa - if the heart is corrupted, the mind is more or less corrupted. So close is the connection between the convictions of our mind and the state of our heart.

a) History and personal experience show that pious people have never been and never are freethinkers and apostates from the faith; education in science and art only strengthens their faith, and does not weaken it. They experience by their own lives the beneficial nature of Christian teaching and ecclesiastical regulations; they deeply and irresistibly feel that “it is with the heart that one believes in righteousness” (Rom. 10:10), and not with the mind, which can and must accept and assimilate the high truths revealed by God, but must in no way reject what it does not understand. And is it possible for a person to understand all the mysteries that are essentially necessary in divine revelation? “For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are My ways higher than your ways,
and My thoughts than your thoughts” (Is. 55:9), says the Lord. There are mysteries which even angels “desire to look into” (1 Peter 1:12): can our minds pretend to comprehend the incomprehensible?

b) But even the divine truth clearly known by reason is disfigured and perverted by a person whose heart is corrupted. The purest and most pleasant to the taste water becomes muddy and unpleasant if it is kept in an unclean vessel; the same can be said about the purest, divine truths of faith: in a corrupt heart, in themselves undamaged, they are interpreted or modified according to the taste of wicked people, who turn the truth of God into a lie, for “they became futile in their thoughts, and their foolish heart was darkened” (Rom. 1:21, 25). And can a corrupt person willingly maintain the holy truths of faith in a pure and complete form, when they require holiness of life and are completely opposed to his bad disposition? Is it pleasant, for example, to believe in a future life, in strict retribution for all deeds after death, in an eternity of torment for unrepentant sinners, for someone who feels and fully realizes that he deserves hell for his deeds? So, in order to calm himself, to justify his crimes, he assures himself and others that there is no hell, there will be no eternal torment, and our spirit “shall vanish as the soft air” (Wisdom of Solomon 2:3). “The fool has said in his heart, There is no God” (Psalm 13:1): no, says the fool, and only in his heart, there is no God, there is no justification for us through the Son of God, there is no mysterious action of grace, and salvation in Christ by faith. What a delusion and what a misfortune! Yes, a misfortune, because without faith a person can never be calm and happy inwardly, no matter how happy the environment around him. And woe to him if an unbeliever brings his errors into families, if he infects inexperienced youths with his freethinking! “Whoever causes one of these little ones who believe in Me to stumble,” says the Lord, “it would be better for him to have an ass’s millstone around his neck, and to be drowned in the depths of the sea” (Matt. 18:6).

III. Take heed, dear brethren, lest there be in any of you an evil and unbelieving heart, lest you fall away from the living God (Heb. 3:12), and lose fellowship with Christ, and lose the crown prepared for believers in the eternal Kingdom of God. But if by misfortune it should happen to anyone to temporarily fall away from the faith, let him know what a grave sin this is and how the saints, for example, Jacob the Persian, now glorified, suffered much in order to be cleansed from this terrible sin. May this induce us to deep heartfelt repentance and correction. Let the words of the Savior always be in our memory: “Be faithful unto death, and I will give you the crown of life” (Rev. 2:10), and the crown will be given to us if we preserve a pure heart for the Lord: for “the pure in heart shall see God” (Matt. 5:8 ), and with Him and in Him shall receive eternal blessedness. Amen.

Source: A Complete Annual Cycle of Short Teachings, Composed for Each Day of the Year. Translated by John Sanidopoulos.