December: Day 19: Holy Martyr Boniface

December: Day 19:
Holy Martyr Boniface
 
(What Does True Repentance Consist Of?)

By Archpriest Grigory Dyachenko

I. The Holy Martyr Boniface, whose memory is celebrated today, lived in the city of Rome during the reign of the Emperor Diocletian. He was a servant to a certain mistress, the maiden Aglaia. He led a sinful, carnal and intemperate life, but his heart ached due to such behavior and always had the intention of changing his way of life. He often prayed to God about this with tears. In addition to prayer, he tried to incline God to mercy by deeds of mercy: the poor and unfortunate did not leave him without consolation. And the Lord looked upon the sinner and showed him the path to salvation. Once his mistress Aglaia wanted to have the relics of some martyr and build a church in his honor, in order to have an intercessor for herself before God. At that time there was a cruel persecution of Christians. The relics of martyrs were sold by unbelievers for large sums of money. Aglaia summoned her servant Boniface, gave him much gold and sent him with many other servants to obtain this holy acquisition. Boniface joyfully accepted this task. But, leaving home, he suddenly said: "And what, mistress, if my relics are brought to you instead of others, will you then accept them?" Aglaia noted that now was not the time for laughter, but it was necessary to hurry to the task for which he was sent. Meanwhile, Boniface began to reflect on his sinful life and the exploits of the martyrs; repentance in him increased, his soul burned with a thirst for salvation, and he himself decided to suffer for Christ - he fasted the entire way and was constantly in a prayerful disposition. When he arrived in the city of Tarsus, where the torment of Christians took place, he stopped at an inn and, having ordered the servants to wait for him, he himself went to the place of execution. The calm appearance of the martyrs amazed him, he ran up, kissed their hands, feet, wounds, begging them to pray for him, so that the Lord would deign to include him among their ranks.

Soon he was also seized, summoned for interrogation, and for admitting that he was a Christian, the judge condemned him to torture. First, they drove sharp iron into his fingernails and toenails, then poured hot molten tin into his mouth, but to everyone’s surprise, this did not harm him, and he remained alive. Everyone cried out: “Great is the Christian God, we all believe in the King and Lord Christ!” Boniface was taken to prison. The next day, they again subjected him to new tortures – they threw him into a cauldron of hot tar, but this did not take his life. Then the torturer ordered that he be beheaded with a sword. With joy in his heart and with a prayer on his lips, Boniface bowed his head under the sword. 550 unbelievers converted to the true God immediately after the death of the martyr. His body was thrown away. Meanwhile, his companions were waiting for his return, and when he did not appear for such a long time, they began to think ill of him: “He is probably somewhere drinking and having fun now,” they said. Finally, they began to ask everyone about him. Then the brother of the scribe who was present at the interrogation of the martyrs told them: “Yesterday a certain foreigner suffered much for Christ and was beheaded with a sword.” They described his appearance to him. It turned out that he was Boniface. But his companions did not believe him. “Would a drunkard and a sinner go to suffer for Christ?” they said. They saw the external, but did not know what was going on in the soul of this man. They were allowed to examine the bodies of the executed, and, to their surprise, the body of Boniface lay among the others. They felt ashamed that they had so reviled the sufferer of Christ. They fell before his relics and kissed them for a long time with tears, asking forgiveness for themselves. For five hundred gold coins they bought the tortured body of Boniface from the torturers, anointed it with perfumes, placed it in a shroud and took it to Rome to their mistress. Before the arrival of the relics, Aglaia heard a voice in a dream: "Accept the one who was your slave, and now our brother and servant, who will be the guardian of your soul and an intercessor for you." In horror she woke up, invited the church servants and together with them went out to meet the relics of the martyr. With joyful tears she received them into her home and thanked God, who had deemed him worthy to accept the death of the martyr as a sacrifice for his and her sins. A little while later, in the outskirts of Rome, in her village, she built a church in the name of the martyr Boniface, where they transferred his relics, from which many healings took place. After this she lived for fifteen years, prayed, fasted, repented of her sins, and by this cleansing of her soul from the sins of an impure life, she peacefully departed to the Lord and was buried at the tomb of the martyr.

II. The Holy Martyr Boniface can truly serve as a model of true repentance.

Behold, what a rapid change in the Saint after a long sojourn in sin! Formerly intemperance, drunkenness, and now fasting during the entire time of his journey to the place of suffering; formerly carnal impurity, coldness, carelessness for the work of salvation, and now an extraordinary thirst for this salvation – he thinks about one thing, how to get it as soon as possible, he thinks about that the whole way. Formerly sinful sweets, pleasures of the flesh, and now the torments of this flesh, not only illnesses, even tortures in it, the shedding of blood, the cutting off of the head. And all this is completely voluntary and when he could easily avoid these sufferings. Yes, the Holy Martyr completely, in the most obvious way, by his very deeds proved the sincerity of his repentance, his hatred of sin, his love for Christ. And how could the Lord not have mercy on him and glorify him? Thus, brethren, we also need to prove the sincerity of repentance – by our very deeds, by all our behavior. Meanwhile, many of us have misconceptions about repentance.

They think that to repent means to fast for a week or less, to abstain from food for a while during this time, to go to church, to confess and to partake of the Holy Mysteries. But this will be fasting, confession and communion of the Holy Mysteries, and not repentance. One can fast, even keep the strictest fast, practice prayer for a long time and often and yet remain unrepentant. One can open one's whole soul to one's spiritual father without concealment, everything that is done in it, and yet not be filled with a feeling of repentance, be far from true repentance.

a) True repentance is accomplished first of all in the soul. "Only by heartfelt contrition can the illness of the soul be healed," says Saint Ephraim the Syrian. Repentance consists first of all in sorrow and affliction over sins. The penitent truly involuntarily sighs from the chest, like the sighs of the publican, and tears flow, like the tears of the harlot, and self-condemnation appears, imagining oneself to be the worst of all.

b) For repentance to be true, it is necessary, further, to fall out of love, and even more so, to hate sins, especially those we love, and then resolve not to repeat them anymore and to abandon them altogether! “What does it mean to repent of sins?” asked one brother to Abba Pimen. “Not to commit sin anymore,” answered the great elder. And how could it be otherwise? And in any matter, good feelings and desires alone are not enough, but the deed itself is required; all the more so in the matter of repentance. Let us suppose that we recognize that until now we have lived contrary to the commandments of God, we grieve, even weep about it, but if this is not followed in us by disgust for sin, a firm intention to abandon it, then such feelings will remain only feelings, and will not bear fruit for us - we can remain as we were. We see that all those who truly repented, after repentance, no longer returned to the sinful life that they led until then. The Venerable Mary of Egypt, having repented, stopped tempting others with herself, left luxury, sweet food, and went into the desert. The Apostle Paul after repentance, instead of a persecutor, he became a great preacher of the Christian faith. The Apostle Peter knew one thing - to weep over his renunciation of Christ. The Savior, forgiving sins, inspired one thing: "Go and sin no more." You see in what case repentance is useful - "if we sin no more." And what father will forgive his son, if this son, asking for his forgiveness, dares to tell him that he will do the same thing again? To repent before God and not have the intention of leaving sins, or - what is even worse - to have the intention of continuing them: this means to think that it is possible to deceive God, to receive forgiveness without deserving it.

But perhaps someone will say: I would like to refrain from sin, but I cannot. But you tell me: do you struggle with sin? And do you try to struggle with it to the last possible moment? If so, then do not become despondent from new falls, only renew the struggle with sin each time with new strength, do not abandon the intention and throughout your life until your last breath be a fighter with yourself. God will see that you fall into sin without intention, without love for it, He will see your grave pain about it, and He will give you the strength sooner or later to leave it altogether. God does not condemn such sinners, who wage a struggle with themselves and only through human weakness, with heartache, fall into this or that sin, but those who have completely given themselves over to sin or passion, who are afraid to even think about leaving their passion, who do not find sin in it. At the same time, every truly repentant sinner must firmly remember that, with all his desire to free himself from the dark power of sin and erase the consequences of previous vices, he is not able to do either one or the other by his own efforts: for this, the help of the Lord is needed, Who, with the all-acting power of His grace, can change for the better the very foundation of our heart and our entire spiritual-sensory nature.

c) The sinner's conviction of the impossibility of freeing himself by his own efforts from sin and its terrible consequences, obtained through the sad experience of his powerless struggle with sin, leads the sinner to the last stage of repentance - to humble trust in the mercy of God. Faith instills in the sinner that what is impossible for him is possible for his almighty Savior; that if He gives strength, then our will is confirmed in good; if through heartfelt repentance and prayer for the forgiveness of our sins we attract His mercy, He will erase all the consequences of our sins, no matter how great they may be.

And it is here that the Divine face of the Saviour of men appears to the repentant sinner in all its majesty; he is ready to fall, like a harlot, at His feet and wet them with tears, in order to hear from Him the remission of sins and receive the grace-filled power to fight against vice. The priest of Christ, with his authority to bind and loose with the chalice of the covenant of the Body and Blood of the Lord, is for him the true, visible representative of the invisible grace of heaven, and he hastens to these mysteries as to the last cure for sins, as to the sign of the New Covenant with God, as to the source of a new grace-filled life.

d) In order that, finally, our repentance be true and achieve its saving goal, it is not enough to acknowledge our sins, to grieve over them, to hate them, to try not to repeat them and to place all our hope in the mercy of God, we must also atone for previous sins with opposite virtues. This is what it means to bear the fruits of repentance. And no matter how many have truly repented, they all atoned a hundredfold with their good life for the evil they had done before. Do we see this in ourselves and in others? Often we do not acquire a single good habit, a single holy rule after repentance? Again the same sinful habits, the same dishonest, often seductive way of life. What is the benefit of such repentance? To what extent a change for the better is necessary after repentance is evident from the teaching of the Church, according to which, if someone repents before death, but does not manage to bear the fruits of repentance, then his relatives must make up for him: they must give alms for him, and offer prayers for him.

III. May God, through the prayers of the Holy Martyr Boniface, help us to take the true path of repentance, as He once helped this holy martyr to do the same.

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