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December 4, 2024

Homily on the Holy Great Martyr Barbara - On the Knowledge of God Through the Contemplation of Nature (Archimandrite Kirill Pavlov)


Homily on the Holy Great Martyr Barbara

On the Knowledge of God Through the Contemplation of Nature

By Archimandrite Kirill Pavlov

In the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit!

"The heavens declare the glory of God, and the firmament proclaims the work of His hands" (Ps. 19:2). "O Lord our Lord, how marvelous is Your name in all the earth! How exalted is Your glory above the heavens. When I look at the heavens, the work of Your hands, the moon and the stars, which You have established. What is man, that You are mindful of him? or the son of man, that You visit him (Ps. 8:2-5)? Thus, contemplating the beauty of the universe, the Holy Psalmist David glorified God. In the same way, through contemplating the beauty of created nature, the holy, praiseworthy, long-suffering Great Martyr Barbara came to the knowledge of God, whose memory, beloved brothers and sisters in Christ, the Holy Church celebrates today.

Saint Barbara suffered in the fourth century, during the reign of the impious Emperor Maximian. She was born and raised in a family of noble and wealthy parents, pagans by faith, in the city of Heliopolis in Phoenicia. While still a baby, she lost her mother, and her upbringing was entirely in the hands of her father, Dioscorus, a zealous idolater. He tried to instill the same faith in the pagan gods in his daughter. Saint Barbara possessed extraordinary physical beauty, which amazed many. Therefore, in order to protect his daughter from evil influence and bad company, Dioscorus built a separate tower for her with all the amenities and various rooms and placed her there to live, so that she would not see any scandal or temptation. Finding herself in solitude and removal from all entertainment, Barbara carefully looked at nature around her and loved to reflect on its wondrous phenomena. From the height of her dwelling, Saint Barbara gazed at night at the countless sparkling stars burning in the vault of heaven, and during the day – at the distant blue mountains, at the dark dense forests, at the green meadows, at the fast-flowing rivers and streams – she looked at this and thought.

Her gaze was especially captivated in the spring, when she saw how the trees and gardens were covered with a beautiful green cover, the meadows were dressed in greenery and flowers, the air was filled with the singing of the birds of the sky. “It cannot be,” she thought, “that this beautiful world came into being by itself or by chance, without the participation of reason. It cannot be that the gods we worship created it: they themselves were made by human hands from gold and silver.” Reflecting thus, she came to believe that there is some Almighty Intelligent Being Who created this beautiful intelligent world, that there is an Invisible God.

And one day, when she was immersed in thoughts about the creation of the universe, the grace of God touched her pure heart and the Lord illuminated her inquisitive mind with His light, and she understood the Living True God, and from that time on nothing occupied her except thoughts about Him. Meanwhile, many rich suitors heard about her beauty and began to woo her, and her father, Dioscorus, rejoiced that his daughter would soon be married. However, when he announced this to her, Saint Barbara categorically refused marriage, saying that she wanted to spend her entire life as a maiden. The father was perplexed by this answer from his daughter. He decided that he himself was to blame for this, having locked her up in a secluded castle, which is why she wanted to continue to live in solitude. Therefore, he allowed his daughter to freely go out wherever she wanted and freely communicate with all young men in the hope that she would change her mind. But this freedom served only for her spiritual benefit: God's Providence arranged everything for her good and eternal salvation. At that time she met many girls, secret Christians, who told her about Christ the Savior, about how the whole world was saved by His suffering. And her immaculate heart rejoiced with inexpressible joy upon hearing the good news about the true God.

She expressed a desire to be baptized, which by God's grace was soon arranged. Her father went off to some distant country, and a priest who arrived in Heliopolis from Alexandria under the guise of a merchant taught the holy maiden the secrets of the Christian faith and baptized her. Having received double grace, Saint Barbara was filled with even greater love for the Lord Jesus Christ and thought of nothing else but Him. When her father arrived and found that his daughter worshiped the Crucified One and believed in Him, he was filled with unspeakable rage and wanted to kill her with his own sword, but flight and God's help saved Saint Barbara from his hands that time. Then her father handed her over to the judge, accusing her of worshiping Christ: at that time, a terrible persecution was raised against Christians, and for the mere name of Christian they were subjected to inhuman tortures and torments.

The judge, after various admonitions and threats, seeing that the Saint steadfastly confessed the Christian faith, subjected her to severe torture. Naked, she was mercilessly scourged, so that the ground was stained with the virgin's blood. After this, the executioners began to rub the fresh wounds with hair cloths, which caused the sufferer incredible pain. Then she was thrown into prison, where, exhausted and wounded, she began to ask the Lord for consolation and help. And there, in prison, the Lord Jesus Christ Himself appeared to Barbara, healed her of all her wounds and strengthened her in patience for the sake of the Kingdom of Heaven.

After this, the Saint was again taken for torture: they hung her on a tree and scraped her body with iron hooks, beat her head with iron hammers, and then cut off her nipples and after that led her naked throughout the city. The last torture was the hardest for the holy and chaste maiden. She asked the Lord to protect her from the gaze of curious spectators, and the Lord sent His Angel, who immediately covered her nakedness with a light-like garment. After all these tortures, the Saint was condemned to death by beheading with a sword, and this sentence was carried out by her own father, the murderer, who cut off his daughter's head with his own hands. Thus ended her suffering feat for Christ, the Holy Great Martyr Barbara.

Beloved brothers and sisters in Christ, from the biography of this great saint, one phenomenon in her spiritual life is especially edifying for us, namely, that she came to know God through the examination of nature. She was brought up in the pagan faith, no one taught her from childhood the faith in the true God, but through the observation of nature she herself came to know Him. And just as Saint Barbara came to know God through nature, so each of us can come to know God through the examination of God's creation.

The traces of God's omnipotence and His everlasting power are imprinted on everything around us. As the footprint of man is clearly imprinted on the snow, so the footprint of God is clearly imprinted on all creation. Every flower of the field, every blade of grass speaks of the omnipotence, wisdom and goodness of God. Look, dear ones, at any blade of grass - and you will see that God's wisdom is revealed in everything. A blade of grass is attached to the ground and cannot move, but it finds everything it needs in the soil itself, where its roots are nourished; with its leaves it breathes pure air and thus lives and exists. Who created it, who waters it with blessed rain, who nourishes it with the pure breath of air, who gives the flower its fragrance and color? How can a rose extract its bright pink color from the black earth, and a lily its brilliant whiteness? No artist, no scientist, no matter how skilled, can create such a fragrant flower. All this is the work of the Almighty God.

Next, let's look at animals. They are born small and weak, unable to exist independently, but the Lord inspired mothers to care for their children, so that the mother knows no peace until she has raised her young. Thus, traces of God's care for His creation are visible in everything.

Therefore, dear brothers and sisters, let us look more often at the beautiful world around us and through it know God and all that is good. Nature is the book of God, not written, but created, which every person, both literate and illiterate, can read, and always revere the Creator of the Universe. Whether the sun rises, the sky is strewn with bright stars, thunder rumbles, rain pours - bow before the greatness of God and give praise to the Almighty. Do the same when you look at the beauty of the world around you.

Beloved brothers and sisters in Christ, the Holy Great Martyr Barbara, when she was going to her death, asked the Lord for the gift of saving from illness and sudden death all who would remember her and her suffering. Let us pray to her today with all our hearts, that she, looking upon all who have gathered in this church on the day of her memory, would save us from sudden death, so that, walking the path of repentance and correction, we would be worthy of the future eternal life. Amen.

Source: Translated by John Sanidopoulos.
 

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