January: Day 10: Teaching 1: Venerable Markianos

January: Day 10: Teaching 1:
Venerable Markianos
 
(The Virtue of Building Temples)

By Archpriest Grigory Dyachenko

I. Venerable Markianos, who is today being glorified, was a presbyter and steward of the Church of Constantinople. Having received a large inheritance after the death of his parents, he used it to provide for the poor and to renovate and build churches of God. He built a magnificent church in the name of the Holy Martyr Anastasia. When one of his friends wondered why he was spending such large sums on this church, the Venerable replied: “If you were giving your daughter in marriage to a nobleman, would you not reward her with a rich dowry? But I am building a church for the bride of Christ, who shed her blood for the Heavenly Bridegroom; how can I grudge wealth for her adornment?” Venerable Markianos was so kind that more than once he gave his last garment to the poor, even remaining without a shirt. For his holy life, God rewarded him with the gift of miracles: he cast out demons with prayer and healed the sick.

Before his death, Venerable Markianos began to build a church in the name of Saint Irene, but did not manage to finish it. Dying, he said: "Lord, into Your hands I commit both my soul, which You have given me, and the church (in honor of Saint Irene), which I have built by Your mercy." The Venerable died in the second half of the fifth century and was buried in the Monastery of Saint John the Baptist. The Church of Saint Irene was soon completed through the zeal of Verina, the wife of Emperor Leo, who ascended the throne after Emperor Marcian.

II. The Venerable Markianos, whom God Himself glorified with the gift of wonderworking for his love for the construction and adornment of the holy temples of God, teaches us to care for the holy temples and to assist in their construction and adornment. In view of this, let us speak about the virtue of temple building.

(a) That temples are necessary for us, as God showed us in the construction of the Tabernacle of the Witness in the wilderness, according to His own command and plan, with the most detailed instructions concerning the materials and their use, prescribing the order of its consecration, and establishing in it, on the Ark of the Covenant, the place of His constant presence. And experience showed the Israelites that as long as the Tabernacle and the Ark of the Covenant were with them, so long was God with them, and they with God.

After the destruction of Solomon's Temple, after the Babylonian captivity, the Lord Himself encouraged the Israelites to build a new Temple and finally, shortly before the coming of Christ, He announced through the mouth of the Prophet Malachi that this only Temple of the true God would soon be replaced by a countless multitude of temples among the nations, which would be called to faith in the coming Redeemer: “From the rising of the sun to the setting of the sun, My name will be great among the nations, and in every place they will offer incense to My name, a pure sacrifice” (Mal. 1:11).

Almost with these same words the Lord Jesus Christ Himself explained to the Samaritan woman that the time would come and had already come when true worshipers, not only in Jerusalem and not in Samaria, but in every place, would "worship God in spirit and truth” (John 4:20–23).

From the very beginning of the Apostles' establishment of the Church of Christ, for prayerful gatherings of believers, for the performance of Holy Mysteries, for explaining to Christians the dogmas of faith and rules of morality, temples were needed and, in accordance with the will of God, they became as essential an accessory to the Church of Christ as the priesthood itself, preaching the dogmas of faith and performing the mysteries. And history has shown that temples were built on the free offerings of church members, not only on the large ones, but also on the small, like the widow's mites, sanctified by the blessing of the Lord.

In our fatherland, where churches shine like stars in the sky, the virtue of temple building has become popular, and all churches, with the exception of state ones, are rarely built with rich donations, but mostly with mites collected from the zeal of the Orthodox.

b) Completely in accordance with the direct will of God, the virtue of temple building renders the greatest benefits to our neighbors. To gather around the temple a large or small community of Orthodox Christians, to establish among them a fraternal union in the name of the temple, which belongs to them and to which they belong, to open in it a source of grace and God's blessing and an always ready place for prayer, where they are taught and led in it, to place in the temple images as a reminder of significant times of the year and Christian celebrations, awakening them with the sacred ringing of the bell from the sleep of moral carelessness and from the darkening of worldly vanity, and together with all this to indicate in the ministers of Christ assigned to the temple - teachers and leaders in the work of salvation, with a ready school of piety in the temple - are not all these great benefits to believers, is not it a direct realization and bringing into action of all, in the words of the Apostle, the powers "which lead to life and godliness" (2 Pet. 1:3), given to us by Christ our Savior? We do not wander, looking for places for worship and prayer. The love of the church builders opens sacred refuges for our souls, seeking communion with our Heavenly Father, like a native paternal home, where we meet everything ready for spiritual enlightenment, grace-filled revival, excitement and consolation. Calling the church the gate to the Kingdom of God, the Orthodox Church by this one feature clearly defines both the highest significance of the church and the dignity of the virtue of temple building.

c) All objections to the virtue of temple building have no reasonable basis. The evil spirit of our time, together with the other foundations of our Christian life, undermines this so clear and beneficial virtue of temple building. The children of the Church say: "Why such expenditures on the decoration of churches? God does not need wealth. The church should be simple and only convenient and spacious. These thousands can be used with greater benefit for schools and charitable institutions." Do not be ashamed, Orthodox Christians, by these judgments of pseudo-educated people, which are offensive to you. The Lord has given us guiding instructions for such cases in the Gospel story about the deed of Mary, the sister of the resurrected Lazarus, who anointed the feet of the Lord with precious myrrh, and the judgment of Judas the traitor about this, in his opinion, vain expenditure. Judas also said that the large sum spent on myrrh could have been used profitably for the poor, but he did not add another purpose – for schools. But the Holy Evangelist John also revealed the motive of the specious adviser: he was a thief and stole money from the box into which good people dropped for the needs of the Lord and His disciples who walked with Him (John 26:4-6). Who is our modern thief, who gives us advice like that of Judas and speaks through the lips of people who are supposedly educated? It is the flesh, it is sensuality, which our age worships and serves: it is a pity that it cannot use anything from the sums brought as a sacrifice to God. But it is a known thief, and we can easily see how it robs all Christian virtues. It robs the love of education, for which it apparently cares, by disposing rich people, instead of schools for the common good, to build palaces for themselves, instead of learned people to pay inventors and organizers of all kinds of conveniences and pleasures; instead of useful books, to throw enormous sums on games and fashionable clothes, senselessly changed and pitilessly thrown away. It robs all the spiritual dispositions of modern man, accustoming him to run to spectacles during hours of prayer, to organize merry gatherings in free time for reading and reflection, instead of quiet family exercises and pleasures to seek enjoyment where conscience does not constrain and the observant gaze of a strict Christian does not shame.

III. And only love for God, aroused and nourished by pure service to Him and sacrifices for His glory, is the sure means for the struggle with the flesh and the source of true love for one’s neighbors. Amen.  

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