March: Day 11: Teaching 3: Holy Martyrs Trophimos and Thallos

 

March: Day 11:* Teaching 3:
Holy Martyrs Trophimos and Thallos
 
(What Explains the Marvelous Patience of the Martyrs?)

By Archpriest Grigory Dyachenko

I. The Holy Martyrs Trophimos and Thallos, whose memory is celebrated today, were both brothers and priests. They preached the faith of Christ and denounced the impiety of the pagans, despite the fact that in their time there was a terrible persecution of Christians. They lived in the 3rd century in the city of Laodicea, in Karia, whose ruler, Asclepius, ordered them to be killed with stones. But the thrown stones did not touch the Martyrs, but flew back and struck the torturers themselves. Finally, Asclepius ordered them to be crucified, and the Holy Martyrs did not cease to teach the people from the cross and died with prayer. After the execution of these Holy Martyrs, Asclepius died in terrible suffering.

II. The sufferings of the Holy Martyrs Trophimos and Thallos, crucified on the cross and from there teaching the people, amazes us, brethren, and involuntarily forces us to ask: how is their wondrous patience explained?

a) Reflecting on this, we find that the first support of their unshakable patience in enduring terrible torments for the name of Christ was a living, firm confidence in the Divinity of the person of Jesus Christ. The holy martyrs acquired their confidence in the divine greatness of Christ the Savior not only through teaching from men known for their wisdom and holiness of life, glorified by the gift of miracles and special signs of the grace of God dwelling in them - from men who sealed the truth of their teaching with blood, but also through their own vision of Jesus Himself, who more than once appeared to them both in dreams and in reality in heavenly glory, through their experienced knowledge of the triumph of the power of Christ over the impotence of the pagan gods. With such complete confidence in the Divinity of Christ crucified, how could the martyrs not dare to endure all the horrors of torture, all kinds of deprivations, when they dared to suggest false gods to the Christ they confessed, forcing them to renounce Him? "I also count all things loss for the excellence of the knowledge of Christ Jesus my Lord, for whom I have suffered the loss of all things, and count them as rubbish, that I may gain Christ" (Phil. 3:8). "I take pleasure in infirmities, in reproaches, in needs, in persecutions, in distresses, for Christ’s sake. For when I am weak, then I am strong" (2 Cor. 12:10), the Apostle Paul testifies about himself.

b) With confidence in the Divinity of Jesus Christ, love for Him, a fiery, zealous love was kindled in the hearts of the martyrs. And for such love, what could all the temptations and threats of the persecutors of Christianity mean? The infinite perfections of Jesus Christ, revealed by the Christian faith, captivated the hearts of the confessors of the faith to such an extent that Christ became the sole, constant object of their desires and aspirations, their thoughts and feelings, their conversations and actions - they tied them so firmly to Him that no force, neither earthly nor heavenly, neither good nor evil, was able to distract them from Him, to separate them from Him. "Who shall separate us from the love of God? Shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or trouble, or sword? I am assured that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor powers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ our Lord," says the Apostle Paul (Rom. 8:35, 38, 39).

c) In addition to the living faith in the God-man Jesus and ardent love for Him, the strong hope for His reward for temporary sufferings and sorrows with eternal joys and comforts made all the tortures invented against them by Christ-haters not terrible, but bearable, even desirable for the confessors of the faith. The Holy Great Martyr Katherine, for example, answered Emperor Maximinus, who threatened to betray her to desecration and cover her body with wounds, without trepidation: “Do whatever you like, but know that through temporary dishonor you will obtain eternal glory for me; my body will suffer only temporarily here, but there, in heaven, it will rest forever. Christ calls me to the ineffable blessedness of paradise. With Him I will reign and rejoice forever and ever.” And the Holy Apostle Paul reasoned: "Since we suffer with Christ, we shall also be glorified with Him." With such a view of the sufferings of Christ for the sake of Christ, why should the martyrs fear them, how could they not even desire them?

d) Finally, the confessors of Christ were greatly strengthened in their feat of martyrdom – in the fearless, joyful encounter with fierce suffering – by the power of God, visibly benefiting them, the gracious, Divine consolation poured from above into their hearts, either mysteriously or through the visible appearance of a heavenly angel and Jesus Christ Himself. "For as the sufferings of Christ abound in us, so our consolation also abounds through Christ" (2 Cor. 1:5), as the Apostle Paul testifies, i.e. as our sufferings for Christ increase, so the grace-filled consolation through Christ also increases in us.

Therefore, brethren, this is what inspired the martyrs and confessors of Christ to fearlessly and willingly endure the tortures from the persecutors of the Christian faith!

III. Christian brethren! Nowadays there are no open persecutions of Christianity, but how many secret rebellions against the loftiness of the dogmas of the faith of Christ, against the strictness of the rules of piety, against the beneficence and importance of the statutes and decrees of the Church of Christ. Nowadays we are not directly forced to renounce Christ, but how many hidden seductions into unbelief and superstition, into doubt and indifference in faith, how many cunning inclinations into heresy and schism! Nowadays we are not forced to worship pagan gods: Mercury, Jupiter, Apollo and others; but are we not persuaded to betray Christ and His Gospel for the sake of money, friendship, kinship, worldly honors, the proprieties of the world, out of fear of the mighty of the earth? Nowadays, for confessing the name of Christ, for following His teaching, our bodies are not subjected to beatings, torment, to being broken into pieces: but instead, do they not wound our hearts with caustic mockery, slander, calumny, contempt, and stinging witticisms? Therefore, is not our present position in the midst of a sinful and adulterous world not similar to the position of the ancient martyrs and confessors of the faith of Christ?

According to the judgment of Saint Dimitri, Metropolitan of Rostov, just as in those times when impious people, ignorant of God, worshiped soulless idols, there were countless multitude of holy martyrs who shed their blood for Christ and died in many different ways of death; so in our time, when idolatry, i.e. service to sin, reigns everywhere in our morals, true Christians must be martyrs out of love for Christ, although without shedding blood. They must constantly mortify their passions in themselves, they must die to sin, so that they are no longer capable of committing sin, and do not enslave themselves to sinful lusts. And just as habitual sin is our favorite idol, so resistance to sin is a martyr's feat. The tormentor here is either our sin-loving nature, or sinful habit, or the tempter himself - the devil. The servants of the tormentor are impure thoughts that lead to sin, as well as those people who incline or tempt us to sin. Different types of torment are a struggle with impure thoughts, a struggle with passions and lusts. This is how every Christian can become a spiritual martyr of Christ - although he will not shed his blood, he will be worthy of the crown of martyrdom.

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

* Translator's Note: In the original text this entry is under March 16th, which reflects the date of the commemoration of these Holy Martyrs in the Slavic Calendar. Here it has has been changed to March 11th, to reflect the date of their commemoration according to the Greek Calendar.