March: Day 20: Holy Martyrs John, Sergius, Patrick and Others, Who Were Killed by the Saracens in the Lavra of Saint Savvas

Sts. John, Patrick and Sergius

 

March: Day 20:
Holy Martyrs John, Sergius, Patrick and Others, Who Were Killed by the Saracens in the Lavra of Saint Savvas
 
(On the Sin of Murder)

By Archpriest Grigory Dyachenko

I. From the seventh century onwards, the environs of Jerusalem were constantly subjected to attacks by predatory Saracens. They did not spare even the peaceful hermit monasteries, although hermits who had no earthly wealth hid in them. Once, during the all-night vigil on Palm Sunday, a rumor reached the Lavra of Saint Savvas that the barbarians were preparing to attack the monastery in significant numbers. The brethren decided not to leave the Lavra, for, having completely surrendered themselves to the Lord and having died while still alive to the world, they did not fear death. They began to pray even more ardently, preparing to pass on to a better life. Indeed, on Holy Thursday, the Saracens attacked the monastery with great force and immediately put some of the monks to death. They gathered others into the church and began to interrogate them as to where the monastery treasures were hidden. “Atone for yourself and your church with four hundred gold coins,” the barbarians said to the holy fathers, “otherwise we will kill you all.”

“Do not shed our blood in vain,” the monks answered meekly. “We have never had so much gold; take our poor clothes; you will not find any other property with us.”

The barbarians did not believe the words of the monks and tried to torture them to find out where their treasures were hidden. There was a cave in the monastery in which Saint Savvas, the founder of the Lavra, had once labored. They brought all the monks there and, before the entrance to the cave, they gathered brushwood and lit a great fire. The monks were suffocated by the stench and smoke; the barbarians continued to ask them about the hidden treasures, but in response they heard only prayers to God from the suffocating brothers. Eighteen people died in the cave; others were beheaded with the sword, or otherwise tortured to death. The names of only John, Sergius, and Patrick are known to the Church, but the memory of all the monks who suffered from the Saracens on Holy Thursday is celebrated on March 20. Then the villains set off home with the stolen property, but were punished by an invisible force and all perished on the way.

II. Amazing are the ways of God's providence, which allowed apparently innocent people to suffer at the hands of villains. Perhaps the Lord, by allowing the holy fathers to die a martyr's death at the hands of villains, wanted to crown them with a martyr's crown and at the same time make them partakers of greater blessedness in the Kingdom of Heaven; perhaps there were other reasons here, which we will not investigate with our weak minds, for the ways of God's providence are always wise and all-good, but inscrutable. Let us rather turn our attention in the present case to the fact that the murderers of the holy monks on the way to their homes with the stolen property were punished with death by the invisible power of God.

a) Renewing the blessing of the human race after the flood, the Lord laid down one immutable law for murderers: whoever sheds human blood, his own blood will be shed among men, for man was created in the image of God. "Surely for your lifeblood I will demand a reckoning," says the Lord, "from the hand of every beast I will require it, and from the hand of man. From the hand of every man’s brother I will require the life of man" (Gen. 9:5, 6). So important in the eyes of God is the earthly life of man, created in the image of God, that the Lord laid down by His judgment to avenge the murder of man, committed not only by man, who can and should recognize the gravity of this crime, but also the murder committed by wild, unreasoning beasts: "From the hand of every beast I will require it." That is why it happens that the murder of a man among men almost never remains undiscovered, unpunished.

Here, for example, is a story showing how a secret murder was discovered. There were two friends living in perfect harmony. Once they were traveling somewhere and stopped for the night in a certain town: one stayed with an acquaintance of his, and the other, who had no one there, neither relatives nor friends, had to stay at an inn. So the first, who stayed with his good acquaintance, lay down, fell asleep, and dreamed that his friend, who was staying at the inn, came to him and said: “Please come to me! The owner is offending me and even wants to kill me.” This dream disturbed him so much that he woke up and was about to go to the inn to help his friend out of trouble, but on the way he changed his mind, believing that the dream was delirium, nonsense, and returned home. But as soon as he fell asleep, he again saw in a dream that his friend, swimming in his own blood and dying, reproached him for not coming to his aid, and said: “I have already been killed by the innkeeper; my body was cut into pieces, carried away by my murderer beyond such and such a city gate and there buried in the manure.” This dream disturbed the sleeper even more: he woke up and immediately ran beyond the city gate, where he found his friend in exactly the position in which he had been told in the dream, and brought the murderer to justice. (See the book “Minutes of Pastoral Leisure”, Bishop Hermogenes, vol. II, pp. 764-765).

b) And even if cases of murder were to increase somewhere, and by their very multitude they could sometimes hide from the gaze of human justice, they cannot hide from the eyes of God, they cannot escape His righteous judgment. The Prophet Isaiah says that at the time when the Lord, although long-suffering, but at the same time just, sends His wrath upon criminals, then the earth itself will reveal the blood it has swallowed up and will not hide the slain (Is. 26:21). And not only do disasters on earth pursue the murderer, but he also moves away from God so that his prayers do not reach God. “When you spread out your hands to Me,” says the Lord, “I hide My eyes from you; and when you multiply your prayers, I do not hear, because your hands are full of blood” (Is. 1:15).

III. Brethren! Let us always remember the commandment of the law of God: "Thou shalt not murder!" which forbids not only to take the life of a neighbor, but even to be angry with him without reason, to revile and slander him, for everyone who is angry with his brother is, according to the judgment of the word of God, a murderer.

Let us also remember the following formidable prophetic words of our Lord: "All who take up the sword will perish by the sword" (Matthew 26:52). 

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