Incidents from the Life of Saint Bessarion of Agathonos

The life of Saint Bessarion is filled with incidents that reveal his profound humility and his absolute love for humanity. He was often called “the Saint of the poor” or “the Merciful One,” since whatever came into his hands he immediately distributed to others.

Below are some of the most striking true accounts:

Holy Apostle Timothy in the Hymnography of the Orthodox Church

By Fr. George Dorbarakis

Saint Timothy was from the city of Lystra. His father was a pagan, and his mother was a Jewess named Eunice. He became a disciple of the Apostle Paul and became his co-worker and a preacher of the divine gospel. He also went with Saint John, the especially beloved disciple of the Lord, and was appointed by the Apostle Paul himself as Bishop of Ephesus.

When Saint John was cast ashore by the sea (as Irenaeus, Bishop of Lyons, also recounts in his writings) and returned to Ephesus, and later was led by Emperor Domitian into exile on the island of Patmos, the blessed Timothy took his place in the episcopacy of the Ephesians.

Now at one time, when the pagans, during a certain ancestral festival of theirs called the “Katagogion,” in the city of the Ephesians, were holding idols in their hands, placing some of them upon themselves as masks, singing with them, and attacking men and women in a robber-like manner and committing murders, the blessed Timothy could not bear to witness the impropriety of their actions. Instead, he rebuked their vain delusion and exhorted them to abandon their shameful deeds. As a result, they killed him, attacking him with clubs. Afterward, his holy relic was transferred to Constantinople and placed in the Church of the Holy Apostles, where his Synaxis was celebrated.

Saint Joseph Samakos and the Liturgical Offering Bread

 

Saint Joseph Samakos, also known as Saint Joseph the Sanctified, was a revered 16th-century Orthodox hieromonk from Crete, celebrated for his sanctity. He was a monk in the Monastery of the Holy Apostle and Evangelist John the Theologian or Dermatanos, as many called it, which was located in a seaside location in Heraklion, Crete. He reposed around 1511, and his relics, found incorrupt and fragrant, led to his veneration, with churches built in his honor in Crete and Zakynthos. He is celebrated annually on January 22nd.

It happened at one time on the feast of Saint John the Theologian that the Christians offered candles and incense and many other things in the temple, but no offering bread or prosphoron for the Divine Eucharist; therefore, when the time for the Divine Liturgy arrived, the appointed servant, seeing that they had no offering bread with which to perform the Divine Mystagogy, went to Saint Joseph Samakos and said to him:

“Honorable Father, the time for the service has arrived and there is no offering; therefore, order me what I should do.”

Prologue in Sermons: January 22

On Love for God

January 22

(Commemoration of the Venerable Martyr Anastasios the Persian)

By Archpriest Victor Guryev

Strong, fervent, and wondrous was the love for God among the true servants of God. Thus the Apostle Paul desires to depart and be with Christ. The Venerable Martyr Anastasios the Persian, having passed through every path that leads to virtue, was finally inflamed with such love for God that he asked Him to help him end his life in blood and in sufferings. And of all the saints one may say, as if in their own words: "Who shall separate us from the love of God: tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword? As it is written: For Your sake we are killed all the day long" (Rom. 8:35–36).

Such was the love for God among God’s saints, and by it they left us a beautiful example for imitation. For we too must love God as they did. We too must strive toward Him with all our heart, and with all our soul, and with all our mind. Therefore we must all learn from the saints how we ought to love God and in what true love for Him consists.

In what, then, should it consist?

A Significant Doctoral Dissertation on “The Interpretive Framework of the Christology of Saint Maximus the Confessor”

By Metropolitan Hierotheos of Nafpaktos and Agiou Vlasiou

On June 25, 2013, I attended, in the Conference Hall of the Theological School of Thessaloniki, the defense of the dissertation of Mr. Georgios Siskos, which was submitted to the Department of Pastoral and Social Theology, on the topic “The Interpretive Framework of the Christology of Saint Maximus the Confessor,” following a request by the doctoral candidate.

The truth is that I myself also showed interest in this dissertation, because I had discussed it with its author during the course of its preparation and had discerned its exceptional importance for the Church, theology, and our time.

The seven-member committee consisted of Professors Despo Lialiou, Demetrios Tselengidis, Konstantinos Christou, His Eminence Metropolitan Elpidophoros of Prousa, Vasilios Tsigos, Symeon Paschalidis, and Fr. Christos Filiotis-Vlachavas. During the defense of the dissertation, statements and questions were posed by the professors, and the candidate under evaluation responded thoroughly, as an excellent connoisseur of the subject — both from the perspective of the teaching of Saint Maximus in relation to Chalcedonian and anti-Chalcedonian Christology, and from the perspective of contemporary theological bibliography on this topic.

The Meeting of Saint Maximos the Greek with Tsar Ivan the Terrible

The great Greek enlightener of the Russians, Saint Maximos the Greek (1470–1556) [21 January], spent the final five years of his life at the Lavra of the Holy Trinity, founded by Saint Sergius of Radonezh (1314–1392) [25 September].

There Tsar Ivan the Terrible (1530–1584) visited him, as he was traveling with Tsarina Anastasia and the young Tsarevich Dmitri on a pilgrimage to Saint Cyril in Belozersk.

Saint Maximos tried — ultimately without success, despite great persistence and at the risk of his life — to persuade the religiously obsessive ruler, instead of making pointless pilgrimages, to help poor women and unprotected orphans, victims of the war for the liberation of Kazan from the Turks.

He received him in his cell with the following conciliatory words, for the sake of discernment:

“I thank Almighty God, Tsar Ivan, who deemed me worthy to see you with my own eyes before the time comes for them to close. May divine protection accompany you, great king of Orthodoxy! And if it pleases you, receive also my humble blessing.”

Saint Maximus the Confessor in the Hymnography of the Orthodox Church

 

By Fr. George Dorbarakis

The commemoration of our Venerable Father Maximus the Confessor, the “all-blessed and all-great,” constitutes for our Church an eternal proclamation — both of his blood that was shed for the sake of the faith and of his God-inspired teachings. That is to say, our Church does not regard the celebrated Saint as something belonging merely to the past, even a glorified one — perhaps analogous to various anniversaries of national holidays — but as a living and enduring present. For his blood (as indeed that of the other martyrs and teachers of the Church) nourished the Church, and his teachings preserved unadulterated the revelation of Christ and the preaching of the Holy Apostles and the later Fathers. Indeed, these two — his blood and his teachings — were inseparably bound together: his blood was the confirmation of his orthodox doctrines.

This is not merely our own opinion concerning Saint Maximus. It is the common faith of our Church, expressed through the mouth of another great Father and hymnographer, Saint John of Damascus. In his Canon for the Saint, for example, the Holy Hymnographer notes among other things: “Even to this day and unto all the ages, O all-blessed and all-great Maximus, your blood, like that of Abel, cries aloud in the Church of Christ, proclaiming with a piercing voice your divinely-inspired dogmas.”

Prologue in Sermons: January 21

How One Should Speak with Simple, Illiterate People about the Salvation of the Soul

January 21

(From the Instruction of Saint Basil on Virtue.)

By Archpriest Victor Guryev

There are many simple, illiterate people who are not acquainted either with the Scriptures or with the power contained in them. How, brethren, should you — the educated — relate to such people, and how should you instruct them? You may say: “This is not our concern; this pertains to you, the spiritual shepherds.” No, that is not true. “For teachers alone are not sufficient for the instruction of everyone individually, but God desires that each person instruct and edify another,” says the blessed Theophylact. And the Apostle Paul teaches: “Therefore comfort one another and edify one another” (1 Thess. 5:11). And Chrysostom adds: “Even if we correct everything in ourselves, yet do not benefit our neighbor, we shall not enter the Kingdom of Heaven.”

What then, you will say, should we do? This is what: when you speak with a simple person about the salvation of the soul, speak with him as simply as possible, and all will be well. “But what should we say to him?” you will object again. Say whatever the Lord places upon your heart.

The Miracle of Saint Euthymios the Great in Pronia of Nafplio

A historical retrospective, a few years before the Second World War, was recalled for us by the former high school principal of Nafplio, Vasilios Charamis, who remembers hearing it recounted by the older generations.

By Evangelos Bougiotis

It was in the years 1928–1930 when, at daybreak in Nafplio, a powerful storm broke out with heavy rain and hail. It was so intense that disaster soon followed. Tons of water swept along everything in their path. The district of Pronia suffered the greatest damage at that time: the roads — which were dirt roads then — were carved into enormous gullies, almost all the houses were flooded, and the residents, in order to save themselves, climbed onto the roofs of their homes.

When dawn came, the inhabitants saw that the calendar showed January 20, the feast of Saint Euthymios. The vow they made to Saint Euthymios was that they might be saved from destruction. And this indeed came to pass. The residents of Pronia, as one body, had an icon of the Saint made, which they placed in the Church of the Holy Trinity at the heart of Pronia, and since then they honor him every year with the blessing of bread (artoklasia) and the Divine Liturgy.