(Oct. 26/Nov. 8)
An Account of the Passion of the
Holy Greatmartyr, and About Our Sacred Duty of Obedience to the Civil
Authorities
By
Protopresbyter Thomas Marretta
Brothers and sisters!
Last Sunday, we commemorated one of the greatest saints of
modern times, the holy, righteous archpriest of Kronstadt John, and today we
celebrate the memory of one of the greatest saints of antiquity, the holy,
glorious great martyr Demetrius of Thessalonica. Saint Demetrius was
governor-general of Thessalonica, a position that gave him authority not only
over the city, but over all of Macedonia, as well as other parts of Greece and
some areas of modern Bulgaria. The emperors at that time were the brutal Diocletian
and Maximian, who presided over the most ferocious persecution of the Church in
history, except for the one perpetuated by the Bolsheviks in Russia during the
twentieth century.
As military governor, Demetrius was responsible for
apprehending and executing the Christians of the region, but the young general
was himself a secret Christian and instead used his lofty position to further
the faith of Christ, becoming a new Saint Paul to the Thessalonians. Word of
this of course reached Emperor Maximian, who at that time had just concluded a
campaign in the northern Balkans. Learning that Maximian was on his way to deal
with him, Demetrius freed all his slaves and gave his possessions to the poor.
Then he prepared himself with intense prayer and fasting for the coming ordeal.
Maximian imprisoned Demetrius in the lower rooms of a public
bath, which have survived to this day as the crypt of the great church of the
saint in Thessalonica. Meanwhile, the Emperor sought to win the people’s favor
by holding violent games of the sort to which the Romans were so addicted.
Among these were wrestling matches featuring Maximian’s Vandal lover Lyaeus, a
huge German. A platform was set up, surrounded by spears pointing upwards, and
the barbarian would hurl his opponents onto the spears. Many Christians were
among the unfortunates forced to wrestle with Lyaeus. The tyrant and most of
the soldiers were delighted when the brute skewered his victims, but the
Thessalonians were horrified, for the better part of them had been converted to
Christ by Saint Demetrius.
One of the soldiers who had been under Demetrius’ command, a
teenager called Nestor, visited the saint and asked his permission to take on
Lyaeus. Although it seemed a hopeless mismatch, Demetrius blessed him to do
this. Nestor miraculously prevailed over the barbarian and threw him to his
death on the spears, for which Maximian had the youth beheaded. Then, having
learned that Demetrius had blessed Nestor to contend with his favorite, the
Emperor sent soldiers to the bath, and they ran through Saint Demetrius with
their spears.
During those days, brothers and sisters, things could hardly
have looked darker for the Christians, but only God, not man, can know the
future. Soon the Lord raised up a ruler very different from Diocletian and
Maximian. This was the renowned Emperor Constantine, and he put an end to the
Great Persecution and legalized Christianity. A chapel was built over Saint
Demetrius’ grave, and many miracles were worked there. Later, a grand church
dedicated to Saint Demetrius would cover the area, a building which exists to
this day and is visited by every devout pilgrim to Thessalonica. For centuries,
vast quantities of healing myrrh poured out of the greatmartyr’s relics. The
ducts that carried it to the basin from which pilgrims drew it still survive.
So copious was the flow that the Thessalonians were known to baptize babies in
it! Alas, because of our sins the city, for centuries kept inviolate by Saint
Demetrius, eventually proved unworthy of his constant protection, and
experienced a series of terrible sackings. Yet despite these calamities, even
now the pious citizens of Thessalonica remain devoted to Saint Demetrius, and
every day come to his basilica to pray, or simply to be in his presence. Anyone
who has visited the church senses that the Thessalonians continue to love this
saint above all others, and still trust and put their hope in him.
Brothers and sisters, Roman history is filled with the
reigns of persecutors and deranged tyrants, men like Diocletian and Maximian,
Caligula and Nero. By comparison, most of our contemporary American politicians
would seem to be paragons of uprightness. Yet, Saint Demetrius and the other
early Christians submitted to the authority of such rulers and obeyed it,
except when these men were specifically commanding something that indubitably
contravened incontrovertible principles of faith. This is difficult to
comprehend for many modern-day Christians, whose inclinations tend more to
suspicious and insubordinate, not to say fantastical political theories than to
the devout spirit of subordination, cooperation, respect, and obedience. Yet
the early Christians were acting precisely in accordance with the teaching of
the Scriptures here, the Scriptures of both the Old and the New Testaments.
In a brief sermon, I cannot quote you every relevant
scriptural passage, but let us review at least portions of some of the more
important:
From Exodus: Thou
shalt not speak ill of the ruler of thy people. [1]
From Ezra: Whosoever
will not do the law of thy God, and the law of the King, let judgment be
executed speedily upon him, whether it be unto death, or to chastisement, or
for a fine of his property, or casting into prison. [2] To these lines
from a letter of the Persian King Artaxerxes, the holy Ezra adds this comment: Blessed be the Lord God of our
fathers, who hath put it thus into the heart of the King. [3]
From Ecclesiastes: Observe
the commandment of the King, and that because of the word of the oath of God. [4]
Also, from the same book: Even in thy conscience, curse not the King. [5]
From Romans: Let
every soul be subject unto the higher powers. For there is no power, but of
God: the powers that be are ordained of God. Whosoever therefore resisteth the
power, resisteth the ordinance of God: and they that resist shall receive to
themselves damnation. [6]
From Titus: Put
them in mind to be subject to principalities and powers, to obey magistrates,
to be ready to every good work, to speak evil of no man, to be no brawlers, but
gentle, shewing all meekness unto all men. [7]
And from First Peter: Submit
yourselves to every ordinance of man for the Lord’s sake: whether it be to the
King, as supreme; or unto governors, as unto them that are sent by him for the
punishment of evildoers, and for the praise of them that do well. For so is the
will of God, that with well doing ye may put to silence the ignorance of
foolish men. [8]
It is noteworthy that both authors of the New Testament
texts adduced, Saint Peter and Saint Paul, were put to death, namely by a Roman
emperor, the depraved Nero, who reportedly used Christians as torches to
illumine his banquets. Perhaps when they wrote, the saints did not know every
crime Nero would commit, but the All-Holy Spirit, Who inspired their epistles,
most certainly knew! Nevertheless, their epistles command obedience to the
civil authorities -- pagan, even antichristian civil authorities -- in the
strongest terms.
Why so, dear Christians? Saint Paul, the mouth of Christ,
explains: Rulers, he
writes, are not a terror to good
works, but to the evil. Wherefore, ye must needs be subject, not only for
wrath, but also for conscience sake. [9] In other words, even pagan
governments are frequently motivated by an interest in furthering the public
good. Besides this, we must obey government for conscience sake; that is, we must have a spirit not of
indiscriminate complaining, criticism, and disobedience, but of purehearted subordination
and obedience to government, in order to have a pure conscience before God --
the prerequisite to pleasing Him. Since we Christians are forbidden to judge
with undue harshness private individuals (our equals) in respect to private
matters, much more are we obliged to extend to the civil authorities (our
superiors) all possible benefit of the doubt with regard to their basic good
intent in the exercise of their governance.
Of course, all governments do act at times in an unwise,
unjust, or ill-intentioned manner, and certain governments act in extremely
evil ways, with varying degrees of consistency. But this does not void the
scriptural principle of Christian subjection for conscience sake. Rather, in the specific situations in
which the civil authorities attempt to compel disobedience to the higher law of
God or create a profoundly impossible moral dilemma, the Christian is relieved
of the general obligation to submit and obey, but for that instance
only. We see this in the life of Saint Demetrius, when the Emperor expected
him to massacre the faithful, but instead he spread the faith among the people.
In modern times we have seen it in Russia, when the Catacomb Church refused to
collaborate with the murderous anti-religious campaign of the Bolsheviks.
These exceptions notwithstanding, it is abundantly clear
from the language of the scriptural texts cited that God has delivered to
us a command, not an option, to obey the civil
authorities. After all, Saint Paul states plainly that those who resist the
power of the government, ordained of
God, shall receive to themselves damnation. [10] Therefore, a heavy
burden of proof rests, not on the civil authorities, but on those who
frivolously impute evil motives to them or foster a spirit of inward or outward
rebelliousness against them. We must never fall back on the exceptions to the
rule lightly, for they are indeed a “court of final appeal.”
Also, it is important to remember that God works His
purposes through the secular powers as through all creation, and that
our ultimate citizenship is not earthly, but heavenly. This means that
things not to our liking -- including onerous or even cruel actions of the
government -- may nevertheless be to our benefit. In difficulties and
hardships, Christ calls us to maintain the spiritual perspective and to endure
gladly for His sake, because, as He says, In your patience possess ye your souls. [11]
Obedience is not so much doing what we want to do, as doing
what we would rather not. Except in the most exceptional of circumstances, it
is not submission and obedience to the secular powers that is reprehensible,
but the spirit of insubordination and disobedience.
Sacred Scripture shouts this aloud. Unless we are being forced to sacrifice to
idols or perform some other heinous deed, insubordination and disobedience to
the civil authorities are not signs of an Orthodox mindset or conscience, but
of ignorance, or sin, or misbelief, or unbelief.
It is no accident that heretical and unbelieving
commentators and historians routinely pillory the Orthodox Church for
subservience to the civil authorities, whether under ancient Rome, Byzantium,
the Ottomans, or Tsarist Russia. The Orthodox Church, precisely because
it is the Church of Christ, the Church of the apostles and martyrs, teaches
submission and obedience to the government and cooperation with it, except when
this would be the clearest, most blatant, most unquestionable betrayal of
Christ and His truth.
Here there can be no question of personal, much less
political prejudices entering in. All such opinions lie outside the realm of
the Church’s teachings. All of them are fallible. None of them are dogmas of
the Church. Even bishops must obey the government, except when the government
attempts to compel obedience in a matter that flagrantly and indubitably
contravenes the law of God or interferes with the Church’s purely internal
affairs. The apostles do not except bishops from their command that Christians obey
the civil authorities. If this be so, then what of us ordinary Christians?
Besides this, we must be especially careful to avoid
bringing in theories connecting current political situations and events to the
reign of Antichrist. The Holy Chief Apostle Peter says plainly: No prophecy of the Scripture is of any private
interpretation. [12] Many people over the centuries -- occasionally
even holy people -- have forgotten this warning, with the inevitable result
that, having misled others, they were always proved wrong in the end. If this
were not enough, we have Christ Who, although omniscient as the Son of God, as
the Son of Man tells us: Of that day
and that hour knoweth no man, no, not the angels which are in heaven, neither
the Son, but the Father. [13] After this, who would presume to
speculate on the subject!
Unfortunately, in our time the Internet and social media
have made possible the unprecedented proliferation of misinformation and
ill-reasoned, ill-supported, yet cunningly
devised [14] theories regarding all sorts of topics. Worse, some of
this is being propagated by persons in clerical rank. No sooner does a new
event occur or a new trend emerge, than the self-anointed pundits rush to
provide their glib explanations, the ingenuity of which is often bounded only
by the limits of the inventors’ imaginations. Intellectual circumspection and
integrity demand that we view their explanations in every case with
considerable skepticism, but the more so when accepting them might well incite
our base passions and put us at variance with the clear, age-old teaching and
ethos of the Church of Christ.
This is why, dear Christians, we must be especially wary
when demagogues attack the basic good intent of the secular authorities. Such
unsparing criticism has become the norm, not the exception in our society, and
modern technology is likely to make this pernicious trend ever more prevalent
for the foreseeable future. But in many, if not most cases, these assaults do
not meet strict standards of proof, or even plausibility. In any case, if the
authorities have in fact acted with poor judgment or bad faith in one instance,
this is no wise necessarily establishes that they have done so in another. For
this reason, the overstretched theories in question, with their saltations in
evidence and logic, but rarely stand up to serious scrutiny.
It will be readily understood that the complexities of
administering public health care in the era of the novel Coronavirus provide a
field day for these attacks of demagogues and conspiracy theorists.
Again, to accuse falsely the powers that be -- which, according to the Apostle, are ordained of God [15] -- is
intrinsically a graver sin than to accuse falsely a private individual --
itself a serious transgression. Saint Tikhon of Zadonsk, in his wonderful
book, On True Christianity,
expresses this clearly. “Although it is a sin to condemn anyone,” he writes,
“and a grievous sin at that, speaking evil of the authorities is a far greater
sin.” [16] So, let us tread with extreme caution and not rush to
judge those set over us with civil authority, but offer them the willing
obedience that is their due, in all except the most extreme circumstances. So
doing, we shall prove ourselves followers of the blessed ancient Christians
such as Saint Demetrius the Myrrh-gusher, of the inspired authors of the divine
Scriptures, and of our Saviour Himself. We shall prove that we have the
mindset, not of the world, but of the Holy Church of Christ, which teaches us
to judge our own faults, and not to
judge them that are without. [17] We have courts to judge governmental
and medical malfeasance. And where these have not established criminal
wrongdoing, we have, in this country, the ballot box and the free market system
to express our sympathies and preferences.
If we humble ourselves and put away political and secular
prejudices, discerning spiritual things spiritually, [18] and
maintaining proper balance and moderation, as the people of God should, we are
certain to choose the right approach here. This means always remaining
intensely focused on our own personal spiritual life, which is vastly more
important than our political notions.
May God help us to maintain true inner peace and thereby to
assist others in maintaining theirs, by the prayers of the Holy Greatmartyr
Demetrius and all the saints. Amen.
NOTES
1. Ex. 22:28; Acts 23:5
2. Ezr. 7:26
3. Ezr. 7:27
4. Eccl. 8:2
5. Eccl. 10:20
6. Rom. 13:1-2
7. Tit. 3:1-2
8. I Pet. 2:13-15
9. Rom. 13:3,5
10. Rom. 13:2
11. Luke 21:19
12. II Pet. 1:20
13. Mark 13:32
14. II Pet. 1:16
15. Rom. 13:1
16. On True
Christianity, Vol. 4, Article 4, Ch. 4:11
17. I Cor. 5:12
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