26-го числа

Saints Xenophon and Mary and their sons John and Arkady St. Rev. Xenophon, Maria and their sons John and Arkady Xenophon and Maria were noble and wealthy citizens of Byzantium who lived in the 5th century. They led a pious life and were most concerned about raising their children to be true Christians. The executor of the aspirations of the human heart pleasing to Him blessed their labors with complete success: the fruits of the Christian education of the young men were not slow to appear in full splendor. Having strengthened their children with home mental education, the parents sent them to the city of Berit to provide them with a scientific education there. “Always do as I commanded you,” their father said to John and Arcadius, parting with them, “not out of vanity, but out of a desire for good, I tell you that if you have my life as an example, then you will not have a better teacher, since home teaching, depicted in words and in deeds, is more useful than any teaching. Children! keep the commandments of the Lord and mine, and may the God of peace be with you Such words of the father and such hearts of the children, which were the prepared soil for the perception of the good seed, turned out to be the salvation of John and Arkady against all sorts of pitfalls in the sea of ​​life... The Lord, the Knower of the Heart, who does not send tests beyond our strength and knows the strength of the souls prepared for Him, visited these young men with a cruel test, inseparable, however, and with great mercy, through which His providence always arranges everything for the better for people. On the way to Berit, the travelers were caught in a storm. The ship was wrecked, and those who escaped from its wreckage were thrown ashore by the waves on different sides. Separated in this way and considering each other dead, each of the brothers decided not to return home, so as not to have the regret of upsetting their parents with the news of the death of another of them... Meanwhile, struck by such a great loss at the first step when entering life, they suddenly comprehended the fragility of all earthly blessings and rushed with their souls to the only reliable fence of true and incorruptible happiness - a solitary life devoted to prayer. John and Arkady - in different ways - achieved the same goal: to strive in monasticism. After a long period of uncertainty about the children who had left, the parents took all measures to find them, and according to the information that reached them, they could only assume that their children died during the storm... Strong in spirit, they endured this extreme grief with submission to the will of God, like Job, and encouraged after fervent prayer by a sleepy vision that presented them with their sons standing before the Lord in great glory, the elders, with hope in God, They began to worship holy places and at the same time search for their children. “Do not grieve, my lady,” Elder Xenophon supported his wife Mary, “I believe that God will not allow our children to perish, and I hope that He will not want to insult my old age, just as I never dared to insult His goodness.” And God did not disgrace such righteous trust in Him. Through the inscrutable ways of His Divine Providence, the elders met with their children... During the journey, they met them as monks in various monasteries, and even then they did not want to distract them from the path of salvation to which their children were led by the will of God. And they themselves, alien to the world and its blessings, having distributed property to the poor, retired to quiet abodes, where, in prayers all for each other, they remained until their peaceful death - in anticipation of eternal union with each other in the Kingdom of Heaven after a short separation in this world, among which the Lord had once miraculously reunited them, as if as a guarantee of their future blissful reunion forever... Blessed are those who raise their children righteously! Blessed are the fruits of Christian education! Blessed is he who comprehends and perceives the visitation and providence of the Lord for himself, like the elders Xenophon and Mary who truly loved God and their children John and Arkady! “The ancient Greek interpreter of works, St. John Climacus notes that, according to some, John Climacus was one of the sons of Xenophon” 271. † Rev. Paul, ascetics of Palestine The father of Blessed Pavla 272 came from the family of Agamemnon, and her mother from the house of the Scypeons and Paul Emileus; her husband was a descendant of the house of Yuliev. The brilliant celebrity origins were matched by the wealth of the spouses. Pavla was a kind wife and mother of five children. But earthly happiness could harm Pavla’s kind heart. And so the Lord sends her severe sorrow: her beloved husband dies when she was 32 years old. Pavla, who had a tender heart, cried inconsolably over the death of her husband. The pious and educated widow Marcellus served as her support. She softened her sorrows with Christian consolations and turned her heart to the Lord. Paula became the Gospel widow. Her enormous fortune provided her with the means to wipe away the tears of hundreds of poor families. There was not a dead person among the poor who was not buried at Pavla’s expense; there was not a sick person who was not supported by Pavla’s love. Pavla sought out poverty and grief in a huge city in order to console them. She considered herself unlucky if she was unable to provide relief to a suffering family. Blessed Jerome, when he met her, considered it necessary to tell her: are there any excesses in her charity? But he himself admits that she disarmed him with the words: I wish to be poor for the Lord, who became poor for us. She was now strict with herself. Ties with the gay world were weakened; She punished her small mistakes severely. When St. Epiphanius of Cyprus and Paulinus of Antioch arrived in Rome on church business (this was in 382), Epiphanius and Jerome lived in Paul's house, and she delivered everything that Paulinus needed; conversations with the saints were the most pleasant pleasure for her. Her eldest daughter, unusually gifted, who lived with her husband for only 7 months, was preparing to enter the monastery, but died. This was a strong blow to Pavla’s heart. Blessed Jerome had to console her. “Your daughter,” he wrote, “passed into the next world with a wonderful determination to devote herself to God; For more than 4 months now, her soul has been purified by her peace. You don’t even think about what the Savior says to you: Paul, why do you grieve that your daughter has become Mine? Your tears are indignation against My concerns, an insult to Me. I know that I must yield to mother nature; but excessive sorrow is not an honor for faith” 273. The marriage of her son Toxotius amazed Rome and consoled Paul. Leta, the wife of Toxotius, was the daughter of the high pagan priest. “Who would have thought,” says Jerome, “that the granddaughter of a pagan priest Albina would be born on the promise of a martyr, that a babbling granddaughter would sing to her smiling grandfather: “Halleluia,” and that such an old man would feed the bride of Christ on his knees? But we happily hoped: “a holy and believing house sanctifies the unbeliever.” The old pagan became a Christian" 274. The Ecumenical Council of 381 called the Jerusalem Church “the mother of all Churches”; What is Rome in Christian history? 275 Paula strongly desired to be a daughter of the Jerusalem Church. This desire was inspired in her by her friend Markella and supported by Jerome. It was not easy for her to part with her children and her extensive noble family. But in 385, the famous and wealthy patrician went with her daughter along a dangerous sea route to the East. On the island of Pontius, which is famous for the exile of the famous patrician Flavia Domitilla under Domitian, I saw cells where St. languished for a long time. sufferer 276. In Cyprus I saw St. Epiphanius; ten days were spent here not for rest, but for visiting monasteries and churches 277. Then she was in Antioch with Peacock. “On the shore in Sarepta she entered the small church (turriculum) of Elijah, where she worshiped the Lord Savior 278; through the sands of Tyre, on which Paul knelt, she reached Akka, present-day Ptolemais: - through the fields of Megiddon, knowing about the death of Josiah, she entered the land of the Philistines; marveled at the ruins of Dora, once a very strong city; Having returned, she was in Caesarea, where she saw the house of Cornelius the centurion, converted into a church, and the church of Philip and the four virgin prophetesses 279. Saw Lydda, renamed Diospolis, famous for the resurrection of Aeneas; also not far from it is Arimathea, the village of Joseph, who honored the body of the Savior with burial 280; Joppa, the port from which Jonah fled. Having repeated the path, she was in Nikopol, formerly called Emmaus, where the Lord was recognized in the breaking of bread and consecrated the house of Cleopas into a church” 281. In Jerusalem, the proconsul prepared a palace for her, but she lived in a small, poor house. “She prostrated herself before the cross of the Savior; kissed the stone rolled away by the angel, and the place where the body of Him who took upon Himself the sins of the whole world lay. How many tears were shed here, how many sighs and sorrows! They showed her a pillar sprinkled with the blood of the Lord, where He was scourged when He was tied. They indicated the place where the Holy Spirit descended on 120 believers.” Having distributed what she could to the poor, she came to Bethlehem and visited the cave where Christ the Lord was born. “What happiness,” she said, “for a poor sinner like me to kiss this manger where my Savior lay as a baby! Do I still need to look for a place for myself after the one that my Savior chose for Himself?” Visiting the outskirts of Bethlehem, Paul ascended the tower of Gader, the tower of the flock, near which 282 Jacob tended the flocks of sheep (Gen. 37), and the shepherds who were awake at night were honored to hear: glory to God in the highest (Luke 2:14); from Bosor I was in Yesyaol; I saw traces of Abraham's oak, Hebron Kafar-Sarun and the sad lake. Then she traveled to Jericho, where she saw the Gilgal camp (Joshua 5); from the bank of the Jordan she was in Bethel and on Mount Ephraim, where she saluted the tombs of Joshua the son of Nun and Eleazar the son of Aaron; passed through Shechem, saw the tombs of 12 patriarchs, Sebastia or Samaria, where “the prophets Elisha and Obadiah were buried, and the one who was no longer among those born of women, John the Baptist” 283; There she was amazed and shocked by many oddities. She saw how demons amused themselves with various torments, how people in front of the tombs of saints howled like wolves, barked like dogs, roared like lions, hissed like snakes, mooed like oxen, while others spun on their heads and touched the ground over their backs with the top of their heads. She regretted everyone and everyone, shed tears, begging Christ for mercy. A doubly expensive journey: both as advice for piety, and as a lesson for the fervent skepticism of the later semi-pagans! From Bethlehem, mother and daughter set off to visit the deserts of Egypt. They accepted the blessing and advice of the Macarii, Isidores, Serapions and other wondrous hermits. Upon returning to Bethlehem, Paul built a hospice house and a men's monastery on the road to Jerusalem, where Blessed. Jerome was the rector. An extensive women's monastery was built in Bethlehem, with three branches. On Sunday, everyone gathered in church for common prayers; On other days, Divine services were held in prayer rooms. Everyone was dressed the same, no one had any property, but everything was common; Everything we needed was prepared by our own work. The sisters were prescribed strict restraint in speech; not a single harsh word should come from the lips of a virgin who dedicated herself to God; “if there was a grumpy, impudent, arrogant person among them, stopping her more than once, Pavla forced her to pray at the door of the meal, behind all the sisters, and to eat separately from them, so that shame would bring to reason the one whom the words did not enlighten.” Those who showed more than neatness in their clothes were told that her foppishness was a sign of a dirty soul. There was zealous care for the weak and sick. Paul's strict mother was a school of piety for her sisters. Her humility was amazing. When she was surrounded by a host of maidens, she seemed to be the last among them in clothes, and in voice, and in techniques, and in gait. She slept on the bare ground, even in a fever, ate little food and the simplest food at that, and fed more on tears. Except on holidays, she added almost no oil to her food. When they asked her to take care of her poor health, she answered: “I need to disfigure my face, which I have put on display so many times, rubbing it with paints, as an insult to the will of God; justice requires torturing a body that has eaten too many sweets; I need to cry a lot, after crazy and criminal fun; I must replace luxurious clothes with hair shirts that flattered vanity and bliss; I’ve tried hard enough to please the world, I want to use everything to be somewhat pleasing to God.” The Lord brought one sinner to Paul. In the vicinity of Caesarea in Palestine, St. Marcian. On a stormy night, his wife, dressed in rags, came to his cell and asked him for protection. The hermit kindly received her into the front cell. The next day he sees his wife dressed in luxurious clothes. Having lit a fire in the middle of the cell, he stood on it with his bare feet and said to himself: “How does this fire seem to you, Marcian? After all, this is not like the fire of Gehenna! If you want hellfire, come to this woman.” Struck by self-denial and his preaching, the sinner threw herself at the feet of the holy hermit, confessed her sins and asked him for spiritual healing. The monk took her to the monastery of Pavla, and here she, under the supervision of the monk, led a strict life until death and rested in peace, with the name of the Monk Zoe 284. Reading St. Writing was Pavla’s favorite pastime, and she tried to apply its rules to the life of her soul. The bliss had to endure a lot of insults. Pavle from a party that did not intelligently understand and still did not intelligently defend Origen’s personal opinions. When it was not possible to win over the famous Roman woman by cunning, and it was not possible because the blessed one. Jerome was against this party - the party began to throw various insults at Paul; they passed her off as crazy and said: we need to protect her from disorder. Things got to the point where the blessed mentor advised Paul to leave the East. She answered him: “You would be fair, my father, if I could find my beloved Bethlehem anywhere. And why hide from people's anger? you must overcome it with patience! Why not triumph over pride through humility? Why, when receiving a blow on one cheek, not turn the other? The death of St. was approaching. Pavels. In her grave illness, she quietly read the psalms. “Aren’t you suffering too much and that’s why you don’t ask for advice?” – asked her confessor. She answered in Greek: “I feel good.” And these were her last words. Archbishop John of Jerusalem, with several other bishops, and many monks and nuns performed the burial over her. The psalms of the petah were in Hebrew, Greek, Latin and Syriac. Widows and the poor pointed to the clothes she had delivered: crowds of needy people shouted that “they had lost their mother and nurse.” She died on January 26, 404, in the 58th year of her life 285. Full months Archim. Sergius, vol. II, part II, p. 31. Life of St. Paul is described by Blessed. Jerome. Migne, Patrol. I. 22 r. 878. Russian translation – in “Christ. Read." 1847, 4, 186 not very skillful. Er. 22. The letter was written in 384, shortly after Jerome's return to Bethlehem. In a letter to Eustochius it was written: “I remember that almost 5 years before this, when I was in Rome, I read Ecclesiastes with Saint Blesilla in order to challenge her to renounce the world and recognize everything worldly as emptiness; I explained to her the dark places so that she could understand what she was reading” (Er. 116). In a letter to Pavle: “if (Blesilla) speaks Greek, you would think that she does not know Latin. If you turn to Roman sounds, you won’t notice anything foreign in the speech. In a few, I don’t say months, but days, she overcame the difficulties of the Hebrew language to the point that she competed with her mother in studying and singing psalms.” Er. 25. Message of the Council of 381 “We declare the venerable and reverent Cyril the bishop of the Jerusalem Church, which is the mother of all churches,” Theodoret ist. 15, 8, 9. Chronicle of Eusebius: “under Domitilla, many Christians accomplished the feat of martyrdom; between them and Flavia Domitilla, the sister-granddaughter of the consul Flavius ​​Clement, was exiled to the island of Pontius because she confessed herself to be a Christian.” Memory of St. Virgin Martyr Domitilla May 7. Usuardi Martyrol. ad 7 Man; Act. Sanct. ad 12 Mai. Igum. Daniel of the 12th century: “The island of Cyprus is very great, because there are 24 bishops in it, and the entire metropolis is one. And there are many saints, without number. There lies St. Epiphanius and the Apostle Barnabas and St. Zeno and St. Philagris is a bishop, and he was baptized by Paul, the Apostle of Christ.” Let's go. Daniel with excellent notes Norov, St. Petersburg. 1864, pp. 12, 13. The 12th-century Greek traveler Phocas: “near Sidon, on the very seashore, the castle of Sarepta was founded and in the middle of the city the church of the Prophet Elijah in the house of the widow who received him.” Let's go. Daniel, page 154. St. Petersburg. 1864. Caesarea by the sea, different from Philippi, neighboring Lebanon, is now ruins. Allioli bibl. Alternately. 2, 424–426. Philip, who baptized the Samaritans and the eunuch of the queen of Candace, was one of the seven deacons (Acts 8:13–27). His four virgin daughters were endowed with the gift of prophecy (Acts 21:8–10); two of them died as virgins in Hierapolis, as Polycrates of Ephesus, bishop of the 2nd century, testifies (Eusebius Ist. 3, 31); one daughter Hermiopia is a martyr (Sept. 4). This is not that Apostle Philip, a Bethsaite, one of the twelve disciples of the Savior (John 1:43, 12:21; Acts 1:13; Luke 6:14). Nicephorus Callistus (2, 44), confusing the deacon Philip with the Apostle Philip, ascribed daughters to the latter. Daniel: “from there from (Sevasta) 4 miles from Arimathea; there is a place in the stone mountains, a small town has been created; in that town the tomb of St. Joseph of Arimathea, and ask Pilate for the body of Jesus.” Page 107. About Emmaus, the words of Daniel and Western pilgrims with fair comments from Mr. Norov, who visited Jerusalem twice - in Putesh. Daniel, pp. 152, 158. Tower of the flock 4 versts from Bethlehem. Equal to the Apostles Helen built a church here (Callista ist. VIII. 30), Epiphanius the monk in the Jerusalem traveler: “a monastery called the Sheep Monastery was built in the East of Bethlehem; Here the shepherds saw an angel who said to them: “Leave the sheep and sing joyfully.” Igum. Daniel: “from Samaria there is a place to the west of the face 2 miles away, the name of the place is Sevastipol. A town was created in that place and in that town the prison of St. John the Baptist and in that prison John the Baptist was beheaded; his tomb is also there; A church was founded on that spot in the name of St. John the Baptist”, pp. 106, 107. “They pointed me out,” says Mr. Norov, “also to the tomb of Obadiah. The tombs are located in an underground church, which is entered by a staircase of 20 steps; the door of the dungeon is carved from granite monomet, just like the doors of the royal tombs,” p. 110. Life of Rev. Marciana - in Chetye-Minea Feb. 13. Igum. Daniel: “there is the same mountain (in Casaria) 2 miles away from Caesarea; St. lived on that mountain. Father Marcian, the harlot came to him to tempt him.” Travel, p. 153. Vershinsky, pp. 25, 242, 254. Martyrology of Usuardi for January 27: “in Bethlehem Judas the Dormition of St. Pavly; Her life, wonderful in virtues, was described by St. Jerome testified that she was crowned with long martyrdom.” According to the Roman Martyrology, her death was on January 26. About the year of Roswein's death in notis ad vitam s. Pavlae.