Страдание святого священномученика Феодорита, пресвитера Антиохийского

The great king Constantine and his son Constantius erected and richly decorated a cathedral church in Syrian Antioch. Among the people, it received the name of the Golden Church, because it was artistically painted in gold and decorated with glittering gold mosaics; its top was also entirely gilded; countless church vessels were all made of gold and pure silver. The kings gave a lot of property to support the numerous church clergy. In the clergy of this great cathedral church, Saint Theodoret was a presbyter; vessels, utensils and all church wealth were entrusted to him for safekeeping. From his youth he led a virtuous life and kept the right faith in his heart, fulfilling the word of Scripture: “with the heart they believe for righteousness, and with their lips they confess for salvation” (Rom. 10:10). By fasting, prayers, alms, concern for the salvation of human souls and immaculate priestly service, he pleased God. When Constantine's son Constantius died, he was succeeded by Julian the Apostate. Having accepted the kingdom, he first showed himself to be a pious Christian and returned from prison the bishops expelled for piety by King Constantius; when he established himself in the kingdom, he clearly rejected Christ in front of everyone, Whom he had secretly rejected long ago, giving himself over to demons and magic. And he began to persecute the Church of Christ; if he did not exterminate the entire Christian people, then at least he captured, tortured and killed the leaders, clergy Christians and lay dignitaries, took away the churches of God from Christians and turned them into churches of their idols, plundered all church property and said, damned: “It is not appropriate for Christians to have any wealth, because Christ commanded them to be poor, saying: do not acquire either gold or silver.” During this fierce time, the Antioch cathedral church, called golden because of its beauty, was also devastated; all her expensive jewelry was taken into the royal treasury, the church estate was plundered, the clergy were dispersed, and Saint Theodoret was martyred. It was like that. Tsar Julian had an uncle of the same name, Julian, his mother’s brother; he installed him as ruler and tormentor over the eastern countries. That Julian, the royal uncle, used to be a Christian, but, wanting to be pleasing to his nephew, the apostate King Julian, he rejected Christ and worshiped idols. He came to Antioch before the king arrived there, together with another royal dignitary named Philix, who was in charge of the royal treasures. Knowing that there was a lot of wealth in the cathedral church, Julian took the church guardian, Blessed Theodoret the presbyter (and the rest of the clergy all fled out of fear and hid wherever they could); therefore he tried to capture him because he had the church sacristy in his hands. Having taken the keys from him, and having tied him tightly and imprisoned him, Julian, with the treasury of the Tsar Philix and with great armed military force, entered the Church of God to take away its decoration, gold and silver, and all expensive things and add them to the royal treasures. Having entered the shrine of God, like a thief and a robber, with what great fearlessness and shamelessness he stole the splendor of the church, dishonored the shrine of the Lord and desecrated it! The accursed one, right at the throne of God, dared to urinate; when the church vessels were taken out of the altar and placed all together on the ground, he sat on them to mock them, uttering blasphemy and slander against our Lord Jesus Christ from his unclean lips. One of those who were there, named Vozoy, admonished him not to shamelessly inflict such dishonor on the shrine of the Lord and not to blaspheme Christ. And he, hitting him hard on the head, said: – Christians do not have any Providence of God, and they are completely deprived of this care. Having robbed and desecrated the Church of God, the wicked ruler turned to torment the servant of God, Saint Theodoret. When he was brought before the wicked court, bound, Julian said to him: - Theodorite! Why did you, under Tsar Constantine, destroy the churches of the ancient gods, and decorate the tombs of the dead and order churches to be built over them? - Divine churches and tombs of saints were created and decorated by our great-grandfathers, for God glorified His saints, finding them worthy of this; But to you, ruler, I am surprised that from a Christian you became an idolater. The ruler ordered to beat the saint in the face. “You are sinning, Julian,” the saint told him, “you call stone and wooden idols gods.” Then the tormentor ordered to undress the saint, hang him on a tree and whittle him all over his body with iron claws. They whittled him for three hours, and the blood flowed in streams, but the saint’s face shone with joy, as if he had not experienced any pain. And the tormentor said to him: - Accursed one, make a sacrifice to the gods, and I will free you from the debt that lies on you for the church estate, which you have depleted evilly. If you do not make a sacrifice, you will expel your soul by violent death. - The accursed one is you, the lawless one and your king, because you left Christ and clung to the Antichrist, and must be burned with eternal fire; I owe no one except my Lord Jesus Christ, before Whom my duty is to preserve the true faith until my last breath. The tormentor turned to him again: - Theodorite! You will receive from me many honors and gold, just reject that crucified sorcerer whom you call the Son of God. - May your gold be with you in destruction 1771; I trust in my Lord, who gives to His servants incorruptible goods instead of perishable ones, and heavenly ones instead of earthly ones. And the tormentor ordered to burn the martyr’s ribs with two candles. When they began to burn him, he raised his eyes to heaven and began to pray, and immediately both of the scorched servants fell to the ground dead. Julian and those around him ordered the servants to be carefully raised from the ground, and said to them: – Why did you leave the wicked Christian to burn and indulge in dormancy and neglect? The servants, having come to their senses, answered the tormentor: – If you do not see how the Angels of God protect the servant of God, then you are wicked and blinded in soul. Here are four Angels talking with him, and we are threateningly forbidden to touch his honest body. Detractor! Don’t be idle talk, but know that the Christian God is great, and we now believe in Him. Overwhelmed by shame, the tormentor ordered to throw these servants into the depths of the sea. When they were led to the drowning, the holy martyr of Christ called out to them, saying: - Go forward on your blessed path in peace, my children, and then I will follow you and rejoice with you in eternal joy in the Kingdom of Heaven. And the servants died from drowning, having been deemed worthy to receive the crown of martyrdom from Christ God, in whom they believed. Continuing to approach the holy martyr Theodoret, the wicked ruler shouted: Filled with the prophetic spirit, the saint said to him: “You, the most evil and damned of all people, will chew your entrails, and a little time will pass before you will forcibly cast out your foul soul and consign it to eternal fire; also your most lawless king, not long after you, will perish in the Persian land; struck by an invisible hand, he will be cast into fiery hell. Know for sure that the beginning of your affairs will not be successful, for your end is near, and your destruction does not sleep. Not being able to tolerate such words of the saint, the nasty tormentor ordered to immediately behead him, and the saint went to his death, joyful, praying to God for himself and for the whole world, and, beheaded by an ax, died. Having buried his honorable body, the faithful kept in their hearts the prophetic words spoken to the tormentor in agony, and awaited their fulfillment. And it came true that both Julians, uncle and nephew, soon died noisily. Julian, the royal uncle, the ruler of the eastern countries, who killed Saint Theodoret, from the time he desecrated the throne of God with his urine and trampled on the sacred vessels, swearing at the shrine and blaspheming Christ, fell into illness. Immediately, worms began to be born in its secret places; they gnawed at him from below, and the disease increased day by day. The most skillful doctors made a lot of efforts to heal him, but had no success, and hour by hour things were worse for him, for the worms multiplied greatly and ate his body, which was touched by the just hand of God. And the saint’s words spoken to the tormentor were fulfilled: “You will chew your entrails,” for when his passages became clogged, his blasphemous lips became a nasty passage: so, devoured by worms, he evilly spewed out his accursed soul. Likewise, his friend Philix, who was in charge of the royal treasures, did not escape the speedy execution of God: by God’s retribution, his insides were damaged, and blood day and night flowed in a stream from his blasphemous lips, as from a source, and he soon died for eternity, consigning his accursed soul to Gehenna. When the evil king Julian came to Antioch and learned about this, he did not dare to dishonor the relics of the holy martyr Babyla, who rested in Daphne of Apollo, but ordered the Christians to take them from there, as it is written about in the life of this saint, on the 4th day of September. Then the apostate Julian, having set out on a campaign against the Persians, died there, as the holy martyr of Christ Theodoret predicted in 1772. Seeing the fulfillment of his prophecy, the faithful glorified Christ the true God, glorified with the Father and the Son forever. Amen. Acts 8:2. Ap.'s words Peter to Simon the Magus, who wanted to purchase the gift of the Holy Spirit for money. Julian was struck by an arrow fired by a Persian. Feeling the approach of death, he put his hand to the wound, took some blood, threw it into the air and said, as if seeing before him Christ, Whom he was pursuing: “You have won, Galilean!” (363) You might be interested in: