Житие и страдание преподобного отца нашего Евстратия Печерского

Saint Eustratius showed himself to be a courageous warrior of Christ, fighting under the sign of the cross both in his name and in his life. He appeared as an imitator of his most chosen Leader, Jesus Christ, and, having accepted the same suffering, from the same people and at the same time, he could truly boast, saying: “I bear the marks of the Lord Jesus on my body” (Gal.6:17). This valiant warrior of Christ, Eustratius, was from Kyiv. He wished to “put on the whole armor of God” (Eph. 6:11), which belongs to the monastic image. Knowing that “no warrior binds himself to the affairs of this life in order to please the commander” (2 Tim. 2:4), he distributed his property to the poor, and left some for his relatives to distribute after him. So, having become poor after wealth, he became a monk of the Pechersk Monastery. And he began to labor in a godly manner under the sign of Christ, who accepted the humiliation of the Governor for our sake, conquering with the spiritual sword, i.e. with the power of prayer and the grace of great abstinence, not only your own flesh, but also invisible enemies, humbling them and enslaving them with your meekness and obedience. Saint Eustratius thought about how his Hero, Jesus Christ Himself, prayed fervently, fasted for forty days, and humbled Himself by obedience; That’s why he armed himself with the same virtues. But knowing first of all that man was overcome by the first sin through intemperance, the saint succeeded in abstinence and great fasting, and therefore was called a faster. When, by God's permission, the evil Bonyak 2228 attacked the Russian land with many Polovtsians and captured her, then blessed Evstratiy, during the invasion of the filthy ones into the Pechersk Monastery, where many were cut with their swords, was captured along with others and sold to the Greek land, to the city of Korsun 2229 to one Jew, together with other Christians - thirty monastery workers and twenty Kievites. The ungodly Jew began to force his captives to renounce Christ and threatened those who resisted to starve them to death in chains. But the courageous monk Evstratiy, praying, strengthened and taught everyone and instructed with these words: - Brothers! Whoever of you was baptized and believed in Christ, let him not change the vow made at baptism. Christ regenerated us by water and spirit, redeemed us from the curse of the law with His blood and made us heirs of His Kingdom. If we live, we will live for the Lord; if we die, we will die in the Lord and through temporary death we will gain eternal life. Let us imitate the one who said: “For me to live is Christ, and to die is gain” (Phil 1:21). Strengthened by the words of the monk, the captives preferred to die from lack of temporary food and drink rather than deny Christ, Who is the food and drink of eternal life. So, after some time, exhausted from hunger and thirst, all fifty people died: some after three days, others after four, some after seven, and the stronger ones after ten. Only one Eustratius remained alive; Tormented by hunger for fourteen days, he still remained alive and unharmed, for he had become accustomed to fasting from his youth. The wicked Jew, seeing that the monk was the reason for the loss of his money paid for the prisoners, whom he hoped to convert to his evil faith, decided to take revenge on him. Then the day of the Resurrection of Christ was approaching. The Jew began to celebrate his Easter and cursed at Saint Eustratius just as his fathers cursed our Lord Jesus Christ himself. And just as in ancient times the Jews crucified Christ, so this righteous man was nailed to the cross by the accursed Jew and his friends. Eustratius, being crucified, thanked God for allowing him to live without food or drink for the fifteenth day. Zhidovin and his other friends reviled the crucified man and said to him: - Crazy! Taste now the lawful Passover, so that you may remain alive and avoid damnation. For Moses handed down to us the law that he received from God, and said in his books: “Cursed is everyone who is hanged on a tree” (Deut. 21:23). The monk answered this: – The Lord has vouchsafed me great grace today. He gave me the grace to suffer for His name on the cross in the image of His suffering. I hope that He will say to me, as He once did to the thief: “Today you will be with Me in Paradise” (Luke 23:43). I do not need your Easter, I am not afraid of the oath, for “Our Passover, Christ, was sacrificed for us” (1 Cor. 5:7), who destroyed the curse placed on us for breaking the law and gave us eternal life with the tree of the Cross, on which he was nailed, being the life of all, as Moses prophesied about this: “and your life will hang before you” (Deut. 28:66). About the Easter holiday, David says: “The Lord has made this day: let us rejoice and be glad on it!” (Ps. 118:24). But you, having crucified me, and all your other like-minded people, will weep and wail, for vengeance will befall you for my blood and the blood of other Christians you bought. The Lord hates your Sabbaths and will turn your holidays into mourning, and the time has already drawn near to kill the leader of your iniquity. Hearing this, the Jew became inflamed with anger, grabbed a spear and pierced the nailed man 2230. And then a fiery chariot and fiery horses were visible, which carried the soul of the jubilant martyr to heaven, and a voice was heard saying: “Behold the valiant citizen of the heavenly city!” He took the body of the holy Jewish martyr from the cross and threw it into the sea, where after that many miracles took place. The faithful diligently searched for holy relics there, but did not find them. By God's providence they were found in a cave, where they rest incorruptible to this day. The prediction of the holy sufferer that his blood would be avenged was fulfilled immediately after his suffering. For on that day a command came from the Greek king to expel all Jews from his region, taking away their property, and to beat their elders for tormenting Christians. One of the first to be killed, according to the prophecy of Blessed Eustratius, was eparch 2231, who incited the Jews against Christians. And it happened this way. One rich and famous Jew was baptized, and therefore the king, wanting to distinguish him, a few days later made him an eparch; He, having received this rank, secretly became an apostate from Christ and His faith and gave permission to Jews throughout the entire Greek kingdom to buy Christians and turn them into slaves. When this wicked eparch was exposed in his evil cunning, the king ordered to kill him, as well as all the Jews living in the Greek land. And at a time when the Jews living in the Greek city of Korsun were being beaten, that wicked Jew by whom the Monk Eustratius was killed was hanged on a tree, and so “his anger turned on his head” (Ps. 7:17), and he shared the fate of Judas. Other Jews, seeing terrible miracles after the death of the saint, believed in Christ and were baptized. And His good warrior and victorious Saint Eustratius, who enslaved them to Christ and after his death, was vouchsafed with the immortal army of heaven to sing a victorious song and reign with Christ, the conqueror of death Himself, with Whom he fought, glorifying Him and giving thanks to His Beginningless Father and the Life-giving Spirit for endless ages. Amen. Bonyak was a Polovtsian khan (or prince) who lived at the end of the 11th century. and the beginning of the 12th century, nicknamed by our chronicles “predator” for his frequent attacks on Kievan Rus. The Polovtsy were a predatory tribe that lived south of Kiev and engaged in robbery and robbery. Korsun is the current Tauride Chersonese. The death of the holy martyr followed in 1097. Eparch is the head of the region. You might be interested in: