Saints Mary and Martha, Orthodox Monastery, Wagener, SC

If this issue of our newsletter has a different look to you, it is due to our printer gently shoving us into learning Quark, software used in the printing and graphics industry. In the long run, it is important for us to learn this in order to do our own layouts for future publications.

We are most grateful to the many of you who remember us and support us in numerous ways. At the end of 2006, we discovered that our building fund “put its nose” over the $100,000 mark. With the knowledge that we must be faithful to the end of our days, we still have a long journey ahead of us and much prayer and work to do. When you know that you are doing what God wants you to do, you have His assurance and help on every level. He will build this monastery in His time in His way with His people, and we know that if He builds the house, we do not labor in vain (Psalm 127:1).

As is our habit (pun intended), we were at the Barn Yard Flea Market on the last Saturday of October. Our building fund increased by $179.50. It all adds up, eventually. Most important is meeting the many people we have come to know from being at the Flea Market and the witnessing for Christ as Orthodox Christians.

It was a true gift to us to be in attendance at the National Nurses Association in Miami, Florida, and witness Cynthia Chernecky, our very dear friend, be inducted as a Fellow. This is a well earned honor for her many years of work as a professor, researcher, author and editor, and numerous other accomplishments.

Thanksgiving, that wonderful holiday when this country gives thanks to God, found us at Liturgy in the morning and with a house full of guests for a Thanksgiving meal in the afternoon.

Two friends of the monastery graciously included us in their birthday celebrations – Zora Milasnovich who gracefully turned 90 encircled by family and friends at a luncheon in her honor and Donna Davenport whose friends gave her two parties before she reached the monastery to quietly celebrate turning 60. May God grant them many years!

For the third year, Holy Apostles in Columbia invited us to have a booth at their Saint Nicholas Festival. Selling antique and modern costume jewelry brought in more income for our building fund. Some of our Monastery Store items along with beeswax candles (both liturgical and gift) and our Women Saints Calendars did well. Pear wine met with much favor as well.

With Liturgy being served at Holy Resurrection Orthodox Mission in Aiken and at Holy Apostles Orthodox Church in West Columbia and our knowing both congregations and being geographically located between the two, we decided to attend Liturgy at each place on alternating Sundays. Once or twice a quarter, we attend Liturgy at a more distant parish. In December, we traveled to Greenville, South Carolina, and attended Liturgy at St. John of the Ladder. It was good to see so many people who, over the years, have taken the time to visit us and to meet many new people.

The Nativity of Christ was celebrated with the wonderful services that the Orthodox Church has developed over the centuries and with the gathering of a few friends for a Christmas meal that afternoon. Each day “Christ is born!” in our hearts and glorified with our whole being.

A few days after the Feast of Theophany (the baptism of Christ), Fr. James Bohlman blest our monastery. Afterwards, both of us felt that the monastery had a more peaceful and joyful feel to it.

Each day we strive to do what God puts before us with the strength that He gives us. Please keep praying that God will add to the monastic ranks. Monasticism is an expression of ecclesial life. The strength and health of the church is tied to the strength and health of monasticism.

Another Christmas season and civil new year have come and gone. We celebrate another Theophany/Epiphany feast - Jesus is manifested as Son of God as ". . .Beloved Son . . . Hear Him." Whose voice do we hear - to whom do we listen? Our speech or lack there of betrays us.

In our time and country which wants political correctness, the name of Jesus Christ is rarely mentioned. Do we speak it with reverence, awe and love? How often do we talk to each other and especially to the young adults about our Lord Jesus Christ and our faith in Him?

The holidays bring generations together. Was Jesus in the midst by our invitation or did we talk politics, sports and above all finances?

The persecution of our time is in political correctness, not offending anyone, allowing anything and everything; however, our faith is in Jesus Christ as was that of the early Christian martyrs and confessors.

Let us make a real effort to live our faith and confess it by our speech and our choices and receive the reward promised by our good God.

Each year, Orthodox Christians celebrate the Triumph of Orthodoxy on the first Sunday of Lent. This is the day we remember that the veneration of holy icons of Christ and His Saints is not idolatry, but rather the confession of the Incarnation of Our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. While precious few icons and frescoes painted before 842 survive, this is the day we rejoice in their return to churches and monasteries and homes. For 120 years iconophiles from every walk of life suffered persecution, exile and death at the hands of iconoclasts, who held power either as emperor as patriarch in the Byzantine Empire. The brothers, Theodore and Theophanes were among this host of sufferers.

While nothing is known of their mother except that she was a pious Christian woman, their father, Jonah the Sabbaite (feastday – September 21st), became a monk in his old age in 829 at the Great Lavra of St. Sabas near the Dead Sea. There he advanced in the virtues, was ordained a priest, and worked many miracles.

To this pious couple, two sons were born – Theodore and Theophanes. Both sons showed great intelligence and excelled in sacred and secular learning. While the boys were still young, Jonah moved his family from Kerak, Moab (Trans-Jordan) to Jerusalem. There they frequented the holy places of Christendom and were noted for their piety and attendance at Liturgy and other church services. To complete their education, they were sent to the Monastery of St. Sabas to study theology and be trained as monastics. During their teens and twenties, Theodore and Theophanes excelled in their monastic training as well as their theological studies and showed much progress in the virtues, especially humility and obedience.

When Theodore was twenty-five and Theophanes twenty-two, the abbot assigned the two brothers to the tutelage of priest-monk Michael, who was later know as the Syncellus (Chancellor) (feastday – December 18th). Over time, teacher and students became united through their overflowing Christ-like love for one another as well their ardent zeal for Christ and the true faith. Theodore worked as a scribe, while Theophanes honed his skill as a hymnographer.

In 811, Patriarch Thomas of Jerusalem ordained them to the priesthood and appointed Michael as his chancellor. Michael, Theodore and Theophanes took up residence in the Monastery of the Spoudaei near the Holy Sepulcher.

The year before, some Frankish monks who resided on the Mount of Olives started making the demand that the filioque (and the Son) be added to the Creed so that Eastern and Western Christendom would be in concord with one another. This could not even be considered since it is contrary to the Holy Scriptures (John 15:26) and the Ecumenical Councils.

The iconophile Leo the Armenian became Emperor in 813. However, he was convinced by the iconoclasts, Monk Sabbatius, another monk, and Theodotus Cassiteras (one of his most trusted counselors and soon made Patriarch of Constantinople) that he could not be a good emperor with a long and prosperous reign unless he renounced icons as idols and removed them from God’s churches. From this time until his assassination in 820, Emperor Leo vehemently destroyed icons and frescoes and persecuted iconophiles.

Shortly after he began his reign, the Muslims from Arabia invaded and conquered a sizable portion of his empire which included Palestine and began taxing Christians heavily. Patriarch Thomas of Jerusalem appointed Michael, Theodore, Theophanes and a monk Job by name to be his envoys to Pope Leo II of Rome to seek his help in convincing Leo the Armenian of his error, to quell the demand of the Frankish monks, and to obtain help in freeing Palestine from the Muslims. However, before proceeding to Rome, they were to travel to Constantinople, obtain an audience with Emperor Leo V, and present their theological argument in acceptance of icons with the fervent prayer that he would recant his heresy.

While in Constantinople, they settled in the Monastery of Chora (now Kariye Djami) and were still there in 815 when Emperor Leo V and Patriarch Theodotus revived the iconoclast heresy which had been condemned by the Seventh Ecumenical Council at Nicaea in 787. The former Patriarch of Constantinople, Nicephorus (an iconophile) was exiled. Michael was imprisoned and placed in shackles in the infamous Praetorium for seven years, thus causing him to be hunchbacked and almost blind. Theodore and Theophanes were brought before the emperor who, having admired them for their intelligence and rhetorical abilities, found that he could not persuade them to his iconoclastic beliefs and had them tortured and imprisoned in a fortress on the Bosporus.

After Emperor Leo’s assassination on Christmas Eve in 820, they were released. The leader of those who overthrew Leo V, Michael Balbus (the Stammerer) seized the throne on Christmas Day of 820 and became Emperor Michael II (820-829). Although he was an iconoclast, he allowed people to believe what they wanted. During his reign, he was greatly influenced by John the Grammarian, an iconoclast sorcerer who donned the monastic habit and feigned great holiness as a model of virtue. This John succeeded Theodotus as Patriarch of Constantinople and had Theodore and Theophanes arrested and banished to Sosthenium where they found refuge at the Monastery of St. Michael on the European shore of the Bosporus. While the conditions were harsh, they were able to continue their monastic life and literary work.

Saints Theodore and Theophanes*

During this time, Methodius, a devout monk who had worked in the service of Patriarch Nicephorus, delivered a papal letter to Emperor Michael II which called for the restoration of holy icons. Patriarch John, having the ear of the emperor, had him cruelly scourged, exiled to an island, and imprisoned in a grave-like hole with two robbers.

Five years after ascending the throne, the iconoclastic Emperor Theophilus (829-842) renewed the persecution of iconophiles with greater fervor than any of his predecessors. In his singling out monastics to persecute, he arrested Theodore and Theophanes, had them tortured and imprisoned them on the island of Aphusia for two years. Remembering their steadfastness in their faith and their ardent supplication for the restoration of holy icons, Theophilus had them brought before him. Finding that they would not recant their faith, he personally assailed them with blows from his own fist and then ordered others to beat them ruthlessly. Four days later and still swollen from their wounds, they were brought before the emperor and asked to attend Liturgy with him and his court. Refusing to submit to this ploy of communing with them in their heresy, Theophilus had them branded on the forehead with these verses of condemnation:

Through the pain and the blood, Theodore informed Emperor Theophilus that he had branded the face of Christ and thanked him for adding them to the ranks of Martyrs and Confessors and thus opening the gates of Paradise for him and his brother.

At the command of Patriarch John, they were exiled to Apamea (now Mudanya) in Bithynia. On the journey, they sailed near the island where Methodius was imprisoned, met a fisherman who fed him, and heard of Methodius’s sufferings. Not being allowed to visit Methodius, the brothers sent a short poem and word of their own sufferings by way of the fisherman. Methodius, gaining strength from knowing that he did not suffer alone, sent back a short poem exhorting them for their faithfulness.

Upon reaching Apamea, they were thrown into a dungeon, where Theodore died, December 27, 841, in fetters from his long years of harsh treatment. Since Emperor Theophilus had decreed that their bodies were not to be buried, Theophanes placed his brother’s body in a wooden coffin which became his reliquary and chanted funeral hymns, not laments, which he had composed. The canon (an eight part canticle sung/chanted at matins) written by Theophanes for Theodore the Branded is still used on December 27th.

On January 20, 842, Emperor Theophilos died. Under the reign of Empress Theodora and Emperor Michael III, the holy fathers were released from prison and exile and brought to the Imperial City where they were honored and praised for their sufferings in defense of the true faith. On the first Sunday of Lent, Theophanes the Branded and Methodius and many other fellow-suffers entered the church solemnly carrying icons and chanting hymns composed by Theophanes for this great occasion. To this day, these hymns are still chanted at matins on the Sunday of Orthodoxy.

Empress Theodora had Methodius elevated to Patriarch of Constantinople. Patriarch Methodius consecrated Theophanes as Metropolitan of Nicaea in 842 where he spent the remainder of his life as a wise and good shepherd of his flock and a hymnographer. Theodore’s relics, through which many healings have occurred, were transferred from Apamea to the Monastery at Chalcedon.

Saint Theophanes is second only to Joseph the Hymnographer in his contributions to the Octoechos (Parakliti) and is credited with having composed 145 poetic canons and numerous hymns that we use almost 1200 years later. Glory to God for all things.

*The Great Synasaristes of the Orthodox Church, p. 221 Translated from the Greek, Holy Apostles Convent, Buena Vista, Colorado, 2002
**The Great Collection of the Lives of the Saints Volume IV: December, p. 543, First English Edition Translated by Fr. Thomas Maretta, Chrysostom Press, House Springs, Missouri, 2000

Other Source: The Synaxarion: The Lives of the Saints of the Orthodox Church, by Hieromonk Makarios of Simonos Petra, Translated from the French by Christopher Hookway, Holy Convent of the Annunciation of our Lady, Ormylia, Greece 1999

Request: If you know the name of their mother, please let us know her name and the source from which you obtained this information.