There is something profoundly consoling in the fact that the first week of Great Lent ends with a miracle. Not with some poor human achievement, not with some negligible merit of our own, but with the miracle of a Saint who, even after death, cares for the people of God. The Saturday of Saint Theodore is a day of thanksgiving: thanksgiving for the ascetical struggle we have passed through, for the food granted to us when we had none other, for the Great Martyr who watches over those who fast and contend against evil.
Today the monastery of Bigorski Monastery was fragrant with boiled wheat. Kolyva – that simple, ancient food of the poor and of the saints – was prepared, blessed, and distributed to the faithful, in remembrance of the miracle of Saint Theodore the Recruit. For when the apostate Julian sought secretly to defile the food of the Christian people with blood from idolatrous sacrifices, Saint Theodore appeared in a dream to Eudoxius, Archbishop of Constantinople, and warned him: Do not eat from the marketplace, but boil wheat and feed yourselves with it. And the people were saved – not by the sword, not by politics, but by boiled wheat and by the prayer of a saint.
The troparion of the Great Martyr proclaims this mystery in words full of paradox:
“Great are the achievements of faith! For the holy martyr Theodore rejoiced in the flames as though beside still waters, offering himself as a sweet bread to the Trinity.”
Sweet bread in the midst of fire; repose within the flame. This is the logic of martyrdom, which is the same as the logic of the Cross: where the world sees destruction, faith sees offering; where the body burns, the soul finds rest. And we, who this week have burned—however little, however modestly—in the fire of abstinence, can understand something of that joy in the flame.
The kontakion adds:
“Thy faith in Christ was as a breastplate upon thy heart; with it thou didst overcome the might of the enemy;.therefore thou art crowned eternally with a heavenly wreath.”
Faith is the armor of the heart. And the whole first week of the Fast has been a putting on of that armor. Day by day, service by service, prostration by prostration, we have clothed ourselves in faith. The enemy did not cease attacking, yet he could not pierce the heart guarded by faith.
The stichera of Matins call Saint Theodore a “true gift of God,” for his very name – Theodore – means precisely that: God’s gift. And this gift is not only for the ancient Christians of Constantinople; it is for us today. For
“All who approach thy relics with sincerity worship Christ and receive with joy the reward of thy miracles.”
We have approached – through fasting, through prayer, through the kolyva – and the reward is already given: the joy of the completed first week, the peace of conscience, the nearness of God.
The litany verses unite the two pillars of this week – fasting and martyrdom – into one:
“The pure and spotless Fast has now brought us to celebrate the wonders of the martyr.
Through fasting we are cleansed from spiritual defilement;.through the sign and sufferings of the martyr we draw courage against the passions.”
Fasting purifies; the martyr strengthens. One without the other is incomplete. You may fast without courage – but then fasting becomes dark and heavy. If, however, you behold Saint Theodore, who “rejoiced in the flames,” then even your small suffering gains meaning and joy.
As Saturday turns toward evening, the services begin to look toward tomorrow – the Sunday of Orthodoxy, the first Sunday of the Holy Forty Days. The stichera of Vespers speak of the holy icons, of the Church that has “clothed Christ in visible form, an adornment surpassing the world,” and of the faithful who bow before the incarnate Image – not worshipping wood and colors, but adoring Him who is depicted.
The troparion of the Sunday of Orthodoxy proclaims:
“We venerate Thy most pure image, O Good One, asking forgiveness of our transgressions, O Christ our God;.for of Thine own will Thou wast pleased to ascend the Cross in the flesh,
To deliver Thy creatures from bondage to the enemy.”
The icon is a window to the One whom we worship. And tomorrow, the church will be filled with joy – not only for the victory over iconoclasm, but for the victory of faith itself, which has outlived all persecutors, all apostates, all Julians of history.
Tоnight, with the taste of kolyva upon our lips and the icon of Saint Theodore before our eyes, we give quiet thanks – for the week that has passed, for the Fast that has purified us, for the martyr who has guarded us, for the Mother of God whose Akathist accompanied us, for the Cross that bore us – and for tomorrow, when with icons in our hands and “Eternal memory” upon our lips, we shall celebrate the triumph of Orthodoxy: our faith, our life, our hope.
