My beloved brothers and sisters in Christ Our Only True Lord, God, and Savior,
CHRIST IS IN OUR MIDST! HE WAS, IS, AND EVER SHALL BE.
On the 12th of December, we celebrate the Feast-Day of our Father among the Saints,
SPYRIDON THE WONDERWORKER, Bishop of Trimythus in Cyprus.
Apolytikion (Dismissal) Hymn of the Hierarch. First Tone
THOU was shown forth as a champion of the First Council and a
wonderworker, O Spyridon, our God-bearing Father. Wherefore,
thou didst speak unto one dead in the grave, and didst change a
serpent to gold. And while chanting thy holy prayers, thou hadst
Angels serving with thee, O most sacred one. Glory to Him that
hath glorified thee. Glory to Him that hath crowned thee. Glory to
Him that worketh healings for all through thee.
Kontakion Hymn of the Hierarch. Second Tone
PIERCED through with the love of Christ, O sacred Spyridon, thou
gavest thy mind diviine wings with the Spirit’s light; in the active
vision of God were all thy labors, O inspired of God, whereby thou
became the Lord’s divine altar, asking divine light for all.
Saint Spyridon, the God-bearing Father of the Church, the great defender of Corfu, and the boast of all the Orthodox, had Cyprus as his homeland. He was simple in manner and humble of heart, and was shepherd of sheep. and tilling his own land. He consumed very little of his own produce, giving the greater part to the poor. He performed great wonders by God’s power, making rain fall in a drought, stopping the course of a river, raising several of the dead, healing the Emperor Constans of a grave illness, seeing and hearing Angels, foreseeing future events and penetrating the secrets of the human heart. He turned many to the true Faith, and did much else. He dressed so simply that once, when he was invited by the Emperor to the imperial court, a soldier took him for a beggar and struck him a blow. The meek and guileless Spirydon turned him the other cheek. When he was joined to a wife, he begat of her a daughter, whom they named Irene. After his wife’s departure from this life, he was appointed Bishop of Trimythus, and thus he also became a shepherd of rational sheep. When the First Ecumenical Synod was assembled in Nicaea, he also was present, and by means of hismos simple words stopped the mouths of the Arians (heretics) who were wise in their own conceit. By the Divine grace which dwelt in him, he wrought such great wonders that he received the surname "WONDERWORKER." So it is that, having tended his flock piously and in a manner pleasing to God, he reposed in the Lord about the year 350 A.D., leaving to his country his sacred relics as a consolation and source of healing for the faithful.
FOR CONSIDERATION
Nothing will help us if we are not generous and forgiving towards human weakness in others. If we do not forgive others, how can we hope that God will forgive us? Saint Spyridon once sold a merchant a hundred goats at a given price, and told the buyer to produce the money. Knowing that Spyridon himself would never count it, he put down enough for ninety-nine goats and secreted the money for the hundredth. Saint Spyridon then counted out a hundred goats for him, but, when the merchant and his servant started driving them away, one of them returned bleating. It was driven off again, and again returned. It kept returning to the flock, and would not go with the other goats. The Saint then whispered into the merchant’s ear, ‘You know, my son, that animal is not acting like this without a reason. Have you, perhaps, withheld the price?’ The merchant was ashamed and acknowledged his sin, and, as soon as he had paid the full amount, the goat immediately went off and joined the rest of the flock.
On another occasion, some thieves went into Saint Spyridon’s pasture. When they had seized as many rams as they wanted, they tried to leave the field, but an invisible force riveted them to the earth and they could not move from the spot. At dawn, the bishop came to the pasture, and, seeing the thieves, reproached them mildly and told them to try, in future, to live by their own labor and not by thieving. He then caught a ram and gave it to them, saying: ‘Take this, so that your trouble and night vigil should not have been in vain,’ and he sent them away in peace.
After he arrived back home from Nichaea a woman told him that she had given his daughter Irene, who had died while he was away, some jewelry for safekeeping. Now that his daughter was dead, no one could find where she had put them. Saint Spyridon looked everywhere but he could not find them either. The Saint went to his daughter’s grave, spoke to her, and was able to restore the jewelry to its owner.
A traveler came upon a journey to visit him on one of those days in which it was his custom to keep a continuous fast with his household, and on the day appointed for tasting food, he would remain without nourishment until mid-day. Perceiving that the stranger was much fatigued, Saint Spyridon said to his daughter, "Come, wash his feet and set meat before him." The virgin replied that there was neither bread nor barley-food in the house, for it would have been superfluous to provide such things at the time of the fast. Saint Spyridon first prayed and asked forgiveness, and asked her to cook some salt pork which happened to be in the house. When it was prepared, he sat down at a table with the stranger, partook of the meat, and told him to follow his example. But the stranger declined, under the plea of being a Christian, he said to him, "it is for that very reason that you ought not to decline partaking of the meat; for the Divine word shows that to the pure all things are pure."
About the middle of the 7th century, because of the incursions made by the barbarians at that time, his sacred relics were taken to Constantinople, where they remained, being honored by the Emperors themselves. But before the fall of Constantinople, which took place on May29, 1453, a certain priest named George Kalokhairetes, the parish priest of the church where the Saint’s sacred relics, as well as those of Saint Theodora the Empress, were kept, took the away on account of the impending peril. Travelling by way of Serbia, he came as far as Arta in Epirus, a region in Western Greece opposite to the isle of Corfu. From there, while the misfortunes of the Christian people were increasing with every day, he passed over to Corfu about the year 1460. The holy relics of Saint Theodora were given to the people of Corfu; but those of Saint Spyridon remain to this day, according to the rights of inheritance, the most precious treasure of the priest’s own descendants, and they continue to be a staff for the faithful in Orthodoxy, and a supernatural wonder for those that behold him; for even after the passage of 1,500 years, they had remained incorrupt, and even the flexibility of his flesh has been preserved.
A different account of where the holy relics of Saint Spyridon states that the sacred relics are housed in a silver casket in a church of Saint Spyridon in Corfu built in 1589. According to local tradition, his holy relics are carried around the island of Corfu four times a year. [Resources: The Great Horologion and The Prologue from Ochrid]
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"Glory Be To GOD
For
All Things!"
– Saint John Chrysostomos
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With sincere agape in His Divine and Glorious Diakonia (Ministry),
The sinner and unworthy servant of God
+ Father George
The Eastern Orthodox Christian Ethos 