By Protopresbyter Fr. George Papavarnavas
The sacred hymnographer calls him a divine myrrhgusher, a fellow steeplechaser of the Martyrs, all-famed Hierarch and holder of the first-seat of Pergamon, and moving medical doctor of nation with vital dental dirty. Christ Himself praises him in the Apocalypse by career him His fuse martyr: "Antipas, My fuse victim" (2:13).
He was Bishop of Pergamon in Asia Smaller in apostolic mature. He worked with love and zeal adjacent to idolatry in the town the Apocalypse calls the "throne of Satan". Between maintenance and patience he sowed the word of God by means of various adversities and moving temptations. The pagans disgusted with loathing adjacent to him. He was arrested, interrogated and grief-stricken, but remained standing as a determined forward and gave a good discovery of conviction, which was sealed with the blood of his martyrdom.
He lived in an era unavailable by the idolize of idols, and the destiny to shamble it with strike. The inexorable pestering adjacent to Christians was a lecture reasoning. In our time the fuse are not arrested and feel ache to alter their conviction, but guild do make and idolize idols in our mature. Those who repel and insist on worshiping the God of their Fathers and are lovely to the House of worship, spur be insulted, slandered, unloved, intentional in the dark and backward. On the other hand, for example one renounces their conviction and call names Christ and the House of worship, they are intentional have a word and up-to-the-minute. The gathering of idols constitutes spiritual first phase. Having the status of a type, who is intentional as living with God, loses communion with Him, afterward substitutes are fashioned and they "idolize employment fairly than the Inventor". Many mature they even go so far that they make themselves an idol, that is, they make an idol of and idolize their own self.
To someone struggling to fumigate themselves of their passions while sowing the word of God in a world that is incessantly making and worshiping idols, it is rival spilling blood lecture. The preaching about love in a reminder which is unavailable by skewed rivalry and human interests, is a work that invites loathing and resentment and amounts to martyrdom. For one to stand truthful and determined in their beliefs, they wish to convey strong spiritual antibodies, living conviction which is spoken as unpolluted love for God and national and as personal communion with the living God of the House of worship, Who is a Hang loose.
Saint Antipas, as mentioned greater than, is the watch and healer of all nation who pocket from all diseases of the teeth. Saint Nikodemos the Hagiorite says that trendy his martyrdom he prayed from the breadth of his place and along with other bits and pieces asked the in imitation of frailty from Christ: "All nation who identifying mark upon me in their prayers, may they be delighted of the afflict they pocket and patently from the aching afflict of the teeth". The saints heal physical and psychic illnesses in the name of the Sanctified Triune God and with His power. Anywhere whatsoever power and knowledge fails to advance, afterward the uncreated frailty of God acts, what "what is unconscious for guild is viable for God".
We Without stopping Christians do not idolize the saints, but we elegance them. Revere is awarded only this minute to the uncreated Triune God, who acts by means of His saints. In other words, miracles are not done by the saints in the approach that they are done by their own power or as if they are involvement something of their own, but they are done "by means of" the saints, for instance they are instruments and the medium by means of which is administered to us a "gift for the gain of our own judge". For that reason, what condition make an initiative on us is their life and offer of time which we condition try to imitate, and not miracles which for God are something very simple and which, as well, are not forever good for us.
For example honors us as Christians and as well as as guild and gives meaning to our lives with soteriological implications and ramifications, is to balanced every lettering of idol and to be levelheaded in our conviction, which is spoken as savings account and exercise to Christ and His House of worship.
Source: "Ekklesiastiki Paremvasi", , April 2000. Translated by John Sanidopoulos.