Sunday of Orthodoxy Today's Christian Martyrs – A most-beautiful and inspiring lecture about martyrdom in our age This is an English translation of the lecture of Archimandrite Aimilianos of Simonopetra (Mount Athos) held in the mid-80s, in Limassol, Cyprus, narrated in English for otelders.org by Peter Eliades. Special thanks to Fr. John-abouna D'Alton for helping…


Sunday of Orthodoxy
Today’s Christian Martyrs – A most-beautiful and inspiring lecture about martyrdom in our age
This is an English translation of the lecture of Archimandrite Aimilianos of Simonopetra (Mount Athos) held in the mid-80s, in Limassol, Cyprus, narrated in English for otelders.org by Peter Eliades.

Special thanks to Fr. John-abouna D’Alton for helping with the English translation.

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Audio source (Greek): http://www.omilies.net/omilies/11paims/29013_1%20TO%20MARTYRIO.mp3

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Archimandrite Aimilianos of Simonopetra:
Which man does not go everyday through a martyrdom?
Every day, all around us people bear their struggle, their pain. They have a thousand martyrdoms. How many times will you see a man to be in his social life great, famous and as soon as you approach him and he opens his heart you will see that he goes through martyrdom.
When somebody loses his one only child, can you tell me whether he becomes immediately a martyr or not? When one faces the death of his child with patience, with humility with faith in God and, most of all, with the certitude that his child is alive…
When we see that life becomes difficult. When all our efforts fail us, when they wrong us, when they slander us, when they forget us, when they defy us, when they see us only because they want to take advantage of us… are not we in pain?
When we fight with our passions, with our sins…are we not martyrs? When I see that I have a passion and I pray to God to take it away from me and it still torments me and I fight and yet I cannot stop falling into sin, is this not a martyrdom in front of God?
The one who tries to beat his ego and take the decision to confess his sins to a priest, is he not a martyr of life? The trumpets, the wars, the swords of any kind… are not all these considered equal to the martyrdoms that we face in our souls, and in our houses daily? Our daily patience, our joy to the difficulties and the unexpected, our faith when we fall sick, our hope in the Heavens when we lose our sight…
How many martyrdoms… if only we do every little thing for the glory of Christ and then it is right away considered a martyrdom.
So, my dears, to martyr is to confess “My Christ I await you, I live for you this tormented life… with my failing liver, with my aching heart, with my intestines that will not let me rest, with my head that they cannot heal it, with the fear I might also have cancer”.
The man who endures for Christ, he is truly a martyr. When we fast… is this not a martyrdom in this age that most people do not? When we fight spiritually, when we pray the moment our neighbors do not… when we love our neighbor the moment most people do not pay any attention at all to their neighbor, but only care for themselves.
You see that every time in day and night, every occasion can turn into an opportunity for a spiritual martyrdom.
Thus, my dears, when we will be martyring, we will witness the joy, Christ bless us with, the feast our heart will be having because we are going to feel becoming heavenly people.