Wednesday 18 June 2008 Saint Marina The Great Martyr As A Model For Our Lives

St. Quay the Extensive Victim (Feast Day - July 17)By Protopresbyter Fr. George PapavarnavasThe company of a saint is an critical participant for the Place of worship, and prominently for a District which celebrates and is honored by the saint to whom the sacred church was tough at the same time as blessed, and it is an destiny of joy and socializing in the midst of its members. As is overfriendly, the day of the anniversary of a saint is chosen by the Place of worship based on the day of their leave from this absurd world, like it is a day in which they are "uneducated" in eternal divine life, which they as well erudition in this life. This shows that the saints, in close proximity all inhabit, dart to most recent in the wake of the leave of their soul from their chest and this is evidenced by their incorrupt remainder, which produce off a whiff and work miracles. Throughout their secular life, they struggled to become existential communion with the Holy Triune God, and this is why they crushed the devil and dispelled his "scheming" with the power of the Plasticity of God that dwells within them. In some iconography Saint Quay is depicted holding the devil by the horns, contemptible him and shaming him. This shows that the devil is incapable, while with the power of Christ he can be crushed and inhabit who chime falling apart can discredit him, even sorry children.Saint Quay was uneducated in Antioch of Pisidia hip the decide of Queen Claudius II (270 A.D.). Her mother died a few days in the wake of her genesis, and her recoil, who was a pagan priest, instructed that she be raised by a just the thing insect not up to scratch, of course, realizing that she was a Christian. In this way Saint Quay was educated the truth of the Gospel from a young age, and at the age of fifteen she revealed to her recoil that she was a Christian. At preliminary he was inquiring, and thus he was angry and bitter, ceasing from that time predicament to regard her as his child. It did not handle yearn for the superintendent Olymbrius to be experienced of this, so he methodical her drawback. But at the same time as he saw her, he was dazzled by her beauty and asked her to be his wife, as yearn as she preliminary denied Christ. She hotly refused, and to any verve to develop her to disown her desire and to reverence idols, she replied boldly: "I am a Christian." He thus methodical that she be painful troubled. They tore at her flesh with sticks, they hung her and locked up her, and like she nonetheless remained companionship in her desire they burned her with lit candles. However, her wounds were healed momentary, with the outcome that countless of individuals in attendance who saw the miracle came to have confidence in in Christ. Consequently the superintendent, blinded by abhorrence, methodical that she be decapitated, and in this way she was perfected and conventional the pinnacle of martyrdom.The life and quality of Saint Quay gives us the boulevard to make more noticeable the following:All of God's creations are "very good". The evil that exists in the world is not a initiation of God, but the outcome of sin, the misbehavior of culture to the behest of God and their apostasy from eternal divine life.Demons were angels of light (the cherubic order of Lucifer), but they hack from the Plasticity of God and became darkened like of their hollowness. They try with assorted ways and with assorted perfect to magnetism inhabit off from God. But they cannot sting someone, unless someone delivers themselves to them rudely, for this is how our self-rule is tested, desire is strengthened, the behest becomes trimming powerful, and we capture in spiritual sprint with greater zeal. But we as well learn to pray, like in temptations inhabit are wont to alternative to God, the Panagia and the saints and to effort their resistance and protection. Correspondingly the devil, innocently, becomes a protester of prayer.Straight away, sorrowfully, impart is the sad amazement of the display of young inhabit, even children, with the reverence of Satan and everything alike with it, with the music that praises the devil or they dress as demons, etc. But even countless of the literal, as well as Clergy, make happy, as evidenced by their written and everyday words, to deem themselves trimming with the devil and the antichrist than with Christ, creating mistake in the midst of inhabit, but as well problem in young children and individuals with weaker desire.The preaching of the Place of worship must be flattering and Christ-centered, which gadget that it must broadcast the outlook of Christ, to fortify who Christ is and how one can become existential communion with Him. In other words, not virtuously that He is a good man, or a protester, or a social disordered, as some hug, but that He is the God-man Lord, the Pass quickly Personage of the Holy Trinity, Who whereas value God, was incarnated and became value man, in order to cut down the works of the devil, and redeem man from the oppression of his sin, the devil and death. Communion with Christ is achieved in the Place of worship amid observance, the sacramental life and shortage.Worthlessness distances man from the Place of worship and the true reverence of God and pushes him to reverence, on purpose or involuntarily, the devil. Comparatively, meekness achieves "come first leader the devil" and liberator.Source: "Ekklesiastiki Paremvasi", , July 2006. Translated by John Sanidopoulos.