SPYRIDON OF CYPRUS

Celebrating the memory of a saint is always a pilgrimage to him. This is a spiritual pilgrimage to the righteous man and friend of God, whom the Church honors as an example of faith and piety, and about whom it is sure that God hears his prayers. Going on a pilgrimage to Saint Spyridon, we ask him for intercession. Turning to the saint with a request, we recall everything that we know and remember about him.

The time of Saint Spyridon and his successors is called in the history of the Church “The Golden Age of the Holy Fathers”. Spyridon (270-348) was the same age as Saint Nicholas the Wonderworker (270-348) and an older contemporary of Basil the Great, Gregory the Theologian, and other Fathers of the Church. All together, they defended Orthodoxy, participated in church councils. Thus, the signature of Saint Spyridon was preserved in the acts of the Council of Sardica, which was important for the history of the Church and took place in 343 in the modern Bulgarian city of Sofia.

Saint Athanasius the Great, ancient historians Socrates, Rufinus and Sozomen mention Spyridon in their works. The biblical righteousness of Spyridon, the obviousness of the miracles he performed during his lifetime served for them as a sign of the truth of the faith of the Council of Nicaea (325), a sign that Christianity is so visible, unconditional and convincing that it will soon spread throughout the whole earth (cf. Matthew 28:19).

The village of Trimifunt, or Tremetousia, where Spyridon was bishop, is located in the Larnaca region. Since 1974, this territory has been occupied by Turkey. The Church of Saint Spyridon houses a military barracks. But the relics of Saint Spyridon were “transferred” to Constantinople at the end of the 7th century. The last evidence of their presence in Cyprus is in 655. Soon after the fall of Constantinople in 1453, the relics were transferred to Corfu, where they were laid to rest.

The island of Corfu is the only territory of Greece that was never occupied by the Ottomans. The inhabitants of the island see this as a special intercession of St. Spyridon. Among the features of the liturgical life of this place is the procession with the relics of the saint through the streets of the city several times a year.

The relics of many ancient saints of the Golden Age have been lost, or only partially preserved. Some are in Catholic churches, placed under the altar, or there is a barrier between them and the believers. In any case, venerating them in accordance with the Orthodox tradition so as to freely “pray and venerate” is difficult.

Perhaps Spyridon is the only one of the Church Fathers of that time whose relics are preserved in their entirety in an Orthodox church and are visibly venerated by believers to this day. They have become a kind of topos of the holiness of the veneration of the relics of saints in anticipation of the general resurrection, the personification of this very important dogma. From the obvious combination of dogmatic faith and popular piety, a visible abundance of help, healings and miracles is born in the blessed help of the saint from God.

“I believe in the Communion of Saints,” says the ancient Apostolic Creed. Addressing Saint Spyridon, the Church, as the Society of Believers, asks Saint Spyridon for intercession before God, to live by the example of his biblical faith, “to trust God, to believe in God and to follow Him”; so that heavenly help would be with us in the coming new year, and, in the Kingdom of the Father and God (1 Cor. 15:24), the Lord would deign to join Spyridon in the Communion of Saints.