Paul the Confessor

  Unlike Holy Week and Pascha, Christmas does not supersede the commemorations of the saints. Instead, the saints whose memory is celebrated during the days of Christmastide lend these days a distinctive spiritual meaning and character.

Thus, on January 5, the eve of Christmas Eve, the Church commemorates Saint Paul of Neocaesarea. He was a bishop, a confessor of the faith, and a participant in the First Ecumenical Council of Nicaea (325). The city of Neocaesarea associated with Paul was a fortress on the Euphrates. It should not be confused with the other, much better-known Neocaesarea in Anatolia, where, among other heroes of early Christianity, Saint Gregory the Wonderworker (+275) served as bishop.

The great Church historian Theodoret of Cyrrhus (393–457) writes that at the Council of Nicaea, Emperor Constantine the Great was moved to tears at the sight of Paul and the other confessors of the faith who had suffered during Diocletian’s Great Persecution. They bore the marks of deep wounds and terrible mutilations inflicted by the pagans. Paul himself had his hands burned.

Many pagans, especially among the judicial and administrative elite, were not sadists and did not inflict such injuries without reason. They had heard Christians—above all bishops, and Paul was one such itinerant missionary bishop—speak of the Eucharist in their prayers as “Fire,” “Light,” and the “Body and Blood of God.”

Obsessed with sinful curiosity — drawn from the triad “the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life” (cf. 1 Jn. 2:16) — the pagans decided to test Paul in his words. If he truly dares to hold in his hands the “Body of God,” which is “Fire,” would he withstand the trial of physical fire?

Paul endured and did not renounce his faith. He offers Christians of every age an important lesson. The words of the Church’s prayers, especially those addressed to God in the context of the Eucharist and Holy Communion, contain many astonishingly bold affirmations. When speaking these words, one must be ready in deed to confess what is proclaimed in speech: to confess what one proclaims, and to remain faithful to the truth of the words being uttered.