PANCRAS OF TAORMINA

The Creed calls the Church “Apostolic”. This is one of the four key properties of the Church, one of its four notes, as this word sounds in Latin. Saint Pancratius was one of those Apostles, that is, the first Christian preachers of the word of God, who spread Christianity throughout the world. If we use the image of the French writer Emile Zola in his novel “Germinal”, he was one of those “little hammers” who, with their labors and, most importantly, their martyrdom, built that marvelous, glorious, new world of the Christian Church, which has been with us for almost two millennia, but which, as in the time of Pancratius, continues to be built to this day, and until the Second Coming of Jesus.

1 July 22nd according to the Julian calendar is an easy date to remember. On this day, the Church celebrates the memory of Saint Pancratius of Taormina.

2 Taormina is a very ancient city in Sicily, known since the end of the 5th century BC or even earlier. It is located on the shores of the Ionian Sea, not far from Mount Etna. Goethe called this city the threshold of paradise, and Guy de Maupassant considered it the main place to see in Sicily. And these are just two examples among many others in the fields of culture, literature, and even cinema that speak of Taormina, highlighting its unique beauty and marvelous location.

3 The city is very ancient, but its historical memory was interrupted by the Arab conquest, which lasted two centuries (902-1079), occupying almost the entire 10th and 11th centuries.

4 Previously, the city remained under Byzantine rule for a long time, literally remaining an outpost of Constantinople in Sicily during the Middle Ages. Thus, in the historical memory of Orthodoxy, Saint Pancratius, like many Sicilian saints, are not saints of the Christian West—venerated, certainly, but unknown and rather distant—but true saints of Orthodox Christianity.

5 The life of Pancratius was written by a Sicilian author in the 8th century. Until, God willing, historians and archaeologists succeed in discovering new information, the saint’s biography will remain undiscovered. We know nothing about it, except for a tiny kernel, which contains a historical truth and takes us back to the time of the apostles.

6 Like Saint Saturninus, considered the first Bishop of Toulouse, Saint Michael, the first Metropolitan of the Russian Church, and many others, Pancratius entered the memory of the Church as the first Bishop of Taormina. This diocese actually existed for nearly a thousand years and is now a titular bishop in the Catholic Church. It is thanks to Pancratius, his personality, and his mission that such a small local church existed and still exists today.

7 According to the life of Saint Pancratius, he heard the Apostle Peter in Antioch. In the first decades after Pentecost, Antioch was the “logistical center” of the entire apostolic mission, and therefore Pancratius could well have heard not only Peter, but also Paul and other apostles.

8 He converted to the faith, was baptized, and went to preach in Sicily, particularly in Taormina. There, he founded a Christian community. The content of his sermon was confirmed by miracles and signs. The main reason was that the pagan temples Pancratius passed through were reduced to ruins, as if there had been an earthquake each time.

9 The great volcano Etna was nearby. So, God, in Christ Jesus, used this “volcanic masterpiece of nature” of his to act through the saint in just this way. Thanks to divine power and his preaching, Pancratius managed to thwart several pagan attacks while they were open. But finally, the fanatical pagans attacked the saint at night and stoned him.

10 The name Pancratius itself derives from the Greek “Pantocrator,” meaning “Almighty.” This word refers to God. Belief in the omnipotence of God is the first article of our Creed. Christianity is a monotheistic religion.

11 We cannot be certain, but something suggests that such a complex first name could hardly have belonged to an apostle or one of their disciples. Most likely, the pagans constantly heard the name of Almighty God from Pancratius. He believed in the biblical God, who lived and breathed in Him always. And this faith incinerated false gods.

12 The pagan gods were not omnipotent; they possessed a complex and absurd system of mutual specialization. Saint Augustine described this best in his work “The City of God.” Thus, Pancratius professed what he preached. For the pagans, he became the personification of this unique Almighty God, of Jesus who, in their eyes, threatened the existence of their idols and deities. That is why they nicknamed the preacher Pancratius. They feared that their entire social order, their entire well-being, would be destroyed. Therefore, they killed Pancratius, hoping, in his person, to kill God the Almighty he preached. To better understand this destructive logic, let us recall the Bolsheviks who, almost two thousand years later, organized a trial against God and killed many millions of innocent people.

13 The veneration of Saint Pancras as an apostolic martyr quickly spread beyond Sicily. Thus, in the 9th century, the greatest Orthodox theologian of the time, Saint Theodore the Studite (759-826), knew the saint well and mentioned him in his works. Moreover, it is to Theodore that we owe many of the characteristics of our Orthodox liturgy, asceticism, and the Lenten discipline, which beautify our ecclesial reality.

14 Grace is communication. Faith in the communion of saints is solemnly proclaimed in the Apostles’ Creed. Thus, a special spiritual fraternity is created between us, men of the 21st century, Saint Theodore, and Saint Pancratius.

15 In current Orthodox liturgical books, an entire service is dedicated to Saint Pancratius, with paremias, that is, readings from the Old Testament, polyeleos, and stichera. This testifies to the great veneration held within the entire Church.

16 The Kontakion of Matins calls Pancratius “the shining star of Taormina.” How can we not remember Saint Pancratius in Toulouse, the capital of French cosmonautics and in a world where space technology plays such a huge role? How can we not remember Vladimir Mayakovsky: “Listen, of the stars are lit, then someone must need them, of course”! (translated by Andrey Kneller).

17 Saint Pancratius is the shining star of Almighty God. It is such a beautiful epithet, as if it were not the ancient Byzantine hymnographers, contemporaries of Theodore the Studite, but Goethe and Byron, who admired Taormina, who had praised the holy martyr of Sicily.