FORTY MARTYRS OF SEBASTE

On March 22 (9), the Church honors the memory of the holy Forty Martyrs of Sebaste. The saints suffered for Christ in 320 during the reign of Emperor Licinius. The importance of venerating the saints is demonstrated by the fact that the great Fathers of the Church, Basil of Caesarea, Gregory of Nyssa and Ephraim the Syrian dedicated laudatory sermons to them.

In turn, the liturgical charter for Great Lent makes a significant exception on the day of the forty martyrs. In honor of them, the Liturgy of the Presanctified is appointed. Finally, the shift of the Julian calendar in relation to the modern secular calendar by 13 days places the memory of the martyrs on the vernal equinox and the very beginning of springtime.

The remarkable symbolic coincidences of times are not accidental, for they have God as their founder and author. “I believe in one God, the Father, the Almighty, the Creator, that is, literally in the original Greek, the Poet of Heaven and Earth,” says the Creed of Nicaea-Constantinople.

Despite the Edict of Milan (313), which he himself signed together with Constantine the Great, according to which Christianity was declared legal and persecution ceased, the Eastern Emperor Licinius pursued a hypocritical policy and continued to persecute Christians.

The Holy Forty Martyrs were Roman soldiers. They came from different parts of the Empire, but were part of the famous Legio XII Fulminata, Thunderbolt Twelfth Legion, formed in 58 BC by Julius Caesar.

One of the locations of the legion was the fortress of Melitene, modern-day Malatya in Turkey, where the Romans kept their army after their conquest of Cappadocia. The saints suffered for Christ in Sebaste, in the historical region of Lesser Armenia, today known as Sivas.

The reason for the martyrdom was the soldiers’ refusal to renounce their faith in Christ. For this, they were sentenced to a slow death from frostbite in the waters of Lake Sebaste. Apparently, parodying holy baptism, about which the pagans had heard that its waters give life to a person through a mysterious death and a new birth in Christ, the torturers prepared a warm bath nearby. In this way, they seemed to depict that it is not the Christian conviction that preserves a person’s life, but the deadening pagan water. How prophetically similar they were to contemporary godless rulers, isolating people from faith for the sake of well-being and comfort!

On the way to their martyrdom, the saints wrote a will. In it, they commanded that their relics not be divided after death, so that all together they could await the general resurrection that would come at the end of time. It is from this will that we know the names of all the saints, with the exception of the eldest of them, who wrote the document on behalf of all. Tradition has preserved his name: Meletius.

Subsequently, it was he who failed the test, renounced the faith and rushed to the bathhouse to warm himself, but immediately fell dead. A Roman guard named Aglaios, who was assigned to supervise what was happening, confessed Christ in response to what he saw. Following God’s instructions in a special vision, he proclaimed himself a Christian and completed the sacred number of forty martyrs.

In different versions of the life, the names may differ, but for us the theological essence of the story is important. The Church Fathers called constancy in goodness a special virtue. Perseverance in goodness is the ability to maintain faith in Christ even until the last breath. This virtue opens the Gates of Salvation to everyone. It is not acquired by personal efforts but is a gift of grace. Like faith itself, perseverance in faith comes from above. “For by grace you have been saved through faith, and that not of yourselves, it is the gift of God” (Eph. 2:8).

In the suffering of the holy martyrs, constancy in goodness was manifested in two ways. The persecutions of the Empire were officially ended by the political decision of the Edict of Milan. “But when they say, ‘Peace and safety,’ then sudden destruction comes upon them,” writes Paul in his Epistle (1 Thessalonians 5:3). Grace gave the Forty Martyrs the strength to be watchful, not to trust the circumstances of the time, and to abide in the faith when it seemed that the extraordinary steadfastness of the former martyrs and confessors was no longer needed. This happened on a global and universal level.

No less significant was the perseverance in goodness manifested in the personal dimension. The saints witnessed the abdication of their leader Meletius, who had previously been faithful, perhaps the most zealous of them, because he was the head and author of their will.

But they themselves stayed firm. Moreover, they were honored with the conversion of an unbeliever, such as their former tormentor and guardian Aglaus. Such, according to the Church Father Saint Augustine (354–430), is the predestination of the saints. Incomprehensible and unaccountable to men and even to angels (cf. 1 Pet. 1:12) is the method of grace.

Finally, it is precisely for the gift of perseverance that the Church prays in the litany “for a Christian end to our lives” in the Litany of Supplication. The example of the holy Forty Martyrs of Sebaste serves as a great edification.

“Be renewed in the spirit of your mind,” calls the Apostle Paul to Christians (cf. Eph. 4:23). Remembering the feat of the saints renews our mind and conscience for attentive prayer with fear and trembling during the divine service, when we hear seemingly familiar but amazingly astonishing words.