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Apolytikion: First
Tone
The three
most great luminaries of the Three-Sun Divinity have illumined all of the
world with the rays of doctrines divine and true; they are the
sweetly-flowing rivers of wisdom, who with godly knowledge have watered all
creation in clear and mighty streams: The great and sacred Basil, and the
Theologian, wise Gregory, together with the renowned John, the famed
Chrysostom of golden speech. Let us all who love their divinely-wise words
come together, honouring them with hymns; for ceaselessly they offer
entreaty for us to the Trinity.
Kontakion: Second
Tone
Receive, O
Lord, the Sacred Heralds who preached God, the pinnacle of Teachers, unto
the enjoyment of Your riches and rest. You have received their labors and
their suffering as being above and beyond all fruitful offering. For You
alone glorify Your Saints.
During the reign of the Emperor
Alexius Comnenus (1081-1118), a controversy arose in Constantinople among
men learned in Faith and zealous for virtue about the three holy Hierarchs
and Fathers of the Church, Basil the Great, Gregory the Theologian and John
Chrysostom. Some argued for Saint Basil above the other two because he was
able, as none other, to explain the mysteries of the Faith, and rose to
angelic rank by his virtues. Organizer of monastic life, leader of the
entire Church in the struggle with heresy, austere and demanding shepherd as
to Christian morals, in him there was nothing base or of the earth. Hence,
said they, he was superior to Saint Chrysostom who was by nature more easily
inclined to absolve sinners.
The partisans of Saint Chrysostom retorted that the illustrious
Archbishop of Constantinople had been no less zealous than Saint Basil in
combating vices, in bringing sinners to repentance and in raising up the
whole people to the perfection of the Gospel. The golden-mouthed shepherd of
matchless eloquence has watered the Church with a stream of homilies in
which he interprets the divine word and shows its application in daily life
with more accomplished mastery than the two other holy Doctors.
According to a third group, Saint Gregory the Theologian was to be
preferred to the others by reason of the majesty, purity and profundity of
his language. Possessing a sovereign mastery of all the wisdom and eloquence
of ancient Greece, he had attained, they said to such a pitch in the
contemplation of God that no one had been able to express the dogma of the
Holy Trinity as perfectly as he.
With each faction setting up one of the Fathers against the other two
in this way, the whole Christian people were soon caught up in the dispute,
which far from promoting devotion to the Saints in the City, resulted in
nothing but ill-feeling and endless argument. Then one night the three holy
Hierarchs appeared in a dream to Saint John Mauropus, the Metropolitan of
Euchaïta (5 Oct.), separately at first, then together and, speaking with a
single voice, they said: “As you see, the three of us are with God and no
discord or rivalry divides us. Each of us, according to the circumstances
and according to the inspiration that he received from the Holy Spirit,
wrote and taught what befits the salvation of mankind. There is not among us
a first, a second or a third, and if you invoke one of us the other two are
immediately present with him. Therefore, tell those who are quarrelling not
to create divisions in the Church because of us, for when we were on earth
we spared no effort to re-establish unity and concord in the world. You can
conjoin our three commemorations in one feast and compose a service for it,
inserting the hymns dedicated to each of us according to the skill and
knowledge that God has given you. Then transmit it to the Christians with
the command to celebrate it each year. If they honor us thus as being with
and in God, we give them our word that we will intercede for their salvation
in our common prayer.” At these words, the Saints were taken up into heaven
in a boundless light while conversing with one another by name.
Saint John immediately assembled the people and informed them of this
revelation. As he was respected by all for his virtue and admired for his
powerful eloquence, the three parties made peace and every one urged him to
lose no time in composing the service of the joint feast. With fine
discernment, he selected 30 January as appropriate to the celebration, for
it would set the seal to the month in which each of the three Hierarchs
already had a separate commemoration (Saint Basil – January 1; Saint Gregory
– January 25; Saint John (translation of relics) – January 27).
The three Hierarchs—an earthly trinity as they are called in some of
the wonderful troparia of their service—have taught us in their writings and
equally by their lives, to worship and to glorify the Holy Trinity, the One
God in three Persons. These three luminaries of the Church have shed the
light of the true Faith all over the world, scorning dangers and
persecutions, and they have left us, their descendants, this sacred
inheritance by which we too can attain to utmost blessedness and everlasting
life in the presence of God and of all the Saints.
With the feast of the three Hierarchs at the end of January—the month
in which we keep the memory of so many glorious bishops, confessors and
ascetics—the Church in a way recapitulates the memory of all the Saints who
have witnessed to the Orthodox faith by their writings and by their lives.
In this feast we honor the whole ministry of teaching of the holy Church,
namely, the illumination of the hearts and minds of the faithful through the
commemoration of all the Fathers of the Church, those models of evangelic
perfection which the Holy Spirit has raised up from age to age and from
place to place to be new Prophets and new Apostles, guides of souls
heavenward, comforters of the people and fiery pillars of prayer, supporting
the Church and confirming her in the truth.
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