Saint Nicholas Velimirovich

 

Nikitas was born in the land of the Goths and was a disciple of their God-bearing bishop, Theofilos, who took part in the 1st Ecumenical Synod in Nicaea in 325.

When the leader of the Goths, Athanaric, began to persecute and torture Christians, Nikitas opposed him with boldness and denounced him as an inhumane idolater. He was immediately arrested and tortured cruelly. He not only withstood this, but confessed his faith in Christ with even greater ardour and rendered thanks to Him. His mind was continually elevated towards God and in his hand, beneath his robe, he held an icon of the Most Holy Lady, the Mother of God, with the pre-eternal Christ-Child holding the Cross in His hands. Nikitas always had this icon with him, because the Mother of God had appeared to him and comforted him. In the end, the torturer cast him into a furnace and the saint gave up his spirit, though his body remained untouched by the fire.

A friend of the saint, Marianus, took his lifeless body from the lands of the Goths (Bessarabia and Wallachia) and brought it to Mopsuestia in Cilicia. There he built a church which was dedicated  to Saint Nikitas and placed the martyr’s wonder-working relics there. Saint Nikitas was martyred in 372.

Hymn to Saint Nikitas

He is a true patriot, among all the people,
who founds a real sacred altar,
to the glory of the Living God.

The Goth Athanaric ruled with violence
and offered sacrifices to the inanimate idols.
But Saint Nikitas was a soldier of Christ
and a herald of eternal salvation.
He sent rays of the Eternal Light through the night,
dissolving the idolatrous gloom which
wrapped souls like a shroud.

Saint Nikitas stood against the prince
and his firm resolve astonished his people.
With the power of the Honourable Cross he pierced the darkness
and filled all his people with the fear of God.

His holy blood was the sweet,
rosy dawn of a new day,
while his spirit ascended to the courts of heaven.

Nikitas was burned in the dreadful fire,
but to this day the fire has not consumed him;
his relics have been preserved intact!

The Goths were baptized into the Truth of Christ
and praised Nikitas, their victor.

Saint Nikitas, voice of the trumpet of God!
Brave martyr, true lover of your land.
You have left behind the dwelling-places of the earth
and now reside with the choirs of angels
in the courts of God the King.
Pray for us, you who have boldness towards the King.

Source: pemptousia.com


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Pemptousia Partnership

Pemptousia and OCN have entered a strategic partnership to bring Orthodoxy Worldwide. Greek philosophers from Ionia considered held that there were four elements or essences (ousies) in nature: earth, water, fire and air. Aristotle added ether to this foursome, which would make it the fifth (pempto) essence, pemptousia, or quintessence. The incarnation of God the Word found fertile ground in man’s proclivity to beauty, to goodness, to truth and to the eternal. Orthodoxy has not functioned as some religion or sect. It was not the movement of the human spirit towards God but the revelation of the true God, Jesus Christ, to man. A basic precept of Orthodoxy is that of the person ­– the personhood of God and of man. Orthodoxy is not a religious philosophy or way of thinking but revelation and life standing on the foundations of divine experience; it is the transcendence of the created and the intimacy of the Uncreated. Orthodox theology is drawn to genuine beauty; it is the theology of the One “fairer than the sons of men”. So in "Pemptousia", we just want to declare this "fifth essence", the divine beaut in our life. Please note, not all Pemptousia articles have bylines. If the author is known, he or she is listed in the article above.

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