The Saints of Antioch: Three Lessons for the Antiochian Orthodox Church
Sub Dn. Timothy Grace reflects on the Sunday of the Saints of Antioch, drawing on the lives of three great Antiochian saints — St. Raphael of Brooklyn, St. John Chrysostom, and St. Marina of Antioch — to highlight three enduring qualities of the Antiochian Orthodox Church: a cosmopolitan missionary spirit, a practical and grounded faith, and the grace of bearing suffering with heavenly hope.
Transcript
In the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. Amen.
Today we acknowledge all the Saints of Antioch. On the Sunday after the Sunday of All Saints, it is the custom to acknowledge the local saints of the various Orthodox churches. Typically, we would defer to one of the other local commemorations, but there have been moves in recent times to appreciate more our great legacy as Antiochian Christians. So today I would like to point out three great qualities of the Antiochian Orthodox Church as seen in the lives of three of her great saints. It will be a way for us to learn a bit more about our patriarchate and also to emulate some of these qualities of some of our leading figures.
First, a little background to the city. Antioch was the capital of Roman Syria — an opulent, multicultural city at one of the hubs of the Silk Road, and the third largest city in the Roman Empire. It featured such things as covered colonnades and even the rare luxury of oil-burning street lights at night. The city declined in the Middle Ages due to war, constant earthquakes, and changing trade routes reoriented by the conquering Mongols. It changed hands several times during the Crusades and was eventually razed by the Mamluke ruler Baybars. It was later incorporated into the Ottoman Empire, and the historical city itself essentially faded away. Its remains are mostly buried beneath alluvial deposits next to the Orontes River, near the modern Turkish city of Antakya, which takes its name from the historical Antioch.
The church in this city was founded by Saints Peter and Paul. It comprises today about 4.3 million Christians, and its territories include Syria, Lebanon, Iraq, Kuwait, the Arab countries of the Persian Gulf, and parts of Turkey. It even once included the Holy Land before the establishment of the Patriarchate of Jerusalem. Vast numbers of Antiochian Orthodox Christians now live in diaspora in the United States, the UK, Australia, and elsewhere.
So let us return to the question of what it means to be Antiochian. The first quality I would like to point out is that Antioch was a centre of multicultural missionary activity. It was from Antioch that Saints Paul and Barnabas departed on their missionary journeys. It was in Antioch that the dispute about what it meant to be a Gentile Christian was thrashed out. What we see in Antioch, then, is a willingness to be on the edge — at the creative, cutting edge of engaging with Gentiles, doing something not done before: incorporating Gentiles into the people of God.
A saint who truly embodies this spirit is St. Raphael of Brooklyn, also known as St. Raphael Hawaweeny. He was born in Syria in 1860, and under persecution his family fled to Beirut. A brilliant student, he travelled to Russia, where he eventually taught Arabic studies at a theological academy. He heeded a call to help Arab Christians in the United States and spent the next two decades travelling through the US, Canada, and Mexico — visiting parishes, leading services, teaching, writing, and guiding the faithful. And this was not just for Arab or Antiochian Christians; he served Russians, Greeks, and anyone who needed his assistance. Multilingual, comfortable in a range of different ethnic settings, devoted to learning and to services in the vernacular language, St. Raphael truly embodies the cosmopolitan, outward-looking Antiochian spirit — one that is nevertheless rigorously faithful to the faith of the Fathers.
What does this mean for us? The lesson we can draw from this aspect of the Antiochian Orthodox Church is to be open-minded, curious about other cultures, and willing to share the faith with those who might be seen as outsiders — especially people on the margins. In our Orthodox context, it also means a devotion to the English language. If we can do this, we keep the Antiochian spirit alive.
A second quality we see in the Antiochians is a preference for a practical and grounded faith. We see this in the ancient Antiochian method of biblical interpretation. In the ancient Christian world, there were two main schools: Antioch and Alexandria. Alexandria favoured an allegorical approach — seeking deeper symbolic meanings behind the text. Antioch, by contrast, preferred a more straightforward and direct understanding, something altogether more practical.
A saint who embodies this attitude is the great boast of Antioch, St. John Chrysostom. Born in that city, he was raised by a widowed mother and seemed destined for a career in rhetoric. Instead he became a monk, then deacon, priest, bishop, and finally Archbishop of Constantinople. We have around 1,447 of his sermons and some 240 of his letters still in existence. He preached on a wide range of topics: the priesthood, marriage, ethics, money, raising children, the church, and much more.
Here is just one example of how down-to-earth his counsel could be. Speaking about how to help someone in need, he says: "Helping a person in need is good in itself, but the degree of goodness is hugely affected by the attitude with which it is done. If you show resentment because you are helping the person out of a reluctant sense of duty, then the person may receive your help but will feel awkward and embarrassed, beholden to you. If, on the other hand, you help the person in a spirit of joy, then the help will be received joyfully. The person will feel neither demeaned nor humiliated, but will feel glad to have caused you pleasure by receiving your help. And joy is the appropriate attitude with which to help others, because acts of generosity are a source of blessing to the giver as well as to the receiver."
His biblical commentary is likewise filled with down-to-earth, practical advice rather than high-flying metaphors. We do need both — sometimes we need to see the deeper meanings behind the text — but we also need to go out and do acts of goodness and kindness in obedience to Christ. What this means for us is that we need to keep our faith grounded and humble, not getting lost in speculation. If you find yourself reading a great deal about Orthodoxy, watching videos, and listening to podcasts, you may simply need to put these things down for a while — go visit your mother, play with the children, fast, talk to your co-workers, fulfil your prayer rule. Do something practical and concrete.
A final quality I would like to point out about the Patriarchate of Antioch is that it is a suffering patriarchate. Many Orthodox churches possess illustrious buildings and historical monasteries. We have lost a great deal of ours. The city of Antioch is no more. Throughout history, we have been ravaged by attackers of various kinds and struck by natural disasters. Today we continue to see upheaval and war in Lebanon, Syria, and the Holy Land, and the numbers of Antiochian Christians in these areas have been greatly reduced.
A saint who embodies the spirit of bearing up under suffering is St. Marina of Antioch — from Antioch in Pisidia, which fell under the jurisdiction of the Antiochian Patriarchate. St. Marina was a woman of great beauty who refused the advances of an official in the city, even when he proposed to her publicly, because she had chosen a life in Christ. She was then fiercely tortured, and while she was in prison, the devil himself visited her. She engaged in what can only be described as single combat with him, even striking him over the head with a hammer that happened to be nearby. When you see an icon of St. Marina, this is exactly what you see: the devil under her feet, one of his horns in one hand, and a hammer in the other. She asked him why he had come, and he muttered something about being jealous of the happiness of Christians and trying to tempt them in their hour of trial. She lost patience with him and told him, "Flee, you wretch." Strengthened, she continued to face her persecutions and was eventually martyred for Christ.
She gave up everything — the chance at a comfortable life, possessions, honour, glory, a good marriage — and she suffered greatly along the way. She is like a symbol of the Antiochian Patriarchate itself: something that once had great external glory, but has lost it all in the preservation of a far more worthy treasure.
The lesson for us from St. Marina is a reminder that our citizenship is in heaven and that our true treasures should be non-material. So the next time you lose something material — your possessions, your money, your health — remember this is part of the Antiochian legacy: to store our treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust can destroy and where thieves do not break in and steal. And on this note, we can also draw close to our fellow Antiochian brothers and sisters who are in times of great suffering — including through our current appeal for the container of goods being prepared for Lebanon.
To finish, I would like to quote from the Synaxarion of the Matins service today, which beautifully sums up what we have been considering:
"Being drastically reduced in both geographic area and numbers, having endured the ravages of time and wars, and bearing the loss of her finest church buildings and earthly goods, Antioch knows full well the worth of having laid up its treasures in heaven. The harvest of Antioch includes the chief Apostles Peter and Paul, the martyrs Ignatius, Artemius, and Julian, and Barbara, Christina, and Marina, the melodists Romanos and Kosmas, St. John and John of Damascus, Ephraim and Isaac the Syrians, Joseph of Damascus and Raphael of Brooklyn, the hieromartyrs Nicholas and Habib Girgis, and countless other saints known and unknown. For two millennia, the light of Christ has shone brilliantly upon the See of Antioch through these glorified children and heirs of the heavenly Father."
So let us keep in mind these three lessons from three great saints of our church: to step outside your comfort zone in your dealings with people, especially seeking out those on the margins; to live out a practical, genuine, and simple faith that avoids any showiness or pretence; and finally, to embrace the sufferings, discomforts, misfortunes, and losses that come your way, seeing them as blessed opportunities to walk the path of the Antiochian saints before us.
Through the prayers of the holy Saints of Antioch, Lord Jesus Christ our God, have mercy on us and save us. Amen.
