Great-Martyr and Unmercenary Healer Panteleimon
Categories: orthodox-life, feast-days
Date: 27 July 2008 07:27:44
Troparion - Tone 3:
Holy Passion-bearer and healer Panteleimon,
entreat the merciful God,
to grant our souls forgiveness of transgressions.
Kontakion - Tone 5:
You emulated the Merciful One,
and received from Him the grace of healing,
Passion-bearer and healer Panteleimon;
by your prayers, heal our spiritual diseases
and continually drive away the temptations of the enemy
from those who cry out in faith "Save us, O Lord."
Today in the Orthodox (New) Calendar, we commemorate Great-Martyr and Unmercenary Healer Panteleimon: "great-martyr" as he was tortured as well as dying [around 305 AD during the reign of Emperor Maximian] for his faith, and "unmercenary" as he refused payment for the healings he performed. As with Orthodox icons which reflect the life of the Saint depicted, St Panteleimon is shown with the tools of his trade -- his medicine box and spoon.
I was particularly touched by the words "heal our spiritual diseases" in the above Kontakion [a particular hymn form in the Orthodox Church; another form is the Troparion]. Just as we have bodily diseases that weaken us, so too, spiritual struggles, spiritual temptations, spiritual pain, can also be referred to as "diseases" -- this imagery struck me.
Perhaps because I'm feeling a keener spiritual struggle than usual; oh, I still have the fleshly ones, and expect to for the rest of my life, but the spiritual ones seem "stranger". I know what to do when I have a cold, or a headache, or, with this wonderful white skin, a particularly bad sunburn. I suppose I should know how to handle spiritual struggles, but I find them a bit harder. Pray? Read my Bible? Cry out, "Lord, help me?" Yes, all these and more. But how much easier to think I can struggle against it myself and overcome it, when in reality I struggle, tire and give in. An experience I feel often doomed to repeat: I can but pray I may, through the grace and strength of the ever-blessed and ever-praised Trinity, have some progress.