For the New Martyrs of Georgia

  • Given the Russ­ian inter­ven­tion — which now appears to be an inva­sion — in Geor­gia (roundup HERE), how rel­e­vant is it that today the Church com­mem­o­rates “the New Mar­tyrs of Geor­gia who suf­fered under the athe­ist yoke”?

    I don’t pre­tend to know that his­tory, but here’s the story of five of those new mar­tyrs from today’s “Daily Lives”:

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     Mar­tyrs Met­ro­pol­i­tan Nazar, Priests Ger­man, Iero­teos, Simon and Archdea­con Bessarion

    In the 20th cen­tury coun­try of Geor­gia, Nazar was edu­cated at the The­o­log­i­cal School and grad­u­ated the sem­i­nary with hon­ors. When his wife and two daugh­ters died, he became a monk and later was made metropolitan.

    Dur­ing the Bol­she­vik Rev­o­lu­tion in 1922 and 1923, twelve hun­dred churches were destroyed along with church wealth, man­u­scripts and spir­i­tual lead­ers. Four boxes of holy objects were buried under Nazar’s porch for pro­tec­tion. When the Bol­she­viks dis­cov­ered them, they sen­tenced Nazar to death by fir­ing squad. How­ever, this sen­tence was rescinded, and after two years of prison Nazar was again free.

    Sev­eral months later, a cer­tain vil­lage asked him to con­se­crate their new church. Nazar and his priests did this, but at night after the ser­vice Soviet agents broke into the house where the met­ro­pol­i­tan and his entourage were stay­ing, bound and beat them, and dragged them before a Soviet coun­cil. They were sen­tenced to death and exe­cuted in the Sapichkhia Forest.

    In 1994, all of these men were can­on­ized as mar­tyrs along with all the Geor­gian Chris­tians who were killed for their faith. They became known as the New Mar­tyrs of the Geor­gian Church.

    And how timely is it as well that in the course of my daily read­ings, I hap­pened to read psalm 34 today:

    O Lord, judge those who injure me;
    Make war on those who make war on me. …

    All my bones shall say, “O Lord, who is like You?
    You who deliver a poor man from hands stronger than he,
    And a poor and needy man from those who plun­der him.”

    Unjust wit­nesses rose up against me,
    Ask­ing me things I knew noth­ing about;
    They repaid me evil for good. …

    They were delighted, and were gath­ered together against me;
    Whips were gath­ered together against me, but I did not know it;
    They were torn asun­der, yet they were not pierced to the heart.
    They tempted me; they mocked and sneered at me;
    They gnashed their teeth at me.
    O Lord, when will You look on this? …

    I will give thanks to You, O Lord, in the great church;
    I will praise You among a mighty people.

    Let those who desire my right­eous­ness greatly rejoice and be glad.
    And let them say con­tin­u­ally, “The Lord be mag­ni­fied,”
    Those who desire His servant’s peace.
    And my tongue shall med­i­tate on Your right­eous­ness.
    And on Your praise all the day long.

    Ps. 34: 1, 10–11, 15–18, 27–28

    .
    May their mem­ory be eternal.

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    Icon image from the OCA web­site HERE
    Longer ver­sion of the story of New Mar­tyr Nazarius and oth­ers HERE.


    Related posts:

    1. More new martyrs
    2. “Why have we fasted, but You did not see it?”
    3. Mar­tyrs of Russia
    4. Late win­ter, early spring
    5. Gun­point conversion

    August 14th, 2008 | Grace | 1 Comment |

One Response and Counting...

  • Mimi 08.14.2008

    Holy New Mar­tyrs, pray to God for us and for the Geor­gian land.

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