St. Theodosius the Great

What a mass murderer taught me about scrupulosity

I thought about calling this one, “What a mass murderer taught me about scrupulosity,” and to tell the truth, as of this writing, it’s still on the table. We’ll see.

If you don’t have eight minutes to watch the video, here’s the synopsis: The Emperor Theodosius the Great is recognized on January 17th. We read about him at trapeza (mealtime) here at the monastery the other day. He’s described as being holy, pious, humble, and repentant.

He was also a mass murderer.

“Sure,” you might say, “Lots of saints have a past…” I would agree. But this man was a zealous defender of Christianity and opponent of Arianism YEARS before he rounded up “several thousand innocent people” and had them slaughtered in a Thessalonica stadium. He repented, and even became a miracle-worker later, but still… That’s kind of a tough one to square for we soft moderns.

I wasn’t reading at trapeza that day. I blessedly got to have a semi-warm meal for a change. (The reader eats after everyone else. During winter in this airy monastery, warm meals are a bit of rarity. Just establishing my ascetical bona fides here…)

I remember sitting there listening to Seraphim read the text, noting that Theodosius had murdered all these rebels. Ok, that’s not so unusual. “Saints have pasts,” after all. Then, this:

“So great were the repentance and the humility of Theodosius that they enabled him to work miracles. It is said that, while travelling incognito in the Holy Land dressed as a simple pilgrim, he came to the doors of the Basilica of the Resurrection which opened of their own accord at his prayer, revealing the church within all lit up as on a feast day.”¹

Hold on. The blood of innocents is on his hands, and but he’s using holy Force powers to open doors?

Yes.

This is where I’m going to try to shamelessly back off from anything that might sound like preaching. I’m not qualified to do so. (There’s a Twitter/X debate is about how all these new converts should shut up until they’ve properly installed and field-tested their phrenomas. I agree.)

It was a powerful reminder that no sin is too great to be forgiven. More than that, a great and public (repentant) sinner doesn’t have to hide in the shadows, keeping one’s face hidden from the world so as not to disturb the happy pastel Jesus-fish image of modern Christian pretension. The critical thing is to truly repent, and if that requires a time of solitude and reflection away from the world, so be it. But another way to think of it is that we are in battle. Our wounds, while self-inflicted, are our battle scars. We’re not dead or out of the battle. We’re battle-tested.

Our sins don’t disqualify us from continuing the race. Believing so is a form of pride. When we fall, sometimes we think we’ve used up all the grace allotted to us. One might even be tempted to think that there’s nothing left to do but kill time until perdition. This is the opposite of the truth. Our falls are permitted to teach us reliance on God.

Get back in the fight.

1. A friend of mine notes that there may be mitigating circumstances regarding the slaughter. He writes, “In the saint’s defense concerning the matter in Thessalonika, he countermanded the order but his attendants knew he would, so they didn’t pass the second order of clemency on to the garrison of Thessalonika.”

This is even more inspiring—he took ownership not only of the order, but then accepted responsibility for it even though he could have theoretically squeezed his way out of it.

---