When the Wronged Become Rich in God

Synopsis of Tonight’s Group on The Evergetinos Hypothesis XXXIX B-C and Hypothesis XL Section A-B

The Martyrdom of St. Menas

The Evergetinos gathers these stories around a single, unsettling truth: those who endure injustice with gratitude and refuse to avenge themselves become truly rich, and God Himself becomes their defender.

Abba Mark says it simply and without comfort: “He who is wronged by someone, and does not seek redress, truly believes in Christ, and receives a hundredfold in this life and eternal life in the age to come.” The measure is not whether we suffer wrong, but what we do with it. Injustice is assumed. The question is whether we turn it into a weapon or an altar.

Gelasios endures theft and humiliation at the hands of Vacatos. He stands his ground about the monastic cell for God’s sake, but he does not pursue his abuser, does not drag him to court, does not stir up others to defend him. He lets God see. And God does see. Symeon unveils Vacatos’ hidden intent, and the man’s own journey to prosecute the “man of God” becomes the road of his judgment. The Elder does nothing, yet everything is revealed. His stillness becomes the place where the truth about both men is made manifest.

Pior works three years without wages. Each time he labors, each time he is sent away empty-handed, and each time he returns quietly to his monastery. His silence is not cowardice; it is poverty of spirit. The employer’s house, not Pior’s heart, collapses under injustice. Only when calamity has broken him does he go searching for the monk, wages in hand, begging forgiveness and confessing, “The Lord paid me back.” Pior will not even reclaim what is his. He allows it to be given to the Church, because his life is no longer measured by what he is owed. He has stepped out of the economy of recompense into the freedom of God.

The Elder whose cell is robbed twice endures in an even more piercing way. First he leaves a note: “Leave me half for my needs.” Then, when all is taken, he still does not accuse. Only when the thief lies dying, tortured in soul and unable to depart, does he confess and call for the Elder. As soon as the Elder prays, his soul is released. The one who was wronged becomes the priest at the threshold of death. The one who stole cannot die in peace until he passes under the mercy of the man he robbed. Here judgment is revealed as truth entering the heart, and God’s “avenging” consists in turning the wound of the innocent into medicine for the guilty.

In Menas, this same mystery ripens into martyrdom. Menas stands literally on bones, his flesh cut away, and chants, “My foot hath stood in uprightness.” His body is mutilated, but his praise is whole. The attempt to silence him only reveals where his life truly rests. In the end even his persecutor becomes a believer and shares his martyrdom. In Menas, injustice is not merely endured; it becomes the final gift by which God crowns His friends.

Peter’s discourse with Clement although appearing convoluted names the inner logic of all this. Those who wrong others, he says, actually wrong themselves most deeply, while those who are wronged, if they endure with love, gain purification and forgiveness. Possessions become occasions of sin; their unjust loss, when borne rightly, becomes the removal of sins. Enemies, for a brief time, maltreat those they hate, but in God’s providence they become the cause of their victims’ deliverance from eternal punishment. Seen this way, those who harm us are, in a hidden manner, our benefactors. Only the one who loves God greatly can bear to see this and respond with love instead of resentment.