The concept of recapitulation, meaning repetition of what has been said or summing up, in theological terms means gathering and heading everything in Jesus Christ. Lent is a time for the Church to remember all those who have made a significant contribution to the formation of its teachings and spirituality, and to honor St. Eustathius of Antioch, a participant in the Council of Nicaea (325) and Father of the Church, whose memory, on February 21 (March 5 or 6, depending on whether it is a normal year or a leap year), is almost always celebrated during Lent. Eustathius of Antioch is perhaps the most forgotten of all the Fathers of the Church.
Eustathius was born around 270 in the city of Side, in the historical region of Pamphylia in Asia Minor. The ruins of this city are well preserved and accessible to tourists vacationing in the vicinity of Antalya, Turkey. He was a contemporary, perhaps even a peer, of Nicholas the Wonderworker and Spyridon of Trimythous, but unlike them, who seemed to have exchanged their education and scholarship for practical pastoral ministry, Eustathius remained a theologian and thinker until the end of his days. His polemics were directed against Arianism and non-Orthodox modifications of Origenism, two not entirely related schools of thought, which Eustathius himself apparently believed to be related.
He was originally bishop of the Syrian city of Aleppo, but was then transferred to Antioch, a very rare event for the Early Church. This happened shortly before the Council of Nicaea, at the very beginning of the Arian crisis, which allowed Eustathius, as the head of the most important apostolic see in the Middle East and Asia Minor, to exert a special influence on the course of the council meetings. He is undoubtedly one of the authors of the Nicene Creed, an apologist for the doctrine of the consubstantiality of the Son of God with God the Father.
Since the triumph of Orthodoxy at the Council of Nicaea was followed by a fierce Arian reaction within the Church, all the major Fathers were removed from their positions in the decade following the Council. Eustathius suffered a similar fate. He died around 337–338 in the city of Traianopolis in Thrace. His traces in history seem to have been lost. But the hagiography of the Georgian Church believes that it was at this time that Eustathius visited Georgia, where he ordained the hierarchy. Thus, Georgian Orthodoxy traces its succession from the See of Antioch and considers itself autocephalous, that is, independent in matters of governance since time immemorial.
Eustathius left behind many significant works, of which only fragments have survived. St. Athanasius of Alexandria called Eustathius “the Great,” and his works were revered and studied by Orthodox Latin fathers: Gelasius, Jerome, and the prominent theologian of the Carthaginian Church, the sixth-century bishop Facundus of Hermiane. This is a very rare example of truly intercontinental dogmatic influence. The ways of the Lord are inscrutable. Just as Eustathius suffered unjustly at the hands of Emperor Constantine, who confirmed his removal from the chair, two centuries later, Facundus became a confessor for defending Orthodoxy under the Byzantine Emperor Justinian.
In the liturgical calendar, the commemoration of Saint Eustathius coincides with that of the Venerable Timothy in Symbola (+795). The latter was an ascetic at the monastery of “Symbola” on Mount Olympus in Bithynia, one of the four Holy Mountains of monastic Byzantium, and a disciple of Saint Plato the Studite. Despite the enormous difference in the chronology of the saints, Eustathius and Timothy are given a joint service in the liturgical Menaion, and even a common troparion is sung: “God of our fathers, always be merciful to us, do not take away Your mercy from us, but guide our lives in peace, through the prayers of Saints Timothy and Eustathius.” . Saints whose memory is celebrated during Great Lent usually do not have their own troparion, but they do have a kontakion. Timothy has one. But Eustathius does not have a kontakion. It is as if the Greek proverb quoted by Orthodox theologian and bishop Vasily Krivoshein (1900–1985) is being fulfilled: “A poor saint has no doxology.”
The reason for this was not some special attitude of contemporaries and authors of liturgical statutes and texts towards Saint Eustathius personally, but rather the fate of the Church of Antioch in the following centuries. At the Third Council of Ephesus (431), the theology of Nestorius, who, as bishop of Constantinople, was considered a typical representative of Antioch, was completely condemned. From that moment on, Antioch began to lose territories that had previously been under its jurisdiction, and the memory of its great holy bishops began to fade.
Something similar happened to Meletius of Antioch, who was the spiritual father of the great Cappadocians and John Chrysostom. Since Alexander, the bishop of Alexandria, was too frail, some historians consider Eustathius to be the chairman of the First Ecumenical Council in Nicaea. In turn, Meletius presided over the Second Ecumenical Council in Constantinople (381). Both Eustathius and Meletius, contrary to the rule in force at the time, were bishops of another city before their election to Antioch. They were representatives of different generations and “missed” each other in time. In 331, Eustathius was deposed by the Arians on false charges, and Meletius only became bishop of Antioch in 360. Their followers in Antioch formed two different hierarchies and did not communicate with each other for a long time. Meletius' sudden death during the Council meetings prevented reconciliation between the parties, whose enmity continued for several more decades. Final peace came when the relics of St. Eustathius were returned to Antioch in 482.
The reason for Antioch's decline was the activity of the Archbishop of Alexandria. The theology of Alexandria and Antioch was very different, and their methods of interpreting Scripture also differed greatly. Both sees were of apostolic origin, so they viewed each other as competitors in the struggle for primacy in the Church in the East. At the end of the first half of the fifth century, it seemed that Alexandria had won a decisive victory. But neither Alexandria nor Antioch noticed the emergence of a third force. It was Constantinople. It did not have apostolic origins, since the city was founded in 330. Nevertheless, its reliance on imperial power helped it not only to displace Alexandria and Antioch from the top of the thrones, but also to subjugate the entire Eastern Church. Antioch prophetically reflected in its example what subsequently awaited Orthodoxy.
In ancient times, bishops were elected for life and, by analogy with human marriage, shared the fate of their see, in sorrow and joy, until death parted them. The holy bishops of Antioch, Eustathius and Meletius, unexpectedly transcended the boundaries of space and time in late antiquity and reflected in themselves the decline and oblivion that eventually befell their Church.