Dr. Augustin Sokolovski
On May 1, according to the calendar of the Holy Fathers, the Church commemorates the holy martyr Victor and his companions. They witnessed the martyrdom of Saint George, who was put to death by being broken on the wheel; they were deeply moved by his extraordinary courage and came to believe.
A bishop and fool-for-Christ from the era of the New Martyrs of the Russian Church—a striking combination—Barnabas Beliaev (1887–1963) titled his seminal work on Orthodox asceticism *The Foundations of the Art of Holiness*. In doing so, he prophetically anticipated the perspective of postmodernism, which, a few decades later, would attempt to understand Orthodox spirituality exclusively in aesthetic terms. Bishop Barnabas’s approach was, of course, different—thorough, meticulous, highly ritualistic, even rigorous. He is still waiting for his translators and researchers.
The witness of the saints who suffered in the wake of the great martyr George in Palestine around the year 303 underscores that holiness—first and foremost that of ascetics and martyrs—is, by the power of grace, not merely an art, but a feat, that is to say, a colossal labor and undertaking. In this sense, the coincidence between the day of commemoration of the martyrs and the secular Labor Day, May 1, lends their holiness an additional prophetic aura. Holy Martyrs Victor, Zoticus, Acindynus, Zeno, Severian and Caesarius pray to God for us!