Holy Martyr Barlaam

Life

Barlaam was a native of Antioch. For his faith in Christ the Lord he was much interrogated by an impious judge. Finally the judge thought to mock him and to compel him by force of circumstances to offer sacrifice to idols, for which reason he brought him into an idolatrous temple and placed fire on his palm and incense on the fire, thinking that the martyr would be forced by pain to cast the fire with the incense from his hand before the idols, and thus inadvertently cense them. But the heroic soldier of Christ held the fire on his palm without thought of casting it before the idols, until his fingers burned off and fell away and his palm burned through. And thus his martyr's fingers fell to the ground with the fire. "His right hand was stronger than fire," says Saint Basil the Great, "for even if the flame consumed his hand, still the hand held the fire like ash." And Chrysostom writes: "From on high the angels watched, the archangels observed; the scene was magnificent, surpassing in truth human nature. Behold, who would not wish to see a man who struggled yet did not feel what is proper to men, a man who was himself both altar, and sacrifice, and priest?" When his hand burned off, the entire body of the old man Barlaam collapsed to the ground dead, and his soul departed into the eternal rest of the Lord Savior. This most glorious old warrior suffered in the year 304.