'Quickly to Saint Elias'

Today, 20 July on the Church’s calendar, we celebrate the memory of the Prophet Elijah the Tishbite (believed to have lived in the 9th century BC). I did a full post on St Elijah way back in 2009 when I was still a relatively new blogger. This will not be a full post in the old Logismoi style, but merely a couple of things I thought of posting related to the Prophet. 

First of all, it has long been noted that St Elijah has been taken as a type of the Christian monk. William Harmless has, for instance, pointed out the Elijah typology in St Athanasius’s famous Vita Antonii (which David Hicks at the CiRCE conference called his favourite book by St Athanasius): 

The most significant biblical type for Antony is Elijah. Athanasius says that Antony ‘used to tell himself that from the career of the prophet Elijah, as from a mirror, the ascetic must always acquire knowledge of his own life’ (VA 7). [1] Like Elijah, Antony is called a ‘man of God’ (VA 70; cf. 1 Kgs 17:18; 2 Kgs 1:9-13). Like Elijah, he dwells in the desert and is described as ‘seated in his mountain’ (VA 59, 60, 66, 84, 93; cf. 2 Kgs 1:9). Like Elijah, he win [sic] duels against those who worship false gods and foretells the death of a military commander who comes out to the desert to seize him (VA 86; cf. 1 Kgs 18, 2 Kgs 1). In 2 Kings, Elijah hands down his cloak to his disciple Elisha; in the Life, Antony has two Elishas, so to speak, handing down one sheepskin and his cloak to Athanasius and the other sheepskin to Serapion (VA 91; cf. 2 Kgs 2:13 ff.). In the preface, Athanasius says that he learned all that he could of Antony from a longtime disciple who had ‘poured water over his hands’, an allusion to 2 Kgs 3:11, in which Elisha is described as pouring water into the hands of Elijah. This Elisha-like informant was, presumably, Serapion (VA praef.). [2] 

Somewhat along the lines of the comment Harmless cites from VA 7, St Macarius the Great seems to find a deeper significance to the connection between the Prophet Elijah and the monastic life than the external desert life per se. In Homily 6.2, St Macarius writes: 

It is not becoming a servant of God to live in a state of disturbance, but rather in all tranquility and wisdom as the Prophet said, ‘Unto whom shall I look but unto him that is meek and quiet and that trembles at my words?’ (Is 66:2). And in the times of Moses and Elijah we find that in the visions granted them, even though there was a great display of trumpets and powers before the majesty of the Lord, still, amidst all of these things, the coming of the Lord was discerned and he appeared in peace and tranquillity and quietness. For it says: ‘Lo, a still, silent voice and the Lord was in it’ (1 Kgs 19:12). This proves that the Lord’s rest is in peace and tranquillity. For whatever foundation a person lays and whatever beginning he makes, he will continue in that until the end. [3] 

So the experience of the Prophet Elijah on Mt Horeb is taken as a model of the contemplative (theoretic) life—indeed, of hesychia itself. 

It is interesting to note that in the West, the model of the Prophet Elijah eventually became connected especially with an order that—while it later became part of the movement of mendicant friars, along with Franciscans and Dominicans—was originally a collection of hermits living in the Holy Land on Mt Carmel itself during the Crusades. As Thomas Merton observes: 

The Carmelites were originally hermits. And of course their life was the traditional hermit life known to the East from the earliest centuries of the Church. They lived as the desert fathers had lived eight hundred years earlier....They were in fact simple laymen, living as solitaries in a loosely connected group, in caves and huts on the side of Mt Carmel. Their manner of life was not yet institutionalized, and even when [c. 1209-1214] they first asked for a Rule, from the hands of the [Latin] Patriarch of Jerusalem [Albert of Jerusalem], that Rule was, as we shall see, deliberately kept simple and uncomplicated....In the words of the Rule itself, [the purpose of the Carmelite life] was: ‘Let each one remain in his cell or near it, meditating day and night on the Law of the Lord, and vigilant in prayer, unless he is legitimately occupied in something else.’ [4] 

And on the connection with the Prophet Elijah, ‘the symbolic adoption by the Carmelites of the prophet Elias as their “Founder”’: 

It is quite true that the hermits living on the slopes of Mt Carmel, near the ‘spring of Elias’, where the prophet himself had prayed and dwelt alone, and where the ‘sons of the prophets’ had had a ‘school’, [5] could themselves claim to be descendants of the ancient prophets. It is quiet true that Elias, in a broad sense, was the ‘founder’ of this way of life since he had in fact been the inspiration of those countless generations that had lived there in the places hallowed by his memory and stamped with his indelible character. [6] 

Finally, Merton notes that the Carmelites too found a deep typology in the Prophet of what appears to an Orthodox reader as an almost hesychastic contemplative experience of their own: 

The author of that moving ancient text on the spirit of Carmelite prayer and contemplation, the Institution of the first Fathers, interprets the retirement of Elias in typical medieval style. To hide in the torrent of Carith (2 Kgs 17:3) is to embrace the ascetical life, which leads to the perfection of charity by one’s own efforts, aided by the grace of God. To drink of the torrent is to passively receive the secret light of contemplation from God and to be inwardly transformed by His wisdom: ‘...to taste, in a certain manner, in our heart, and to experience in our spirit the power of the divine presence and the sweetness of the glory from on high, not only after death but even in this mortal life. That is what is really meant by drinking from the torrent of the joy of God...’ [7] 

One wonders if these Latin pilgrims had perhaps learned something from Orthodox monks that may have been living in the area. 

Finally, to bring the consideration of St Elijah down to the level of the ordinary life of traditional Christian laymen, in her fascinating book, Cosmos, Life & Liturgy in a Greek Orthodox Village, Juliet du Boulay writes: 

...there is a hint, in a poem to the Prophet Elias (Elijah) quoted later, that mountain tops are regarded as openings to the heavenly world. This prophet customarily has his churches on the tops of hills and mountains, so the invocation of Elias is the invocation of one who, as the inhabitant of the mountain peaks, lives at the point where earth meets heaven. [8] 

Eventually, du Boulay makes good on her promise to quote the poem, sung by young girls who perform a traditional folk ritual in traditional Greek villages on 1 May: 

Quickly, quickly,
Quickly to Saint Elias;
And Saint Elias to the sky
So that God will send rain
For the wheat, for the barley,
For all the grains of God.
Holes, holes for the wine,
Channels, channels for the water.
The farmer with his mattock
To stop the water running out. [9] 

In du Boulay’s words: 

The song takes the form of a call to the village to appeal to the Prophet Elias, previously noted as having his churches on mountain tops in reflection of his vision of God on Mt Horeb, so that he will intercede ‘for all the grains of God’, and its structure is parallel with a similar prayer made every week in the Divine Liturgy during the Litany of Peace: ‘For temperate weather, for abundance of the fruits of the earth, and for peaceful seasons, let us pray to the Lord.’ The structure in both is of an intercession made directly to a holy figure, and what is prayed for, translated as temperate weather (εὐκρασία ἀέρων), means precisely a good mixture or a good balance of the atmosphere, whose consequence is fruitfulness. Thus the symbolic language, which could be ambiguous on its own, is in the song and the mime that accompanies it made into a pattern of words and actions which is continuous with the pattern of prayer offered in church. [10] 

Although I’ve never witnessed this little ritual, I did have the good fortune once to attend a Divine Liturgy on the Feast of the Prophet Elijah at one of these little hilltop churches du Boulay mentions. My chief memories are of a woolly Pontian priest whose Greek dialect I couldn’t understand at all, and of the lingering breakfast in the cool shade just outside of the church. 

[1] This remarkable comment is found on p. 37 of Robert Gregg’s translation—St Athanasius the Great, The Life of Antony & The Letter to Marcellinus, tr. Robert C. Gregg (Mahwah, NJ: Paulist, 1980), p. 37. 

[2] William Harmless, Desert Christians: An Introduction to the Literature of Early Monasticism (Oxford: Oxford U, 2004), p. 70. I've added the citations from VA and from Scripture to the text, whereas Harmless had them in endnotes. 

[3] St Macarius the Great, Pseudo-Macarius: The Fifty Spiritual Homilies & The Great Letter, tr. George A. Maloney (NY: Paulist, 1992), p. 76. 

[4] Thomas Merton, ‘The Primitive Carmelite Ideal’, Disputed Questions (NY: The New American Library, 1965), p. 168. 

[5] Merton notes here: ‘Schola not only in the sense of a place where one learns, but in the more original and etymological sense of a place of leisure, quiet and retirement, where one can think deeply’ (ibid., p. 169, n. 2). 

[6] Ibid., p. 169. 

[7] Ibid., p. 172. 

[8] Juliet du Boulay, Cosmos, Life, & Liturgy in a Greek Orthodox Village (Limni, Evia, Greece: Denise Harvey, 2009), pp. 33-4. 

[9] Ibid., p. 88. 

[10] Ibid., p. 89.

'He That Is of God Heareth God's Words'--A Homily for the 5th Sunday of Lent

I really didn’t mean to let two full months go by without posting a thing. To make up for it, here, much belatedly, is one of two homilies that I plan to post this week. This is my homily for the Fifth Sunday in Lent, preached, as usual, at chapel on the Monday morning following. I had received an indirect request through my principal to make it easier for the other teachers to take something away to discuss with their students—hence the repetitions of certain carefully enumerated points. The age and generally Protestant orientation of most of the audience accounts for the tone and some details of my retelling of the Life of St Mary of Egypt. I apologise that it is hardly a model of hagiographical narration.

Hebrews 9:11-15
St John 8:46-59

‘He that is of God heareth God’s words: ye therefore hear them not, because ye are not of God.’

In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost. Amen.

In the second verse of today’s Gospel, these words that I have just quoted are spoken by Christ to the Jews. By ‘God’s words’, we can be sure that Our Lord means the Scriptures, of course, but the Scriptures are not only words already written but the words He is speaking at that moment.

From this ‘living Scripture’ we learn, first, that it is important that we ‘hear’ His words, not only read them silently. In the ancient world reading was always done out loud, and as often as we can we too must read the Scriptures aloud, listen to others read them, recite them, etc.

Second, we learn that merely hearing His words physically with our ears is not enough, since the Lord says to his physical audience ‘ye therefore hear them not’. It is also necessary to pay careful attention to what He says. Commenting on this text, the English Puritan, Matthew Henry, writes:

He that is of God . . . is willing and ready to hear His words, is sincerely desirous to know what the mind of God is, and cheerfully embraces whatever he knows to be so. He apprehends and discerns them, he so hears them as to perceive the voice of God in them, as they of the family know the master’s tread, and the master’s knock, as the sheep know the voice of their shepherd from that of a stranger.’

Third, and finally, we learn from these words of Christ that even paying attention is not enough—in v. 51, the Lord says that those who would never see death must ‘keep my saying’. In other words, truly hearing entails also doing.

In his commentary on this Gospel passage, St Gregory the Great emphasises all three of these points:

Let each one of you then consider within himself if this voice of God prevails in the ears of his heart. Then he will recognize whether he is now of God. There are some who do not choose to hear God’s commands even with their bodily ears. There are others who do this but do not embrace them with their heart’s desire. There are still others who receive God’s words readily, yes, and are touched, even to tears. But afterwards they go back to their sins again and therefore cannot be said to hear the word of God, because they neglect to practice it. [2]

Hearing the Word means listening, paying attention, but most importantly, doing the Word.

In the Anonymous Collection of Desert Fathers sayings, we read that:

A woman came to [St] Antony [the Great] and declared that she had endured great fasting and had learned the entire Bible by heart. [Amazing, huh?] She wanted to know from Antony what more she should do. Antony was less sanguine about her accomplishments than she was and put a series of questions to her. He asked her, ‘Is contempt the same as honor to you?’ She answered, ‘No.’ He then asked her, ‘Is loss gain, strangers as your parents, poverty as abundance?’ Again she answered ‘No.’ Antony said to her, ‘Thus you have neither fasted nor learned the Old and New Testament, but you have deceived yourself.’ [3]

By contrast, consider the story of the monk who—

came to St Basil [the Great] and said, ‘Speak a word, Father’; and Basil replied, ‘Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart’; and the monk went away at once. Twenty years later he came back, and said, ‘Father, I have struggled to keep your word; now speak another word to me’; and he said, ‘Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself’; and the monk returned in obedience to his cell to keep that also. [4]

Hearing God’s Word means listening, paying attention, but most importantly, doing God’s Word.

Indeed, I have already mentioned that in v. 51 Christ says, ‘If a man keep my saying, he shall never see death.’ Does He mean we won’t die, but be taken to heaven like Enoch and Elijah? Clearly not. According to St Augustine: ‘It means nothing less than He saw another death from which He came to free us—the second death, eternal death, the death of hell, the death of the damned, which is shared with the devil and his angels! This is real death; the other kind of death is only a passage.’ [5] So Christ promises that if we keep His saying, we shall be delivered from this eternal death. But there is a more subtle, positive promise as well: If we hear (that is, do) the Word, its mysteries will be revealed to us.

Recall that the Jews respond to Christ’s promise: ‘Abraham is dead, and did he not keep God’s Word?’ What the Lord says in reply is rather strange. In v. 56, He tells them, ‘Your father Abraham rejoiced to see my day: and he saw it, and was glad.’ Happily, the author of Hebrews, traditionally believed to be St Paul, helps us to understand this.

First, in a passage not found in today’s Epistle, but in chapter 11, v. 13, St Paul, having spoken of Abraham, writes: ‘These all died in faith, not having received the promises, but having seen them afar off, and were persuaded of them, and embraced them.’ In other words, yes, Abraham died the lesser death, and he died before Christ brought deliverence from eternal death, but he foresaw the deliverance, and he obtained this through faith—through hearing (that is, doing) the Word of God. St Irenaeus of Lyons says, ‘Righteously therefore, having left his earthly family, Abraham followed the Word of God walking as a pilgrim with the Word so that he might afterwards make his home with the Word.’ [6]

Now, the Fathers say many things about what Abraham saw—the mysteries revealed to him for his faith, like the Holy Trinity and the Incarnation. But most Fathers specifically connect what Christ calls ‘my day’ with His crucifixion and death. St Irenaeus writes, ‘Abraham was a prophet and saw in the Spirit the day of the Lord’s coming and the dispensation of His suffering’; [7] St Chrysostom says Abraham ‘was gladdened at the cross’; [8] and St Gregory Palamas says the ‘mystery of the Cross was working in Abraham’. [9]

How was this so? The Fathers say it is especially true in the story of the Sacrifice of Isaac (found in Gen. 22:1-14). St Cyril says Abraham ‘saw the day of the Lord’s slaughter . . . when, as a type of Christ, he was enjoined to offer up for a sacrifice his only begotten and firstborn, Isaac . . . making clear the exact force of the Mystery in a type in what happened.’ [10] St Ephraim the Syrian writes, ‘“He saw and rejoiced,” for he recognized the redemption of all the nations through the symbol of the lamb. “He said, ‘Before Abraham was, I am.’” For He existed, but in hidden fashion, when Isaac was being redeemed and revealed His sign through a lamb.’ [11]

Christ is of course the true Agnus Dei, the true Lamb of God—that is the Word of God that Abraham saw, and it is this ‘Word of God’ which we ‘hear’ in today’s Epistle: Hebrews 9:11-15. In verses 13-14, St Paul writes:

For if the blood of bulls and of goats, and the ashes of an heifer sprinkling the unclean, sanctifieth to the purifying of the flesh: How much more shall the blood of Christ, who through the eternal Spirit offered Himself without spot to God, purge your conscience from dead works to serve the living God?

This is the Mystery revealed to Abraham. Christ is the perfect sacrifice, who delivers us from death and frees us from the dead works of the Law—sacrificing animals, etc.—so we can follow ‘the Word of God’. To paraphrase St John Cassian (Conference 21.4.3), we no longer offer sacrifices of animals or mere ‘tithes of our possessions’, but ‘disdaining property, we offer ourselves and our own souls to God’. [12] We hear and do God’s Word by imitating Christ’s sacrifice. We participate in the Mystery of the Cross by denying ourselves, taking up our cross, and following Jesus. For as we listen to today’s Gospel, we ourselves must be hearing the Word of God, and if we do this, we like Abraham will learn its Mystery. The Jews to whom Our Lord spoke heard but did not hear—we have the opportunity to hear what they did not.

In St John 8:58, Christ says: ‘Verily, verily, I say unto you, Before Abraham was, I am.’ Commenting on this passage, St Gregory the Great writes:

Our Redeemer graciously turns their gaze away from His body and draws it to contemplation of His divinity. . . . ‘Before’ indicates past time, ‘I am’ present time. Because divinity does not have past and future time but always is, He did not say, ‘I was before Abraham’ but ‘Before Abraham was, I am.’ And so it was said to Moses [at the burning bush], ‘I am who I am’, and ‘You will say to the children of Israel, “He who is has sent me to you”’ (Ex 3:14). [13]

In other words, Christ existed both before and after Abraham. It was Christ Who appeared to Abraham by the Oaks of Mamre, and the sign of the Precious Cross was stamped on his life. But this should not surprise us. As one modern theologian puts it:

Theologically speaking, creation and its history begins with the Passion of Christ [His suffering on the Cross] and from this ‘once for all’ work looks backwards and forwards to see everything in this light, making everything new. Christian cosmology, elaborated as it must be from the persective of the Cross, sees the Cross as impregnated in the very structure of creation: stat crux dum volvitur orbis—the Cross stands, while the earth revolves. The power of God revealed in and through the Cross brought creation into being and sustains it in existence. [14]

He then quotes St Isaac of Syria:

We do not speak of a power in the Cross that is any different from that through which the worlds came into being, [a power] which is eternal and without beginning and which guides creation all the time without any break, in a divine way and beyond the understanding of all, in accordance with the will of His divinity. [15]

If all this theology is a bit too much for you though, I’ll tell a little story that might make it easier.

Starting about 600 years ago, the Church that I belong to began a tradition of reading the Life of a Saint named St Mary of Egypt every year on the 5th Sunday of Lent. In the West, not many know about St Mary, so I’ll tell her story briefly.

The Life as we have it was written down in the 7th c. by St Sophronius of Jerusalem. It tells of a St Zosimas who lived in the Holy Land and was a good monk who ‘never ceased to study the Divine Scriptures. Whether resting, standing, working or eating food (if the scraps he nibbled could be called food), he incessantly and constantly had a single aim: always to sing of God, and to practice the teaching of the Divine Scriptures.’ According to the custom of his monastery, St Zosimas set off to the desert across the River Jordan to spend Lent alone with Christ (so, following the Word of God).

After 20 days, St Zosimas saw a human being whose body was ‘blackened, burnt by the heat of the sun’ [16]—an image of self-denial, of suffering, of the Mystery of the Cross—and discovers that it is a woman who already knows his name through Spirit. She is too humble to speak of herself, but St Zosimas begs her to tell him her story and finally cajoles her into it.

She says her name is ‘Mary’ and that she is from Alexandria, Egypt. Before she came to the desert, she was a very sinful woman—she liked to party, she wore lots of makeup and fancy clothes, and committed adultery many times. One day she went to Jerusalem and heard it was Feast of Precious Cross (at that time the Jerusalem Church still had all of the actual Cross that Christ was crucified on). Mary tried to go into the church with the crowd, but a mysterious force held her back. She realised that God was preventing her to enter because of her sins, and she promised to go to the desert and live in repentance. At that moment, she was able to enter the church and kiss Christ’s Precious Cross, upon which she immediately left and crossed the Jordan. At the time that she meets St Zosimas, St Mary believes that it has been 47 years since she left the Holy City to follow the Word of God.

When St Mary quotes Scripture to St Zosimas, he asks if she has read the Bible. Interestingly, she says: ‘I never learned from books. I have never even heard anyone who sang and read from them. But the word of God which is alive and active, by itself teaches a man knowledge.’ So Christ revealed to her His mysteries—she has heard His living voice, of which Scripture is only a record, and has been freed by grace to ‘serve the living God’. St Zosimas says, ‘Blessed is God Who has shown me how He rewards those who fear Him. Truly, O Lord, Thou dost not forsake those who seek Thee!’

The end of the story is that St Mary tells St Zosimas (who is a priest) to bring her Holy Communion. When he goes back to the Jordan he sees her on the other side, but she crosses by walking across the water to receive the Mysteries and says, ‘Now lettest Thou Thy servant depart in peace, O Lord, according to Thy word; for mine eyes have seen Thy salvation.’ When St Zosimas goes back at her request after a year, St Mary has fallen asleep in the Lord.

Because St Mary has heard (and done) the Word of God, He has made known the Mystery of His Cross to her.

Because St Zosimas has heard (and done) the Word of God, He has made known mystery of St Mary’s cross to him.

Obviously, not all are called to live in the desert of the Holy Land, but as we get ready to celebrate His death and resurrection in a couple of weeks let’s try to remember that—

Whenever we are asked to do something we don’t like, we have an opportunity to share in Christ’s Cross just a little bit.

Whenever someone insults us or hurts us, and we are tempted to get angry and get back at them, we can share in Christ’s Cross.

Whenever we feel like fidgeting during Matins, or ignoring our teacher, we can share in Christ’s Cross.

Whenever we have to wait for something we want, we can share in Christ’s Cross.

Whenever our tie is too tight, the day is too hot, our chair is too hard, our class is too long, or the book we have to read is too boring, we share in Christ’s Cross.

If we do this, if we take advantage of these opportunities and even seek new ones, we will truly hear God’s Word.

In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost. Amen.


[1] Matthew Henry, Commentary on the Whole Bible: New One Volume Edition, ed. Leslie F. Church (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 1966), p. 1555.

[2] Joel C. Elowsky, ed., John 1-10, NT Vol. IVa of Ancient Christian Commentary on Scripture: New Testament (Downers Grove, IL: IVP, 2006), p. 309.

[3] Douglas Burton-Christ, The Word in the Desert: Scripture & the Quest for Holiness in Early Christian Monasticism (NY: Oxford, 1993), p. 161.

[4] Benedicta Ward, Foreword, The Sayings of the Desert Fathers: The Alphabetical Collection, rev. ed. (Kalamazoo, MI: Cistercian, 1984), p. xxii.

[5] Elowsky, p. 313.

[6] Ibid., p. 316.

[7] Ibid., p. 316.

[8] Ibid., p. 316.

[9] St Gregory Palamas, The Homilies, ed. & tr. Christopher Veniamin with the Monastery of St John the Baptist (Waymart, PA: Mount Thabor, 2009), p. 79.

[10] Elowsky, p. 316.

[11] Ibid., p. 317.

[12] St John Cassian, The Conferences, tr. Boniface Ramsey (NY: Newman, 1997), p. 721.

[13] Elowsky, p. 317.

[14] Fr John Behr, The Mystery of Christ: Life in Death (Crestwood, NY: SVS, 2006), p. 90.

[15] Qtd. in ibid., p. 90.

[16] All quotations from the Life of St Mary of Egypt are taken from here.

Gerasims & Lions: Tolstoy & the Prologue

A recent comment by the Ochlophobist on this post at Ora et Labora suggested the idea of a few of us Orthodox bloggers concurrently reading the new rendition of War & Peace by my favourite translators, Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky. (Incidentally, I would like to invite any interested readers to join us. The plan is to begin reading the book the first week of May. We’ll work on ideas for how to go about facilitating discussion soon.)

As a first step in actually carrying out the plan, I went last week to Oklahoma City’s only locally owned new bookstore, Full Circle, to purchase the volume. Well, sitting right next to it was a hardcover volume in a beautiful dust-jacket of the same translators’ rendition of The Death of Ivan Ilyich & Other [late] Stories. Naturally, I could not resist the temptation, and particularly since I was due to reread ‘Death of Ivan Ilyich’ in time for my tutoring session last Friday.

Which brings me to the main subject of this post. In the middle of my tutorial on Friday, I was discussing a passage of ‘Ivan Ilyich’ with my pupil that makes reference to Ivan Ilyich’s servant, Gerasim. Ivan is, of course, in terrible pain from an ultimately fatal illness, and Gerasim seems to be the only person who understands and wants to help alleviate his pain. Ivan often asks him to sit where he can place his feet on Gerasim’s shoulders, which affords him a little relief. Ultimately, it is his exposure to Gerasim that convinces Ivan that he has lived his life all wrong:

His moral sufferings consisted in the fact that, looking at Gerasim's sleepy, good-natured, high-cheekboned face that night, it had suddenly occurred to him: And what if my whole life, my conscious life, has indeed been ‘not right’? [1]

While discussing this passage, I realised incidentally that my pupil might not be aware of Russian naming conventions, and I began to explain that in the Orthodox Church, the first names are always those of Saints. I even noted in a general way that occasionally, Russian writers will deliberately choose for their charactres the names of Saints that have some relevance or symbolic significance. Then it dawned on me—we had a perfect example right before us!

According to his own testimony, ‘the Martyrology and the Prologues’ were for a time Tolstoy’s ‘favorite reading’ which ‘revealed to me the meaning of life’. [2] The main ‘St Gerasim’ on the Church’s calendar is St Gerasimus of the Jordan, whom Tolstoy would have read about in these sources, and the most famous story about St Gerasimus concerns his compassion to a certain lion. Here is the brief account in the Prologue from Ochrid:

He once saw a great lion which was roaring with pain, having a thorn in its paw. Gerasim came near to it, crossed himself and pulled the thorn out. The lion was so tame that it followed the elder to the monastery and remained there until the latter’s death. When the elder died, the lion also succumbed to illness after him and died. [3]

It seems to me that there is a clear parallel between Gerasim’s act of mercy in alleviating the suffering of Ivan Ilyich, and that of St Gerasimus in alleviating the suffering of the lion. Furthermore, while the biographical details of Ivan Ilyich’s life are very different from those of his creator, his consciousness of death and existential angst over his mortality remind one of Tolstoy’s Confession. It may have been a further inducement to choose the name ‘Gerasim’ for the servant since Tolstoy’s own Christian name means ‘lion’. [4]

I have posted the account of St Gerasimus and the lion in full from the primary source—St John Moschus’s Spiritual Meadow—in this post of last year for the Saint. Western pilgrims of course confused the name ‘Gerasimos’ with ‘Ieronymos’, who had also lived in Palestine for a time, and thus in the West the lion is associated with St Jerome. [5]


[1] Leo Tolstoy, The Death of Ivan Ilyich & Other Stories, tr. Richard Pevear & Larissa Volokhonsky (NY: Knopf, 2009), p. 88.

[2] Leo Tolstoy, Confession, tr. David Patterson (NY: Norton, 1996), p. 83.

[3] St Nicholas (Velimirovi), The Prologue from Ochrid, Vol. 1, tr. Mother Maria (Birmingham: Lazarica, 1986), p. 245.

[4] I suppose one could also make a case for some sort of connection between the lion’s wailing on the death of St Gerasimus and Ivan’s wailing before his own death, but it would take some real working out.

[5] See Derwas Chitty, The Desert a City (Crestwood, NY: SVS, 1995), p. 90.

'You Sit Here as a Stranger'—Evagrius Ponticus

Twice now, here and here, I have posted on the life of St John Cassian the Roman. I have also posted passages from his writings—here and here—which I have deliberately linked with those of one of St Cassian’s primary teachers and sources of monastic theology, the 4th-century deacon, intellectual, and ascetic, Evagrius Ponticus the Solitary (c. 345-399). Evagrius is not a Saint, and indeed, in some of his writings he seems to have advocated some Origenist ideas that led to his condemnation at the Fifth Œcumenical Council. Columba Stewart argues that the persecution of Origenism, which famously and tragically led to the exile of another of St Cassian’s mentors, St John Chrysostom, created a climate in which St Cassian ‘felt constrained to down play his links with the Evagrian Origenism of Nitria and Kellia’. As Stewart sadly notes, ‘The impossibility of openly repaying his debt to his master must have been deeply painful to Cassian, who identified monastic tradition so closely with those who embodied it.’ [1]

For Evagrius’s ascetical, monastic writings, ‘so far from being condemned, have exercised a decisive influence upon subsequent writers’. [2] He is accorded a place in the Apophthegmata Patrum, or Gerontikon, the Lausiac History of Palladius, the Evergetinos, and the Philokalia. Stewart argues that ‘Evagrius was the single most important influence on Cassian’s monastic theology, although Cassian never mentions him by name.’ [3] Indeed, Evagrius’s monastic theology, in particular his terms and categories, have led many to ‘the conclusion that Evagrius is the chief source of the properly contemplative spirituality of the Byzantine tradition, to such an extent that its centuries old tradition should properly be described as Evagrian spirituality’. [4]

It is for these reasons that I have decided to offer a post on Evagrius’s life and person. By way of honouring St Cassian, whose feast day was two days ago, I hope to do what he could not and pay some modicum of honour to his master. I intend as well to revisit in future posts some of the controversial issues surrounding Evagrius’s teaching and influence.

Let’s begin with the biographical note composed by St Nicodemus of the Holy Mountain as a preface to Evagrius’s Philokalic writings:

Wise and learned Evagrios flourished around the year 380. He was ordained a Reader by Basil the Great, and a Deacon by Basil’s brother Gregory of Nyssa. He was educated in sacred learning by Gregory the Theologian, and served him as Archdeacon at the time when Gregory was Patriarch of Constantinople, according to Nikephoros Kallistos (Book 11, chapter 42). Later, renouncing worldly things, he embraced the monastic life.

Being acute in intellectual perception, and very skillful in giving expression to what he grasped, he left many and varied writings. Among them are the present discourse to hesychasts and chapters concerning the discrimination of passions and thoughts. These have been included in the ‘Philokalia’ because they present to an iminent degree what is needful and profitable. [5]

But much of what was known about Evagrius by monastic authors like St Nicodemus, would have been learned from the classic text, passed down as a paradigm of monastic life: the Lausiac History of Palladius. Palladius, who knew Evagrius personally, produced an entire chapter on him which, while considerably briefer in the Lausiac History than in a closely related Coptic version, also seems to have passed through some ‘anti-Origenistic editorial pruning’. [6] For that reason, I shall largely confine my remarks to a few things about the Lavsiakon as the ‘safer’ of the two.

Palladius tells us that Evagrius was ‘of the Pontic race, of the city of Ibora, [and] son of a chorbishop’, [7] i.e., ‘a bishop of a country district in full episcopal orders, but with restricted powers’. [8] Palladius tells us that St Gregory the Theologian ordained the young Pontian having taken ‘note of his fitness’, and that during his career in Constantinople, Evagrius was ‘most skillful in confuting all the heresies . . . with youthful exuberance’. [9] But this career was not to last. Here is William Harmless’s summary of the story:

Not long after this [i.e., St Gregory’s resignation as Patriarch], Evagrius fell in love with an upper-class woman, the wife of a high imperial official. Apparently the risk of scandal was great, and, as Palladius notes, a sexual scandal would have risked the fragile hegemony of the Nicene cause in the capital city. Evagrius decided to break off the affair, but the woman was ‘by now eager and frantic’. One night he had an ominous dream. He imagined himself under military arrest, standing in chains and an iron collar. Suddenly an angel appeared and compelled him to swear on the book of the Gospels that he would leave town. When he awoke, he decided to fulfill the oath he swore in the dream vision and caught the first available ship to Jerusalem. [10]

But Evagrius’s troubles were not to end there immediately, for as Palladius writes, ‘Soon the devil hardened his heart, as in the case of Pharaoh.’ [11] In Jerusalem, the young man had become connected with the Cappadocian theologians St Melanie the Elder and Rufinus and their monastic community at the Mount of Olives. But he unwisely concealed the cause of his departure from Constantinople, and, ‘intoxicated with vainglory’, fell into a prolonged sickness. [12] According to Palladius:

9. Now when the doctors were in a quandary and could find no treatment to cure him, the blessed Melania addressed him: ‘Son, I am not pleased with your long sickness. Tell me what is in your mind, for your sickness is not beyond God’s aid.’

Then he confessed the whole story.

She told him: ‘Promise by the Lord that you mean to aim at the monastic life, and even though I am a sinner, I will pray that you be given a lease on life.’

He agreed, and was well again in a matter of days. He got up, received a change of clothing at her hands, then left and took himself to the mountain of Nitria in Egypt. [13]

Evagrius lived at Nitria for two years, beginning a lifelong diet of uncooked food and joining what Harmless calls ‘that remarkable circle of intellectual monks led by Ammonius the Earless and the Tall Brothers’, disciples of the Abba Pambo who later took refuge in Constantinople with St John Chrysostom. [14] Palladius writes that he earned his living as a calligrapher, ‘for he wrote very gracefully the Oxyrhynchus character’ [15]—‘so called because it was “sharp-snouted”’ and not because of the place name. [16]

After two years in Nitria, Evagrius ‘went off to the desert’, [17] staying for the rest of his life at Cellia, where he became a disciple of St Macarius the Great and St Macarius of Alexandria (as we shall see, a matter of irony). According to the historian, Socrates Sozomen, ‘Evagrius became a disciple of these men and acquired from them the philosophy of deeds, whereas before he knew only a philosophy of words.’ [18] In the case of St Macarius the Great, this involved ‘the dangerous trek from Kellia to Scetis’. [19] It seems to have payed off. According to the Coptic Life, Evagrius spent his time alone thusly:

14 With regard to sleep, he followed a rule: he would sleep a third of the night, but during the day he would not sleep at all. He had a courtyard where he would spend the middle part of each day walking, driving away sleep from himself, training his intellect to examine his thoughts systematically. When he had finished sleeping a third of the night, he would spend the rest of the night walking in the courtyard, meditating [meaning ‘to quietly utter on one’s lips the words of Scripture’] and praying, driving sleep away from himself, training his intellect to reflect on the meaning of the Scriptures. [20]

It is not surprising then that we read in the Lausiac History, ‘Within fifteen years he had so purified his mind that he was deemed worthy of the gift of knowledge and wisdom and the discernment of spirits.’ [21] Consequently, Evagrius himself eventually became recognised as a teacher of the monastic life. According to the Coptic Life:

17 This was his practice: The brothers would gather around him on Saturday and Sunday, discussing their thoughts with him throughout the night, listening to his words of encouragement until sunrise. And thus they would leave rejoicing and glorifying God, for Evagrius’ teaching was very sweet. When they came to see him, he encouraged them, saying to them, ‘My brothers, if one of you has either a profound or a troubled thought, let him be silent until the brothers depart and let him reflect on it alone with me. Let us not make him speak in front of the brothers lest a little one perish on account of his thoughts and grief swallow him at a gulp.’

18 Furthermore, he was so hospitable that his cell never lacked five or six visitors a day who had come from foreign lands to listen to his teaching, his intellect, and his ascetic practice. [22]

Interestingly, the demons of fornication and concupiscence continued to plague Evagrius throughout much of his life. Palladius writes of his time at Cellia, ‘The demon of fornication bothered him so oppressively, as he himself told us, that he stood naked throughout the night in a well.’ [23] Finally we read, ‘Near the time of his death he said: “This is the third year that I am not tormented by carnal desires”—this after a life of such toil and labor and continual prayer!’ [24] Evagrius reposed ‘after having communicated in the church at Epiphany’. [25]

Whatever we may conclude for now about his Origenism, on the basis of the history of honour accorded to Evagrius’s own person and his more practical writings I think Bamberger is at least partly right to refer to his ‘personal sanctity and good faith’. [26] As one last piece of evidence in his favour, and to begin drawing this post to a conclusion, I would cite the last of the apophthegmata under Evagrius’s name in the Gerontikon:

7. One day at the Cells, there was an assembly about some matter or other and Abba Evagrius held forth. Then the priest said to him, ‘Abba, we know that if you were living in your own country you would probably be a bishop and a great leader; but at present you sit here as a stranger.’ He was filled with compunction, but was not at all upset and bending his head he replied, ‘I have spoken once and will not answer, twice but I will proceed no further’ (Job 40.5). [27]

Concerning this story, Harmless observes that one can read it in several ways. He writes:

At one level, it lays bare what Evagrius’s choice of the desert had cost him: home, ecclesiastical honors, even the right to the public voice normally accorded the educated. In this sense, it is a telling demonstration of Evagrius’s humility—likely the reason it appears in the Apophthegmata.

But it can also be read as a foreshadowing of what was to come: while Evagrius accepted Egypt, Egypt did not accept Evagrius. In 399, on the feast of the Epiphany, Evagrius was near death. He had to be carried to church to receive the Eucharist and died soon after. He was fifty-five—comparatively young, given the long lives that desert literature normally accords its leaders. That year, the patriarch of Alexandria, Theophilus, embarked on a ruthless persecution against Evagrius’s friends and disciples. They were accused of Origenism and force to flee Egypt. Death spared Evagrius the bitter experience of exile and condemnation. [28]

[1] Columba Stewart, OSB, Cassian the Monk (NY: Oxford, 1998), p. 12.

[2] The Philokalia, Vol. 1, tr. G.E.H. Palmer, et al. (London: Faber, 1983), p. 29.

[3] Stewart, p. 11.

[4] John Eudes Bamberger, OCSO, ‘Introduction’, The Praktikos & Chapters on Prayer, by Evagrius Ponticus, tr. John Eudes Bamberger, OCSO (Kalamazoo, MI: Cistercian, 1981), p. xxxii.

[5] St Nicodemus of the Holy Mountain, ‘Brief Biography of Evagrios the Monk’, The Philokalia, tr. Constantine Cavarnos (Belmont, MA: Institute for Byzantine & Modern Greek Studies, 2008), p. 121.

[6] Tim Vivian, tr., with Rowan A. Greer, Four Desert Fathers: Pambo, Evagrius, Macarius of Egypt, & Macarius of Alexandria—Coptic Texts Relating to the Lausiac History of Palladius (Crestwood, NY: SVS, 2004), p. 69.

[7] Palladius, The Lausiac History, tr. Robert T. Meyer, No. 34 in Ancient Christian Writers: The Works of the Fathers in Translation (NY: Paulist, 1964), p. 110. Bamberger points out that this is very close to St Basil’s family estate at Annesi, where the latter had pursued the ascetic life for a while (Bamberger, p. xxxvi).

[8] Palladius, p. 200, n. 340.

[9] Ibid., p. 111.

[10] William Harmless, SJ, Desert Christians: An Introduction to the Literature of Early Monasticism (Oxford: Oxford U, 2004), p. 313.

[11] Palladius, p. 112.

[12] Ibid., p. 112.

[13] Ibid., pp. 112-3.

[14] Harmless, p. 314.

[15] Palladius, p. 113.

[16] Ibid., p. 201, n. 350.

[17] Ibid., p. 113.

[18] Qtd. in Harmless, p. 315.

[19] Ibid., p. 315.

[20] Vivian, pp. 81-2.

[21] Palladius, p. 113.

[22] Vivian, pp. 83-4.

[23] Palladius, p. 113.

[24] Ibid., p. 114.

[25] Ibid., p. 114.

[26] Bamberger, p. lxxxi.

[27] Benedicta Ward, SLG, tr., The Sayings of the Desert Fathers: The Alphabetical Collection, rev. ed. (Kalamazoo, MI: Cistercian, 1984), p. 64.

[28] Harmless, p. 316.

'Tuneful Harps of the Holy Spirit's Mysteries'—Ss Barsanuphius & John

Today, 6 February on the Church’s calendar, we celebrate the memory of the Holy Barsanuphius the Great and John the Prophet (mid-6th c.), who were among ‘the last of the classical tradition of desert saints and elders’. [1] In a Life penned as an introduction to his edition of their letters, St Nicodemus of the Holy Mountain writes, ‘The writers of this God-wise and soul-profiting book were truly God-bearing, Christ-bearing and Spirit-bearing Fathers—Barsanuphius and John—examples of asceticism, practitioners of hesychasm, lamps of discernment, sleepless eyes of clairvoyance, treasuries of virtues, and embodiments of the Holy Spirit.’ [2] In the Prologue, St Nicholas (Velimirović) calls them ‘Great ascetics from Gaza, gifted with insight and wonder-working power’. [3] Here is the account of their lives in the Great Horologion:

Saint Barsanuphius the Great, who was from Egypt, and his disciple, Saint John the Prophet, struggled in very strict reclusion during the sixth century at the monastery of Abba Seridus at Gaza of Palestine, and were endowed with amazing gifts of prophecy and spiritual discernment. They are mentioned by Saint Dorotheus of Gaza, their disciple, in his writings. Many of the counsels they sent to Christians who wrote to them are preserved in the book which bears their names. Once certain of the Fathers besought Saint Barsanuphius wrote back that there were ‘three men perfect before God’, whose prayers met at the throne of God and protected the whole world; to them it had been revealed that the wrath of God would not last long. These three, he said, were ‘John of Rome, Elias of Corinth, and another in the diocese of Jerusalem’, concealing the name of the last, since it was himself. [4]

The translator of Ss Barsanuphius’s and John’s complete letters, Fr John Chryssavgis, has clarified somewhat some of the details of the relationships involved here. St Barsanuphius had retired to a cell in Thavatha, and Abba Seridus was abbot of a monastery that happened to be nearby, when he began to visit the Elder. According to Fr Chryssavgis, ‘Seridos was the only person permitted to communicate with Barsanuphius, acting as mediator for those who wished to be counseled by the elder.’ In about 525-527, St John the Prophet settled near the Elder. ‘The two shared the same way of life and supported one another’s ministry (Letters 224-225 and 571-572), with John assuming another monk, Dorotheus, as his mouthpiece. . . . John responded primarily to matters of a practical nature and Barsanuphius to questions of a more spiritual nature.’ [5]

Unfortunately, some modern scholars have begun to speculate that these great Elders of Gaza may have been ‘crypto-Monophysites’, basing themselves in part on questions that arose about the Elders in Byzantium in the 9th century. But St Theodore the Studite concluded at that time, after an investigation of the matter, ‘As for the writings of the above-mentioned Fathers, I did not find even the minutest impiety, but on the contrary much spiritual benefit’, [6] and St Nicodemus writes, ‘This divine Barsanuphius about whom we are writing was a man absolutely Orthodox in everything, and the Church of Christ venerates him as a saint.’ [7] Fr Chryssavgis characterises them as deliberately abstaining from theological disputes, and while St Barsanuphius may use some of the language of Abba Isaiah of Scetis which seems to be based on a Monophysite Christology [8], yet the great Elder of Gaza was simultaneously ‘urging his disciples to follow a Chalcedonian bishop’. [9] Even those who seem inclined to push the issue acknowledge that St Theodore’s argument that the Elders’ slanderers have confused them with other men of the same name is perfectly plausible, specific Monophysite partisans bearing their names being quite well known. [10]

In the end, all admit, ‘The positions of Barsanuphius and John were generally orthodox, although their essential attitude to theology seems to have generated a tolerant stance toward those holding non-orthodox theological views.’ [11] To waste time and ink speculating on the ‘heterodoxy’ of the Orthodox Saints constitutes yet a further example of what Fr Seraphim calls the failure of ‘patristics scholars’ ‘to trust the judgment of Orthodox tradition over his own personal opinions and whims, and to place any “new discoveries” he may make into the context of that tradition.’ [12] So much for such questions!

St Nicodemus laments that a narrative of the lives of Ss Barsanuphius and John had not come down to him, [13] but it is not unfitting that these great elders have been remembered chiefly for their vast correspondence. As Fr Chryssavgis observes, ‘Sensational miracles and exceptional charismata are neither the most striking nor the most appealing feature of these elders.’ [14] Bitton-Ashkelony & Kofsky point out that Ss Barsanuphius and John do not reflect the image of the ‘holy man as a substitute for the village patron and as a “man of power”’ [15] so much as ‘a new kind of teacher with a new kind of paideia, identifying the central expression of authority within ascetic society as the relationship between master and disciple.’ [16] This paideia is communicated entirely through their letters.

Fr Placide (Deseille) calls the letters ‘a unique document on the practice of spiritual fatherhood in this milieu’. [17] As such, Ss Barsanuphius and John were a great influence, not only on their own disciple, St Dorotheus of Gaza, but on St John Climacus, the Evergetinos, and St Gregory of Sinai, who quotes St Barsanuphius at length in his treatise ‘On Stillness’. [18] St Ignatius (Brianchaninov) includes the letters among the other books that Fr Seraphim (Rose) calls the ‘ABC’s’ of patristic books, [19] and for the coenobitic monk recommends reading ‘the Directions for the Spiritual Life of St Barsanuphius and St John the Prophet, beginning with Answer 216 (the preceding answers are given primarily for hermits and so are less suitable for novices).’ [20]

But it is important to note that the letters are not addressed only to monks, for as Fr Chryssavgis writes, ‘Whereas the study, and indeed the literature, of spiritual direction has traditionally focused on monastic development, the correspondence of Barsanuphius and John redresses a balance in this regard, concentrating much of its attention on the concerns of lay persons.’ [21] Jennifer Havelone-Harper further notes, ‘The questions posed by petitioners reveal the anxieties and hopes of individuals representing a wide cross section of Byzantine society.’ [22]

For this reason, the letters of these two elders have the potential to become useful spiritual reading for laypeople. Many may already be familiar with Fr Seraphim’s translation of selections from the Russian edition published in 1855 by Optina. [23] Many selections from among those in the Russian Philokalia compiled by St Theophan the Recluse can also be found translated from the Russian in Writings from the Philokalia on Prayer of the Heart. [24] But Fr Chryssavgis has produced the first full translation of all 848 letters, which is also the first translation from the original Greek text. [25] Although this 2-vol. set is not the most affordable of patristic translations, he has also provided a selection in one volume of the much more accessible Popular Patristics Series published by SVS. I strongly recommend that all who can acquire either Fr Seraphim’s or one of Fr Chryssavgis’s versions. As St Nicodemus writes:

For as the tree is, so is its fruit. Truly, any one can understand this from his own experience; for when he will begin reading this book, he will hear the words—uncomplicated and simple. And at the same time, secretly within his own heart, he will feelwondrous grace and the sweetness of the Holy Spirit, which like a magnet actively draws the will to oneness with God’s will, and he will feel undoubting conviction in the truth of the words he reads. He will understand how all these words were brought out of an enlightened and God-bearing mind; how they issued from one heart, in which dwelt Jesus Christ and the Holy Spirit of Christ; and how they (these words) came from one soul which was all filled with peace and silence, was all Christ-like, all inspired by the fine wafting of a peace-giving and enlightening Spirit. [26]

I will offer a sample of some of the Elders’ teaching. I am told both of these can be found in Fr Chryssavgis’s Popular Patristics volume, but they certainly are not in Fr Seraphim’s translation of Ss Barsanuphius and John. First comes a question that has particular relevance in our day, when any belief that a particular thing is wrong is considered intolerant and judgemental.

Letter 453

Question: ‘If I notice someone doing something inappropriate, should I not judge this as being inappropriate? And how can I avoid the condemnation of this neighbor of mine?’ Response.

If this matter is truly inappropriate, then we cannot but condemn it as being inappropriate. Otherwise, how can we ever avoid the harm that comes from it, according to the voice of the Lord, who said: ‘Beware of false prophets, who come to you in sheep’s clothing but inwardly are ravenous wolves; you will know them by their fruits’ (Mt 7.15-16). The one, however, who is actually doing the inappropriate deed should not be condemned, according to the words: ‘Do not judge, so that you may not be judged’ (Mt 7.1), but also because we should regard ourselves as being more sinful than all others. Furthermore, we should not ascribe the sin to our brother but to the devil, who deceived him. For in this caseit is as if someone were to push another person towards a barrier, and we were to blame the person being pushed.

It may even be that someone will do something which appears inappropriate to those watching, but which is really done with a good intention. This happened once to the holy [Great] Old Man [Barsanuphius]. For as he was walking past the hippodrome on one occasion, he entered it, fully conscious of what he was doing. And when he saw each of the competitors striving to overtake and triumph over the others, he said to his thought: ‘Do you see how the followers of the devil eagerly race against each other? How much more so should we, who are heirs of the heavenly kingdom?’ And, as a result of that sight, he left that place more eager in his spiritual journey and ascetic struggle.

Moreover, again, we do not know whether through his repentance, the sinful brother will be more pleasing to God, like the publican who in an instant was saved through humility and confession. For it was the Pharisee who left condemned by his own arrogance. Therefore, in consideration of these things, let usimitate the humility of the publican and condemn ourselves in order to be justified; and let us avoid the arrogance of the Pharisee in order not to be condemned. [27]

The second passage is particularly helpful for those of us liable to be taken advantage of by those in need.

Letter 620

A Christ-loving payperson asked the same Old Man [St John]: ‘If someone is asked to give alms but has nothing to give, is that person obliged to borrow in order to give?’ Response.

If one is asked to give something that one does not have, then there is no need to borrow in order to give. For even the Apostle Peter was asked to give alms and responded: ‘I have no silver or gold’ (Acts 3.6); and he did not borrow any money in order to give some. Indeed, even if one only has the bare necessities, then again there is no need to spend it all, so that he may not later miss it or be afflicted by its absence. Moreover, if the person from whom alms are demanded says to the person making the request: ‘Forgive me, but I have nothing to give you’, then this is not a lie. For someone who has nothing beyond what is necessary does not have anything to give to another person. He should simply say to the person who is asking: ‘Forgive me, but I only have what I need myself.’ Remember the five bridesmaids who asked the others to give them oil for their lamps; the latter replied: ‘There will not be enough for us and for you’ (cf. Mt 25.9). And the Apostle Paul writes in his letter to the Corinthians: ‘May your abundance be for their need’ (cf. 2 Cor 8.14), as well as: ‘I do not intend that there should be relief for others and pressure on you’ (2 Cor 8.13). [28]

As St Nicodemus of the Holy Mountain says of the letters of Ss Barsanuphius of John, ‘Therefore, read this book diligently, and become vouchsafed the grace-giving gifts which are locked in it. Draw from it everflowing benefit.’ [29] In conclusion, here are the Troparion and Kontakion of the Saints, taken from the Great Horologion:

Dismissal Hymn of Saints Barsanuphius and John
First Tone. While Gabriel was saying

Divine and tuneful harps of the Holy Spirit’s mysteries, * sounding forth sweet hymns of discernment which soothe all those in sorrows: * ye moved men to cast off passion’s yoke * and trample upon Satan’s loathsome head. * Wherefore, Godlike Barsanuphius and wise John, * deliver us who now cry out: * Glory to Him that hath given you grace. * Glory to Him that hath blessed you. * Glory to Him that hath saved many through your sacred words of counsel. [30]

Kontakion of Saints Barsanuphius and John
Third Tone. On this day the Virgin

O great Barsanuphius, * and John, thou marvellous Prophet, * all the hidden secrets of * men and of God’s dispensation * brightly shone in the clear mirrors * of your most pure hearts; * and with beams of grace divine, ye cast out sin’s shadows * from the souls of men; O Fathers, * lights of discernment, * entreat the Lord for us all. [31]

This post is dedicated to Bishop Savas of Troas, a man of questionable politics, but tremendous generosity. I hope this meets your expectations.


[1] Fr John A. McGuckin, The SCM Press A-Z of Patristic Theology (London: SCM, 2005), p. 44.

[2] St Nicodemus of the Holy Mountain, ‘The Life of Our Holy Fathers Barsanuphius & John’, Guidance Toward Spiritual Life: Answers to the Questions of Disciples, by Ss Barsanuphius & John, sel. & tr. Hieromonk Seraphim (Rose) (Platina, CA: St Herman of Alaska Brotherhood, 1990), p. 21.

[3] St Nicholas (Velimirović), The Prologue from Ochrid, Vol. 1, trans. Mother Maria (Birmingham: Lazarica, 1986), p. 144.

[4] The Great Horologion, tr. Holy Transfiguration Monastery (Boston: HTM, 1997), p. 410.

[5] Fr John Chryssavgis, ‘Introduction’, Letters, Vol. 1, by Ss Barsanuphius & John, tr. Fr John Chryssavgis (Washington, DC: Catholic U of America, 2006), p. 6.

[6] St Nicodemus, p. 36.

[7] Ibid., p. 35.

[8] Brouria Bitton-Ashkelony & Aryeh Kofsky, The Monastic School of Gaza (Leiden: Brill, 2006), pp. 216-7.

[9] Fr Chryssavgis, p. 13, n. 15.

[10] Bitton-Ashkelony & Kofsky, pp. 219-20.

[11] Ibid., p. 217.

[12] Hieromonk Seraphim (Rose), ‘A Note on “Pseudo-Macarius” and the “Messalian Origin” of the Spiritual Homilies’, Fifty Spiritual Homilies, by St Macarius the Great, tr. A.J. Mason (Willits, CA: Eastern Orthodox, 1974), p. xxix.

[13] St Nicodemus, p. 21.

[14] Fr Chryssavgis, p. 6.

[15] An image associated with the sociological studies of Peter Brown.

[16] Bitton-Ashkelony & Kofsky, p. 83. Although I am not familiar with him, the authors ascribe this more pedagogical model to Philip Rousseau’s article ‘Ascetics as Mediators & as Teachers’, The Cult of Saints in Late Antiquity & the Middle Ages, ed. J. Howard-Johnson & P.A. Hayward (Oxford: Oxford U, 1999), pp. 45-59. They also cite S. Rubenson, ‘Philosophy & Simplicity: The Problem of Classical Education in Early Christian Biography’, Greek Biography & Panegyric in Late Antiquity, ed. T. Hägg & P. Rousseau (Berkeley, CA: U of California, 2000), pp. 110-39. I do not have these articles, but I would love to read them!

[17] Archimandrite Placide (Deseille), Orthodox Spirituality & the Philokalia, tr. Anthony P. Gythiel (Wichita, KS: Eighth Day, 2008), p. 22.

[18] The Philokalia: The Complete Text, Vol. 4, tr. G.E.H. Palmer, et al. (London: Faber, 1998), p. 266.

[19] Qtd. in Hieromonk Damascene (Christensen), ‘Preface’, Ss Barsanuphius & John, Guidance, p. 13.

[20] St Ignatius (Brianchaninov), The Arena: An Offering to Contemporary Monasticism, tr. Archim. Lazarus (Moore) (Jordanville, NY: Holy Trinity Monastery, 1991), p. 22.

[21] Fr Chryssavgis, p. 8.

[22] Jennifer L. Hevelone-Harper, Disciples of the Desert: Monks, Laity, & Spiritual Authority in 6th-c. Gaza (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins, 2005), p. x.

[23] See n. 2 above for the citation info. The numbering of the letters in Fr Seraphim’s translation is different from that in Fr Chryssavgis’s, and I’ve been finding it difficult to compare them. It’s too bad, because I would like to post—with references to the numbering in the complete translation by Fr Chryssavgis—Fr Damascene’s transcription of Fr Seraphim’s list of ‘subjects which he thought were especially vital for Orthodox Christians of today’ in the Elders’ correspondence (Fr Damascene, p. 17). As it is, it will be fairly time-consuming!

[24] Ss Barsanuphius & John, ‘Directions in Spiritual Work’, Writings from the Philokalia on Prayer of the Heart, ed. E. Kadloubovsky & G.E.H. Palmer (London: Faber, 1992), pp. 346-81. The translators also present St Theophan’s ‘Short Biographical Note’ on the Saints, ‘Taken from their lives composed by Nicodemus of the Holy Mountain’ (pp. 341-5).

[25] Ss Barsanuphius & John, Letters, 2 vols., tr. Fr John Chryssavgis (Washington, DC: Catholic U of America, 2006).

[26] St Nicodemus, p. 42.

[27] Ss Barsanuphius & John, Letters, Vol. 2, pp. 67-8.

[28] Ibid., p. 209.

[29] St Nicodemus, p. 45.

[30] Great Horologion, p. 411.

[31] Ibid., p. 412.

'The Same in a Crowd as in Solitude'—St Theodosius the Cœnobiarch

Today, 11 January on the Church’s calendar, we celebrate the memory of the Holy Theodosius the Cœnobiarch (423-529). St Theodosius is one of the pillars of Orthodox monasticism, and as such is traditionally depicted on the walls of monastery refectories. Derwas Chitty calls him an ‘initiate into the ways of the desert’, [1] and notes that at one point, ‘the spiritual life of the wilderness seemed to be focused around the two great abbots, Savas and Theodosius’. [2] St Nicholas (Velimirović) dubs him a ‘wondrous organizer of the monastic life’. [3] In the words of Cyril of Scythopolis, he is ‘worthily called blessed and citizen of heaven, the great glory of Palestine and boast of the desert, the stay of the monastic order, the general and champion of the correct doctrines, the leader and patron of the cenobitic rule’. [4] Here is the account of St Theodosius’s life from the Prologue:

The first founder and organiser of cenobitic monasticism, he was born of devout parents in Cappadocia, in the village of Mogarisses. As a young man, he visited Simeon Stylites, who blessed him and predicted for him great spiritual glory. Theodosius set out in search of a place in which to found a monastery. He took with him a censer containing cold charcoal and incense. At the place where the charcoal suddenly ignited of itself, he stopped, settled down and began to lead a life of asceticism. There very quickly gathered round him many monks of different nationalities and with different languages. He therefore built a church for each language-group, so that services were conducted and God praised at the same moment in Greek, Armenian, Georgian and so forth. But on a day when they were to receive Communion, all the brethren gathered in the great church, where the service was conducted in Greek. The refectory was common to all; they held all possessions in common, laboured in common, endured in common and often hungered in common. Theodosius was a sublime example to all the monks; an example in work, in prayer, in fasting, in vigils and in all the Christian virtues. And God endowed him with the gifts of wonder-working, to heal the sick, to be present and help from a distance, to tame wild beasts, to predict the future and to increase bread and wheat. Prayer was on his lips day and night. He entered peacefully into rest in the Lord in the year 529, at the age of 105. [5]

Although the more detailed Life by Theodore of Petra has not to my knowledge been translated, apart from Cyril (on whom I drew heavily last year), we can also supplement our portrait with the Life published by the Holy Apostles Convent. [6] This account makes the interesting remark that St Theodosius ‘exhorted’ his monks ‘with beneficial words and examples to live in a God-pleasing way, that is, having the remembrance of death as the true philosophy, for it can induce one to live in virtue’. [7] Later on, it adds:

Among his other attributes, the saint loved to read, and a book never left his hands, neither when he was ill nor in his old age, but he read day and night in order to receive benefit from the sacred words. In truth, he was worthy of admiration for, even though he never studied rhetoric, he was endowed to speak well by the grace of the Holy Spirit, and not by human wisdom, so that he surpassed even trained orators. He possessed an excellent memory and recited excerpts from Saint Basil, whom he emulated closely, and strove to adorn his soul with his ways, and his tongue with his words. [8]

Here is a passage from St Theodosius’s Life chosen by the 14th-c. Athonite, Nicephorus the Solitary, as an illustration of sobriety and guarding of the heart. As yesterday was the feast of St Theophan the Recluse, it seems fitting to be quoting Kadloubovsky’s and Palmer’s translation of St Theophan’s Russian translation of this text: [9]

St Theodosius was so deeply wounded by the sweet arrow of love and held so fast in love’s fetters that he practiced in actual deed the highest of God’s commandments: ‘Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy strength, and with all thy mind’ (Luke x. 27). And this can be achieved by no other means than concentrating all the natural powers of the soul in single desire for the Creator alone. Such also was the work of his mind, that when offering consolation he inspired awe, and when reprimanding someone, he was always kind and sweet. Who else, like him, could converse with many and appear quite at their service, yet at the same time could collect his senses and marshal them back within him? Who, like him, could enjoy, in the midst of tumult, the same inner peace as others who live in the desert? And who else has remained the same in a crowd as in solitude? Thus the great Theodosius, through collecting the senses and turning them within, became pierced by love for the Creator. [10]

Many years to Fr Theodosius of Xeropotamou on his nameday. For more on St Theodosius, including a (somewhat dubious) vampire connection, see my post of last year. In conclusion, here is the third Sticheron at ‘Lord, I have cried’ from Vespers for the Saint:

Venerable Father, God-bearer Theodosios, rightly you were counted worthy of the blessed life, having found it by purity and ascetic practice; for while living you passed over to the life on high, bidding all things farewell, and with the Bodiless Powers ceaselessly glorifying Christ, who took flesh ineffably from a Virgin and sunk our sins by Baptism in Jordan’s streams. Entreat him, implore him, Venerable Father, that the inhabited world may be given harmony, peace and great mercy. [11]

[1] Derwas Chitty, The Desert a City (Crestwood, NY: SVS, 1995), pp. 108-9.

[2] Ibid., p. 126.

[3] ‘Hymn of Praise’ from the Prologue (here).

[4] Cyril of Scythopolis, The Lives of the Monks of Palestine, trans. R.M. Price (Kalamazoo, MI: Cistercian, 1991), p. 262.

[5] St Nicholas (Velimirović), The Prologue from Ochrid, Vol. 1, trans. Mother Maria (Birmingham: Lazarica, 1986), p. 47.

[6] Although the HAC Life contains material that is not in Cyril but is in Theodore, it makes no mention of either of these in a note on various versions of St Theodosius’s Life, mentioning only St Symeon Metaphrastes, the New Paradise, the Synaxaristes, and Constantine Koukey’s St Theodosius the Coenobiarch (The Lives of the Saints of the Holy Land & the Sinai Desert, trans. Holy Apostles Convent [Buena Vista, CO: HAC, 1997], p. 36, n. 1).

[7] Ibid., p. 14. Constantine Cavarnos eruditely traces this idea of the ‘remembrance of death’ as ‘the true philosophy’ from Plato’s Phaedo through St John Climacus and various Fathers and Greek theologians (Constantine Cavarnos, The Hellenic-Christian Philosophical Tradition [Belmont, MA: Institute for Byzantine & Modern Greek Studies, 1989], pp. 95-8.

[8] Ibid., p. 23.

[9] In the HAC version, this story is found on p. 22. The wording there is nearly exactly that of Kadloubovsky’s and Palmer’s translation. In The Philokalia, Vol. 4, trans. G.E.H. Palmer, et al. (London: Faber, 1998), the story is on pp. 196-7.

[10] E. Kadloubovsky & G.E.H. Palmer, trans., Writings from the Philokalia on Prayer of the Heart (London: Faber, 1992), p. 25.

[11] From the translation of Archimandrite Ephrem (Lash), here.

'Poor, Thin, & Venerable'—St George the Chozebite

Today, 8 January on the Church’s calendar, we celebrate the memory of the Holy George of Chozeba, or ‘the Chozebite’ (6th-7th centuries). St George was one of the survivors of the terrible Persian conquest of the Holy Land in the early 7th century. Considering that his monastery in the Wadi Qelt is one of the few still-inhabited monasteries of the once burgeoning monasticism of Palestine, his life is not widely known. St Nicholas’s account of him in the Prologue is particularly terse—‘He lived the ascetic life in the seventh century in the Chozebite community on the road from Jerusalem to Jericho, where our holy Father John the Chozebite first lived as a monk.’ [1]

John Binns points out that the Prima Vita written by St George’s own disciple, Anthony the Chozebite, which was published in Analecta Bollandiana, [2] has not been translated into English. [3] But what appears to be an abridged version can be found in the Holy Apostles Convent’s The Lives of the Saints of the Holy Land & the Sinai Desert, [4] and it is on this, as well as Derwas Chitty’s summary of the Life, [5] that I shall base this post.

St George was born in Cyprus to pious parents with moderate land and means, ‘and was reared in ever form of piety and respect’. [6] An older brother, Heracleides, had become a monk at the Lavra at Calamon while on pilgrimage in the Holy Land, and the youth longed to join him there. But when his parents died, one of his uncles schemed to marry the pious young man to his daughter. St George sought refuge in a monastery where another uncle was the abbot, but when he was found there, the young man at last took flight to the Holy Land.

As he was still too young to be admitted to the Lavra at Calamon, Heracleides entrusted his brother to the abbot of the monastery of the Mother of God at Chozeba, who, ‘after he observed the youth’s fervor and monastic piety, tonsured him a monk’. [7] The full extent of his piety, however, soon became known in an extraordinary way. As Chitty tells it, St George was put ‘under a rough old Mesopotamian monk as assistant gardener. When the old man struck his apprentice for a supposed fault, [8] the hand that struck was dried up, but was healed at the young man’s prayers’. [9]

As so often happens, news of the miracle traveled quickly, and the young monk found himself at the centre of much unwanted attention. Rather than swallow ‘the bait of vainglory’, [10] he secretly left Chozeba and joined his elder brother at Caramon. According to Anthony:

Their way of life in this place was as follows: Never did they partake of food that was cooked on the fire, except when they were visited by others, and they ordered the doorman of the tower to keep the leftover food from one Sunday to the next. By this, they sustained themselves. The basin that was used for food was never washed, nor was it emptied. It abounded with worms, and the smell it emitted was sensed from afar. They never tasted wine. These things were sufficient to them. [11]

St George remained at Calamon until the death at the age of seventy of his brother, Abba Heracleides, whom Anthony describes as ‘a man full of goodness and faith, adorned with all the virtues and famed throughout the Jordan Valley as a virgin, a man of stillness, without possessions, merciful, and continent above everyone else’. [12] Left ‘alone in the cell’, St George ‘grieved and lamented the death of his brother, but he continued his way of life and austerity with courage, and was beloved by all’. [13] But when the abbot of the lavra fell asleep in the Lord, the monks fell to arguing over who was to be the successor, and our holy Father was told in a vision to return to the monastery of his repentance, Chozeba, once again.

At Chozeba, St George was given a cell by the holy elder Leontius, who ‘had achieved such virtue through almsgiving that, after his repose, one of the elders saw the holy Leontius standing completely enveloped in fire before the holy table’. [14] There St George followed the custom of the cell-dwellers in going to the cœnobium every Saturday evening for the Vigil and Liturgy and trapeza on Sunday, ‘But,’ according to Chitty, ‘he would never spend Sunday night in the cœnobium.’ [15] Indeed, Anthony tells us, ‘No one knew how he fared or conducted himself in his cell, except that he had neither wine, nor oil, nor bread, nor garments, other than a short rason, that he wore in church.’ [16] It seems St George would collect rags to sew together for his garments and mattress, and bits of discarded food and leftovers to grind up and make into dried balls for his sustenance. [17]

At this point, Chitty tells an interesting story behind the Life of St George and its author, Anthony the Chozebite, as well as offering some insightful remarks about the Vita:

Some time towards the end of this period, two aspirants to the monastic life, warned that the route to Rhaithou was infested with Saracen robbers, were advised to come to Choziba, where the hegumen Dorotheus received them, and tonsured them in due course. But one of them, going up with the hegumen to the Holy City, slipped off unbeknown and made his way after all to Rhaithou. His companion Antony, must distressed, contemplated following him thither. Dorotheus, failing to dissuade him, appealed to George, who proved more persuasive, and from this time Antony became George’s disciple and constant attendant. To him we owe the saint’s Life, written some twenty years later, when Modestus was Patriarch (i.e. in AD 631), and Dorotheus had become Crosswarden. While historically reliable, he is not primarily a historian as Cyril of Scythopolis may be said to be. But he is more concerned than Cyril to enter into the spirituality of his master and convey it to us. Herein is his great value, for this is the generation which had known the old Roman security and survived its shattering by the Persians. The besetting sins of his generation he sees in pride, shown especially as aphobia—lack of fear of God—and a ‘contemplation falsely so called’; and judgment of our neighbour. Love and respect for God and for our neighbour constantly urged. In a world which certainly did not undervalue dogmatic orthodoxy, we are glad to find his master’s words quoted: ‘For I tell you, brethren, that there is not a Greek, or a Jew, or a Samaritan, who has genuine piety and gentleness, who is not loved and found acceptable with God and with man.’ [18]

But to return to the main progression of our story, St George, having heard about the incursion of the Persians into the Holy Land and their capture of Damascus, and ‘completely inflamed by spiritual love for the fulfillment of the divine will, . . . supplicated the philanthropic God with continuous tears to take pity upon His people’ and deliver them from the Saracens. In response, however, he was told to ‘Go down to Jericho and see the works of the people.’ [19] Sufficiently horrified by the experience, the elder ‘wept and lamented because of the irreverence and perversity of the people, or rather, their ignorance and perversity’, and prayed to God with the following, terrible words: ‘Master, God and Lord Who willest that all be saved and come to the knowledge of the truth, raise Thy rod and punish this people, for they walk not according to knowledge.’ Then, seeing a vision of a rod of fire extending from the Holy City to Bosra, in Syria, St George knew that what he had just prayed for would be carried out, and he wept for the people of the Holy Land. [20]

When the Persians attacked Jerusalem, freeing ‘all the enemies of the Roman order . . . to roam the country in search of plunder’, the abbots of Mar Sabas and Chozeba took most of their monks to Arabia. [21] St George however refused to go, and insisted that Anthony stay as well, saying, ‘Though the Lord may chasten us for our sins as a compassionate and loving Father, He will not forsake His Holy City, but His eyes ever watch over it and over this land as the Land of Promise, unto the end of the world, according to His promises.’ [22] Eventually however, St George was persuaded to leave his cell and hide. During this time Anthony stayed with him, and while he was often in danger from the Jews and Muslims, he was not taken, ‘protected by the Old Man’s prayers because he had obeyed his word’. [23] When at last the elder was found by a band of the Saracens, ‘something in George’s bearing made them let him go’ [24]—in Anthony’s words, ‘When they saw Saint George to be poor, very thin and venerable, they revered his state; being incited by God, they gave him a straw bag filled with bread and a vessel of water, and released him, saying: “Go wherever thou wishest to save thyself!”’ [25]

Thus at night he went down to the Jordan, where he stayed until the Persian army passed Jericho on their way to Damascus with captives from Jerusalem. Having stayed for a while in the Holy City, during which time his disciple Anthony was with the abbot and other brethren in Jericho, [26] St George returned to Chozeba with the rest of the fathers. ‘But’, according to Chitty, ‘even George returned only to the cœnobium, not to the outer cells. For one would hardly dare now to venture into the gorge alone: since the Persians, it had become all savage with wild beasts and unclean spirits.’ [27] Back at Chozeba, St George ‘daily taught the brethren, and a great number of miracles were wrought’. [28]

The faithful disciple and hagiographer, Anthony, tells a touching story of St George’s final hours. He writes, ‘During the evening when the blessed one reposed, in order to show the confidence with which he departed to the Lord, by God’s economy, a crowd of strangers arrived.’ It seems that Anthony, as monastery cellarer, was detained by the guests just when he so desperately wanted to be with his dying elder. But finally, he tells us, the elder sensed his distress and sent the message: ‘Do not be sorry or agitated, my child, but complete thy ministering, and I will wait until thou comest.’ When at last Anthony had finished his duties, he went to St George, who embraced him, kissed him, and blessed him, and, turning to the East, said three times: ‘Come out, my soul, now in Christ, come out!’ And with this, ‘he surrendered his spirit to the Lord, with Whose help he strove and accomplished a life worthy of praise and above reproach.’ [29] Finally, Anthony concludes, ‘After they buried him with psalms, hymns and spiritual odes, they laid him to rest in the tombs of the holy fathers. Now he is found among the choirs of the saints and intercedes with them on our behalf and for all the world.’ [30]


[1] St Nicholas (Velimirović), The Prologue from Ochrid, Vol. 1, trans. Mother Maria (Birmingham: Lazarica, 1986), p. 37.

[2] Analecta Bollandiana VII (1888), pp. 97-144. The Life was totally unknown until the nineteenth century, when it was discovered in a 10th-c. MS at the Koeslinian Library in Paris (No, 303).

[3] John Binns, Introduction, The Lives of the Monks of Palestine, by Cyril of Scythopolis, trans. R.M. Price (Kalamazoo, MI: Cistercian, 1991), p. xii.

[4] Anthony the Chozebite, ‘The Life & Struggles of Our Holy Father Among the Saints George the Chozevite’, The Lives of the Saints of the Holy Land & the Sinai Desert, trans. Holy Apostles Convent (Buena Vista, CO: HAC, 1988), pp. 1-9.

[5] Derwas Chitty, The Desert a City (Crestwood, NY: St Vladimir’s Seminary, 1995), pp. 151-2, 155-6, 158.

[6] Anthony, p. 1.

[7] Ibid., p. 2.

[8] According to Anthony, this incident took place ‘by the tombs of the five holy fathers, who were laid rest there’ (ibid., pp. 2-3). I can’t seem to figure out who these ‘fathers’ would be.

[9] Chitty, p.151.

[10] Anthony, p. 3.

[11] Ibid., p. 3.

[12] Ibid., p. 4.

[13] Ibid., p. 5.

[14] Ibid., p. 6.

[15] Chitty, p. 151.

[16] Anthony, p. 6.

[17] I can’t figure out why Holy Apostles Convent insists on translating the word for these things as ‘spheres’ when ‘balls’ would seem to do quite nicely!

[18] Chitty, p. 152.

[19] Anthony, p. 6.

[20] Ibid., p. 7.

[21] Chitty, p. 156.

[22] Ibid., p. 155.

[23] Ibid., p. 155.

[24] Ibid., p. 156.

[25] Anthony, p. 8.

[26] Chitty, p. 158.

[27] Ibid., p. 158.

[28] Anthony, p. 8.

[29] Ibid., p. 8.

[30] Ibid., p. 9.

'All-Praised Founder of Cities in the Wilderness'—St Sabbas the Sanctified

Dear readers: Per the suggestion of Mr Tartski, I have decided to try giving my citations in endnotes rather than in-text as I have always done before. Please let me know what you think of this format.

Today, 5 December on the Church’s calendar, we celebrate the memory of the Holy Sabbas the Sanctified (439-532), founder of the Great Lavra known as ‘Mar Saba’, which, ‘In spite of many vicissitudes, and not a few Bedouin devastations, . . . has continued with an unbroken history to the present day.’[1] St Sabbas’s biographer, Cyril of Scythopolis, calls him ‘This angel on earth and heavenly man Sabas, the wise and knowledgeable teacher, the advocate of orthodoxy and accuser of heresy, who proved to be a faithful and prudent steward, who multiplied the talents of God, who was clother power from on high’, and summarises his achievements, saying that ‘by the favour of God the Father, the assistance of Christ and the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, [he] colonized the desert with a huge number of monks and founded in it . . . seven famous monasteries . . . .’[2] John Binns, though he is strangely critical of the Saint, writes, ‘The genius of Sabas lay in his ability to establish an environment in which the monastic life could take root and grow.’[3] I have briefly summarised the life of St Sabbas based on Cyril’s account—and added a couple of details of interest—here, so today I will simply offer the material from the Prologue:

The unknown village of Mutalaska, in the province of Cappadocia, became famous through this great light of the Orthodox Church, for St Sava was born there. He left the home of his parents, John and Sophia, at the age of eight and became a monk in a nearby monastery called ‘Flavian’s’. After ten years, he moved to the monasteries of Palestine, staying longest in the monastery of St Euthymius the Great (Jan. 20th) and Theoctistus. Euthymius, who had the gift of discernment, foretold that he would be a famous monk and leader of monks, and that he would found a monastery that would be greater than any other of that day. After St Euthymius’s death, Sava went into the desert, where he lived for five years as a hermit in a cave which an angel of God showed him. After that, when he had become a perfected monk, he began by divine providence to gather round him many desirous of the spiritual life. They very quickly grew in number, so that Sava had to build both a church and many cells. Some Armenians also came to him, and he set aside a cave for them, and they celebrated the services there in their own language. When his father died, his aged mother Sophia came to him and he made her a nun and gave her a cell away from the monastery, where she lived in asceticism till her death. This holy father endured many attacks from those close to him, from heretics and from demons. But he overcame them all in these ways: those close to him he won over by his goodness and forbearance, the heretics by an unshakeable confession of the Orthodox faith, and the demons with the sign of the Cross and the invocation of God’s aid. He had a particularly severe battle with the demons on the mountain of Castellium, where he founded the second of his seven monasteries. He and his neighbour, Theodosius the Great, are considered to be the greatest lights and pillars of Orthodoxy in the East. Kings and Patriarchs were brought to the right Faith by them, and these holy and wonderful men, strong in the power of God, served each and every man as an example of humility. St Sava entered into rest in 532 at the age of ninety-four, after a life of great labour and great reward.[4]

St Nicholas also gives us another story about St Sabbas in the ‘For Consideration’ in today’s Prologue:

A man may be great in some skill, as a statesman or a military leader, but no-one amongst men is greater than the man great in faith, hope and love. The greatness of the faith and hope in God held by St Sava the Sanctified is best shown by the following incident: One day the monastery treasurer came to Sava and said he would not be able to sound the semantron the following Saturday and Sunday to summon the brethren for the common service and meal, because there was not a trace of flour in the monastery, nor anything at all to eat or drink. For the same reason, even the Divine Liturgy was impossible. The saint replied without hesitation: ‘I shall not cancel the Liturgy because of a lack of flour. He who commanded us not to be concerned for bodily things is faithful to His word, and is able to sustain us in a time of hunger.’ And he placed all his trust in God. In this extremity, he was prepared to send some of the church vessels and vestments to be sold in the city, so that the divine services might not be foregone, nor the brothers’ customary meal. But, before Saturday dawned, some men, moved by divine Providence, brought thirty mules laden with wheat, wine and oil to the monastery. ‘What do you say now, my brother?’, Sava asked the treasurer. ‘Shall we not strike the semantron and gather the fathers?’ The treasurer was ashamed of his lack of faith, and begged the abbot’s forgiveness. Sava’s biographer called him ‘severe with demons, but mild with men’. Some monks rebelled against St Sava, and were driven from the monastery by order of Patriarch Elias [of Jerusalem]. They built themselves huts on the bed of the Tekoa river, and lived there in dire straits without the bare necessities of life. Hearing that they were starving, St Sava loaded mules with flour and took them to them himself. Seeing that they had no church, he built them one. At first the monks received him with hatred, but afterwards they returned his love with love, and repented of their former evil towards him.[5]

In relating the story of St Sabbas’s blessed repose, Cyril tells us that the great Abba ‘summoned the fathers of the laura and gave them as superior a monk of Berytus by birth, called Melitas, telling him to guard inviolate the traditions handed down in his monasteries and giving them to him in writing.’[6] Derwas Chitty comments at length on this reference to a written Sabbaite rule:

His younger contemporary Benedict, who was settled at Monte Cassino by the time of Sabas’ death, has bequeathed his Rule to us. Sabas’ Life would seem to imply that he also left behind him a written Rule. It has not come down to us, though a collection of Rules for his monastery of several centuries later does survive in two MSS. On Sinai, and is of very great interest, perhaps retaining some reminiscences at least of the original Rule. Maybe it is more in keeping with the spirit of East Christian monasticism that the written Rule should not survive, while there remains the pattern of his living monastery, whose Typikon has continued through the centuries to take perhaps first place among the Typika which regulate the liturgical order of the Eastern Orthodox Church.[7] When Egypt had slipped off into heresy or schism, and the Athonite monasteries were far in the future, the Lavra of St Sabas, with the other surviving Judaean monasteries only less tenacious under the lordship of Islam, was moulding the shape of Orthodox monasticism for the centuries to come, developing its hymnody and liturgical order, and gather up its dogma, with a continued intellectual life of which St John of Damascus is only one, though the supreme, example.[8]

That this last point is so should not be surprising, for as Cyril writes:

While our all-praiseworthy father Sabas was still in the flesh, there was one confession of faith in all the monasteries of the desert, and one could see all the children of Jerusalem walking in the house of God in concord, upholding in harmony the inviolable and irrefragable character of the divine doctrines, so as to fulfil the scriptural saying, ‘Lift up your eyes round about; and behold, your children are gathered together’ (Is 60:4).[9]

The memory of such a powerful spiritual personality must have been great, and it is natural that he should have left a lasting mark on Orthodox monasticism.

Here is the ‘Hymn of Praise’ for St Sabbas from the Prologue:

Venerable Sava, chief of monks,
Spiritual commander of Christ's heroes,
Was glorified by fasting, vigils and meekness,
By prayer and faith and blessed mercy.
You taught the monks to not be concerned with bread;
You entrusted yourself to heaven, with labor and prayer.
You sought neither precedence nor rank of any kind.
Most rarely did you taste of oil and wine.
You kept all the services at the appointed time.
‘Let the service be a joy and not a heavy burden,’
St Sava told the monks,
And he showed this to all by his example.
Like a wise gardener, he enclosed the garden,
And carefully planted many young men.
The young men grew and brought forth fruit:
A regiment of monks, to the glory of Sava.
Fifteen hundred years have passed,
Yet Sava’s spiritual garden still blooms:
One thousand monks, a hundred thousand,
Have been raised up by Sava’s community up to now.
St Sava, glorious recluse,
O God-pleaser, pray for us also.

Finally, here is the Kontakion for the Saint:

Kontakion. Plagal of Fourth Tone
To thee, the Champion Leader

O blessed Sabbas, thou wast offered from thine infancy * through thy great virtue as a pure and spotless sacrifice * unto God, Who ere thy birth, verily foreknew thee; * wherefore thou wast an adornment of the righteous Saints, * an all-praised founder of cities in the wilderness. * Hence, I cry to thee: * Rejoice, O Father of great renown.[10]

[1] Derwas Chitty, The Desert a City: An Introduction to the Study of Egyptian & Palestinian Monasticism under the Christian Empire (Crestwood, NY: SVS, 1995), p. 117.

[2] Cyril of Scythopolis, The Lives of the Monks of Palestine, trans. R.M. Price [Kalamazoo, MI: Cistercian, 1991], p. 167.

[3] Ibid., p. xxii.

[4] St Nicholas (Velimirović), The Prologue from Ochrid, Vol. 4, trans. Mother Maria (Birmingham: Lazarica, 1986), pp. 287-8.

[5] St Nicholas, pp. 288-9.

[6] Cyril, p. 191.

[7] St Nicholas notes, ‘Among all his other great and good works, let this be remembered above all: that he compiled the first Order of Services for use in monasteries, now known as the Jerusalem Typikon’ (St Nicholas, p. 168).

[8] Chitty, pp. 117-8.

[9] Cyril, p. 197.

[10] The Great Horologion, trans. HTM (Boston: HTM, 1997), pp. 333-4.