JOHN of the LADDER/JOHN CLIMACUS (579-649AD)

The world’s most famous monastery is the one on Mt Sinai in modern Egypt – Saint Catherine’s.  And its most famous resident and Abbot was undoubtedly Saint John Climacus, or John of the Ladder – named as such for his famous book The Ladder of Divine Ascent.  This Sunday we celebrated his memory.

Climacus is one of the greatest minds the world has ever known, a sort of mediaeval Tony Robbins.  The Ladder is the first, and maybe even the only, book you will ever need on living the Christian life.  With it, he practically invented the “self help” book, and it to this day probably still remains the greatest “self help” book ever written.  Much Christian thought and dialogue is based on the person of Christ and His acts, which is as it should be, but too little is expended on the human response – how should we live with this knowledge of Christ’s gospel – His nika – His victory?  The Ladder, while primarily written for monks, provides us with answers in this regard, of how we unite ourselves to that victory, in a set of thirty “steps”, which Climacus likens to a “ladder” which we ascend to meet Christ.  This is not, of course, “works based salvation”, but Orthodox synergia – a daily putting on of Christ and humbling ourselves.  It is salvation viewed as a journey, not as a legal status, and it is a book that is realistic about human nature and the deceits that our brains run past us when we are striving to be more like Christ.

You can read, download, or print The Ladder of Divine Ascent here.  Of course, the book is written for monastics, and ordinary people should not expect to work on the steps therein with the same vigour, but nonetheless there is plenty that can be applied to ordinary believers “in the world”.  As John himself says:  “To admire the labours of the saints is good; to emulate them wins salvation; but to wish suddenly to imitate their life in every point is unreasonable and impossible.”

PATRICK of IRELAND (390-461AD, 17th March)

Saint Patrick is probably familiar to most of us.  Sold into slavery in Ireland, he managed to escape to France, before returning later on, this time as a Bishop and as a missionary.

Patrick, while not the first Christian missionary to visit Ireland, is definitely the most important.  He founded many monastaries and converted many of the pagan Irish to Christ.  The legend that he drove the snakes from Ireland probably refers to the pagan druids that many a village made redundant following Patrick’s preaching.

In the Orthodox Church, Patrick is known as the Enlightener of Ireland, and is commemorated as such.  Far more than just some mythical man that liked shamrocks and green beer, he is a real Saint of the Church who did great things for Christ in Ireland.

FORTY MARTYRS of SEBASTE (320AD, 9th March)

While Christianity had officially been legalized in 313AD, the Eastern Emperor Licinius continued to cause trouble for Christians, most famously in Sebaste (in central modern Turkey) where he had forty of his soldiers stripped naked and frozen to death on a lake.  The story goes that, while one of the soldiers acquiesced and renounced his faith, another soldier, on seeing this, confessed Christ, threw off his clothes, and joined the other 39 on the ice.  While their bodies were burned the next day and the ashes scattered, Christians gathered as much of their relics as they were able.

The bravery of these forty men soon became renowned, and there are many churches now dedicated to them, including a chapel in the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem.  They are even mentioned in the modern Orthodox wedding service as examples of how a couple must sacrifice for one another!

SYMEON the NEW THEOLOGIAN (949-1022AD, 12th March)

Symeon, a monastic of Constantinople in the Roman Empire, is one of only three Saints to be given the title “Theologian” by the Church (the others being the Apostle John, and Gregory Nazianzus, an Archbishop of Constantinople).  A controversial figure whose unconventional ways as a monk and abbot often put him offside with his brethren, his major themes were the direct experience of God through the ascetic life (not academic knowledge or learning), God as Divine Light, and the importance for every Christian of having a spiritual father – a more senior figure to whom one could be accountable in one’s walk and seek guidance from.

Saint Symeon, more than any other Saint, is probably the embodiment of the “mystical East” in terms of what sets Orthodoxy apart.  I am hoping to read some of his work and familiarize myself with him more in future.

GREGORY the GREAT (540-604AD, 12th March)

Gregory, along with Leo a century and a half earlier, is probably the most revered of all the canonical Roman Popes, presiding during a period when Rome had been reunited with the empire bearing its name.  He is famous for sending the missionary Augustine of Canterbury to re-evangelise Britain after the settlement of English tribes there.  He also is famous as a liturgist, having composed the bulk of what is now, in the Orthodox Church, the weekday lenten Eucharistic service (the Liturgy of the Presanctified Gifts).  Gregorian chant is attributed to him.  Ironically, given the nature of the modern papacy, he defended the equality of the Bishops against the Bishop of Constantinople, who had recently taken the title “Ecumenical”.

On a personal level, Gregory was renowned for his pious monastic way of life, and his generosity towards the poor.  During his reign, the Byzantine holdings on the Italian peninsula began to shift more and more under Papal, rather than imperial command, spurred by necessity from Lombard incursion and a lack of leadership from the East.

GREGORY PALAMAS (1296-1359)
This Sunday 8th March is the Sunday of Gregory Palamas, a pivotal figure in Christianity and specifically in the Eastern understanding of Christian faith.

By the 14th Century, the Roman Catholics had solidified their break from the traditional faith.  In addition to the filioque – the idea that the Holy Spirit proceeds from the Son as well as God the Father, they now taught penal substitutionary atonement as their primary soteriology, and had introduced the concept of a legalistic purgatory, as well as defined indulgences to alleviate the harsh torture of such a supposed place.  Their vision of the faith had turned scholastic and theoretical.

Into this debate came Gregory Palamas, who, having learned traditional hesychastic prayer on Mt Athos, promulgated the more noetic view of faith – that God is experienced, not philosophised into existence, that experiencing God comes through prayer of the heart and quietness, not intellectual musing.  Furthermore, when God is experienced in His fullness, as the three Apostles experienced Him at Christ’s Transfiguration, then this experience itself is uncreated – God’s light is not a creation of God, but God Himself.  God has an essence, which cannot be known or experienced, but He also has uncreated energies, which can be experienced.  These energies constitute God’s grace, which Western Christians spearheaded by the monk Barlaam tried to argue was not uncreated, but a created product of God, and that in seeking God, philosophy was more useful than prophecy, prayer or visions.

Gregory’s theology was controversial, and came under huge scrutiny by Barlaam, and by many people in the Eastern Church.  Finally, there was a Council in Constantinople in 1341, and the Church came down on the side of Gregory:  The Uncreated Light was real and Christianity was an experiential, not a scholastic faith, and to this day this is the Orthodox Christian approach.

Here’s a nun to talk all about him:

JAMES THE FASTER (6th Century AD)

I wasn’t planning to write about this fellow, but he came up as a Saint of the Day on Wednesday (4th March) and I was blown away by his story.  How many Saints out there have sex with a teenage girl, then kill her to hide the evidence?!  And yet this is the story of Saint James the Faster – a great ascetic of the Eastern Roman Empire from what is now Lebanon, who even burned his own hand to stop himself from having sex with a temptress, only to sin with, and then kill, a young girl he had healed from demon possession.  In James we see the worst of the worst – it’s hard to imagine a greater fall from grace – and yet he bounced back and was healed and restored by God… after spending ten years sleeping in an open grave of course!  Saint James, like King David before him, is testament to the unmerited grace of God, and the truth than anyone can be redeemed.

42 MARTYRS of AMORIUM (845AD)

The recent martyrdom of the 21 Coptic Christians in Libya is nothing new.  In fact, on March 6th 845, Muslims beheaded 42 Christian Generals nearly 1200 years ago after capturing them during a war of conquest in modern day Turkey.  They were kept prisoner for 7 years in Samarra, then martyred when, after many tortures, they would not submit to Islam and deny Christ.  The more things change, the more they stay the same…

I thought I might introduce a new feature here at Eternal Vigilance – the Saint (or Saints) of the week.  There are several reasons – the first is that many modern Christians have no clue of their famous forbears in the faith, or the history of the Church from the resurrection of Christ until the present day.  The second is the amazing example that these people set, and the things they teach us even today.  The third is that the Church celebrates these people on feast days every single day throughout the year, and I thought it might be good to mark the more prominent of them as we go.

All these Saints will be great men and women canonised by the Orthodox Church, of course, but I hope you will forgive my bias in that regard.  It needs to be clarified that the Church does not make people Saints – it is the grace of God alone that does it, and the Church merely confirms whomever has been revealed.  There may well be millions of Saints in heaven abiding with Christ.  However, lest we become complacent about diligently working out our own salvation, God reveals to us a comparative handful of people only, to give us hope and something to aspire to, as well as people through whom we can seek intercession for our ongoing theosis.

This last week was kind of a bumper week, and I have three Saints I want to recognize:

POLYCARP (80-167AD)
Polycarp, whose feast day was celebrated last Monday 23rd February, was a disciple of the Apostle John, and was appointed Episcopos (Bishop) of Smyrna by him.  He is one of the most prominent of the next generation of Christians after the passing of the Apostles.  We have one surviving text from him – his Letter to the Phillipians, but in him we see a continuation of the Church the Apostles founded, and their faith.  It has even been suggested by scholars that he was the first to compile the New Testament as we know it today.

The account of his martyrdom is one of the most famous of the Early Church, and has relevance today, especially with the violence of radical Islamists against Christians.  Brought into a Roman arena, he was challenged:

“…the proconsul asked him whether he was Polycarp. On his confessing that he was, [the proconsul] sought to persuade him to deny Christ, saying,  Swear by the fortune of Cæsar; repent, and say, Away with the Atheists. …Then, the proconsul urging him, and saying, Swear, and I will set you at liberty, reproach Christ; Polycarp declared, Eighty and six years have I served Him, and He never did me any injury: how then can I blaspheme my King and my Saviour?

The man had balls.  They proceeded to burn him alive, though the flames did not actually kill him, and they had to finish the job with a dagger.  We also see in the account of his martyrdom that 2nd Century Christians would venerate and honour the remains of reposed Saints, such that the Romans actually decided to rekindle the fire to burn his body after his death so that his relics would be dishonoured.  He remains one of the most famous of the Early Church martyrs.

PHOTINI (?-66AD)Better known as the Samaritan woman of John 4, her feast day was last Thursday 26th February, and her encounter with Christ at the Well of Jacob was truly transformational.  She converted her five sisters to the faith, as well as her two sons.  She later moved to Carthage in North Africa, before the persecution of her son Victor brought her to Rome to face Nero.  After her sisters and sons were brutally and savagely murdered, Nero offered her one last chance to sacrifice to other gods, to which she replied:

“O most impious of the blind, you profligate and stupid man! Do you think me so deluded that I would consent to renounce my Lord Christ and instead offer sacrifice to idols as blind as you?”

Photini was, fittingly, martyred by being thrown down a well.  She is my family’s patron saint, and well loved for her ability to turn her life around into one of service and devotion.

RAPHAEL of Brooklyn (1860-1915)
Friday 27th February saw the 100th Anniversary of the repose of St Raphael, the first locally consecrated American Bishop, and the first Arab Bishop to serve in the United States.  He personally founded 30 parishes in the United States and was adored for his personal piety, asceticism and love for his people.

Holy Polycarp, Holy Photini, Holy Raphael, pray unto God for us!