Our righteous Father Gregory of Sinai.
Our righteous Father Gregory of Sinai was born in the little village of Kukula in Asia Minor not far from Smyrna, of well-to-do parents, in the reign of the elder Andronicus Paleologus (reigned 1282–1328), at a time when the Turks were making incursions deeper and deeper into Asia Minor. The young Gregory was well educated in both secular and sacred learning. When they seized Saint Gregory’s village, he with his family were taken as captives to Laodicea. The Laodiceans took compassion on them and ransomed them, after which Gregory went to Cyprus, where he won the love and esteem of all by his cheerful and virtuous ways.
On Cyprus Gregory lived under the direction of a saintly monk living in stillness, who clothed him in the schema and guided him well in the monastic life. In search of greater labors, Gregory left for Mount Sinai, where he astonished his seniors in asceticism by his almost supernatural fasting, vigils, psalmody, and prayer, which were all grounded in humility and genuine obedience. While fulfilling all his obediences with diligence and thoroughness, he never neglected his prayers, and was the first to enter church and the last to leave.
He served as cook for three years – always one of the most trying and thankless tasks in a monastery. He was a skilled calligrapher, he read the Holy Scriptures assiduously with deep understanding, and he made the labor of climbing to the summit of Sinai daily to pray where God had appeared to Moses.
When his more than human way of life had excited jealousy in the weaker among the brethren, Gregory left for Jerusalem where he worshipped the Holy Places, and thence to Crete, where through divine revelation, in answer to his prayer to find a spiritual man who could lead him to perfection, he came under the direction of a clairvoyant elder named Arsenius who informed him that all his efforts hitherto had been righteous activity (praxis), but not divine vision (theoria), which, at Gregory’s fervent request, Arsenius taught him. Once Gregory had advanced in the mystery of prayer and in knowledge of the snares of the enemy of our salvation, he went to Mount Athos. Here he visited the monasteries and hermitages seeking a guide in mental prayer, until he found three monks versed in this at the hermitage of Magula. Here he attained to the heights of inner prayer and was inwardly transfigured through the grace of the Holy Spirit, overcoming the passions and the fallen man and experiencing the resurrection of the soul before the General Resurrection.
Saint Gregory also had many saintly disciples who attained to great heights of prayer. Callistus, who knew him well and wrote his life, became Patriarch of Constantinople and is among the Saints (celebrated on June 20). Another of Saint Gregory’s disciples, named Aaron, was blind, yet through his ardent faith in God he was given the gift to have the eyes of his soul so enlightened that he had no need of his bodily eyes, and not only could walk without a guide, but saw the doings of others at a great distance away. Saint Callistus, the author of Saint Gregory’s life, explains that Adam had this inner vision when first created, but he, and we through him, lost it when he fell. Aaron also knew in advance not only what Feasts of the Master were approaching, but also those of the great Saints, to such a degree that when asked how he knew, he said that a great illumination and glory came nigh to his soul from God on such occasions. Another disciple, named Clement, had the grace to see a bright cloud descending upon Great Lavra at the chanting of “More honourable than the Cherubim,” whenever he was sent there by Saint Gregory. Saint Gregory also knew Saint Maximus the Hut-burner (Jan. 13) and Saint Romulus of Vidin (Sept. 18); the latter entered Saint Gregory’s monastery at Paroria and was trained by him in the ascetical life.
Many of the Athonite monks who lived the outward life of asceticism without the deeper understanding of the inner life of prayer and hesychasm rose up against Gregory for introducing new teachings. Giving way to wrath, Gregory went to the Protaton, the governing body of Mount Athos, and submitted his teachings for approval to its head, the Protos, who highly esteemed Saint Gregory’s spiritual achievements and received him with such kindness and respect that Gregory’s enemies were persuaded to do likewise. Because of the growing number of monks and hermits who came to him for spiritual guidance, he began to change his abode and sought out the most deserted and impassable parts of Athos.
When the Turks threatened to invade and devastate the Holy Mountain as they were doing with Greece, Saint Gregory sought some other place to lead the life of stillness. After journeys here and there he finally settled in Paroria, on the border of Bulgaria and the Byzantine Empire, where he founded a lavra under the protection of King John Alexander of Bulgaria, who not only protected him and his monks from the brigands that troubled the area but also bestowed money and lands on his monastery for its support. From this monastery his teachings of the inner life of prayer illuminated many Greeks, Bulgarians, Serbs, and Romanians who in turn sowed his teachings in their own lands. Here it was that he ended his earthly life, giving his soul up to God in peace on November 27, 1346.
He and his contemporary Saint Gregory Palamas were the two great leaders of the hesychast movement of the fourteenth century. A selection of his writings on prayer is included in Volume Four of the Philokalia, and the editors of the English edition note that in his Discourse on the Transfiguration he refers to the light that appeared to the Apostles on Mount Tabor as “divine and uncreated” (Philokalia, Faber & Faber, Volume Four, p. 208).
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