Our righteous Father John the Hesychast of Mar Sabbas Monastery, former Bishop of Colonia.
Saint John the Hesychast of Mar Sabbas Monastery was born about the year 454 at Nicopolis in Armenia of rich and noble parents privileged with rank and offices in the Imperial Court of Byzantium. Upon his parents’ repose when he was eighteen years of age, John consecrated himself to God and used his inheritance to build a church dedicated to the All-holy Mother of God and Ever-virgin Mary. He renounced not only the world but his own flesh also, living a strict ascetical life in genuine humility, while ruling the monks under his care with discretion and firmness.
Because of the grace that was in him he was made Bishop of Colonia at the age of twenty-eight, without relaxing the austerity of his life as a monk. After nine years as a bishop, John had to endure many temptations from his brother-in-law who had become governor of Armenia (his sister having died before this) and interfered tyrannically in the government of John’s diocese. The holy Bishop was compelled to go to Constantinople towards the end of the reign of the Emperor Zeno, whose help he obtained in restoring his diocese to order.
Instead of returning, however, he entrusted the clergy who had accompanied him with taking the imperial orders back to his diocese, and secretly travelled to Jerusalem, where he spent some time in a hospice founded by the blessed Empress Eudocia, praying that God guide him to a place where he could struggle for his salvation. One night a bright star in the form of a cross appeared to him and led him to the Great Lavra of Saint Sabbas the Sanctified, who received him as a novice, since John hid his rank out of humility. This was in the thirty-eighth year of his life. He was assigned the duties of hospice-keeper and cook, in which he served the others with humility and kindness. His soberness of mind and spiritual discretion so impressed all, that Saint Sabbas gave him a cell to dwell in solitude after only one year of service as a novice.
Saint John lived alone in his cell for three years, remaining in strict solitude for five days of the week, and on Saturday and Sunday being the first to enter church and the last to leave, standing with great fear of God and weeping streams of tears. At the end of the three years he was made steward of the Lavra, and fulfilled this so capably that Saint Sabbas decided to have him ordained. He took John to Jerusalem and presented him to the blessed Archbishop Elias, describing John’s virtue to him and asking him to ordain him priest. John, finding himself compelled to reveal his secret, told the Archbishop that he had many sins on his conscience which he wanted to confess to him privately; and as soon as they were alone John asked the Archbishop to keep his secret, or he would have to leave the country. Upon receiving his word, John told him that he had already been ordained bishop. So Archbishop Elias told Saint Sabbas that upon hearing John’s confession he found it impossible to ordain him, and asked him to let him live in solitude undisturbed, then dismissed them both.
This grieved Saint Sabbas immensely, and he spent the night in tears praying to God as if he had been abandoned by Him in judging so wrongly about a man he had thought worthy of the priesthood. An angel appeared to him in a vision and explained that he could not be ordained priest, because he was a bishop. When Saint Sabbas went with joy to John’s cell and embraced him, telling him of the revelation he had received, he had to promise John that he would never to reveal it to others, in order to persuade him not to leave. From that day on Saint John lived in strict solitude, seeing no one without the greatest necessity, living either in his cell or in a cave in the desert.
God showed him His favor and protection in his struggles in the desert. Once John lost his way and had no strength to continue, and was conveyed through the air by divine power back to his cave. A younger monk came to dwell with him, but soon found his way of life too strict, and asked that they return to the Lavra to celebrate Pascha there, since they had nothing but wild plants to eat there. John admonished him to have patience in God’s providence, but he left anyway. After his departure a complete stranger arrived at John’s cell, leading a donkey laden with fresh bread, wine and oil, cheese, eggs, and a pot of honey, which he gave to John and then departed. The younger monk, who had lost his way, came back after three days to find a feast provided by God’s goodness, and begged Saint John’s forgiveness for his lack of faith. On another occasion God sent an enormous lion to protect John from the Saracens then ravaging Palestine.
In the seventy-ninth year of Saint John’s life, Saint Sabbas went to his rest, which plunged Saint John into such grief that Saint Sabbas appeared to him in a vision promising that he was with him in spirit, and that it was necessary for John to remain in the lavra to help the brotherhood through the trials about to come upon it.
Saint John persevered in solitude unto deep old age, graced with clairvoyance and working miracles for many. His life was written by Cyril of Scythopolis, who knew him personally and heard from him many of the facts he recorded in his life of Saint Sabbas. He completed his life of Saint John in the year 556, when the Saint was one hundred and four years old, but still full of zeal and overflowing with divine grace.
Saint John is called The Hesychast because, while living in a Lavra, that is, a community of monks, he practised strict stillness (hesychasm) till the end of his life.
At the end of his account of the Saint, Cyril of Scythopolis sums up the Saint’s life by noting that Saint John was ordained bishop at age 28; spent nine years as bishop; lived in the Lavra of Saint Sabbas for twelve years; lived in the wilderness of Rouba for six years; and forty-seven years secluded in his cell, till the hundred and fourth year of his life, when Cyril composed his account of him.
Copyright © 2016, Holy Transfiguration Monastery, Brookline, MA, all rights reserved.
All reproduction of texts or icons on this website in any form
without prior written permission is forbidden.