By Fr. George Dorbarakis
There are mainly three points around which the grace-filled pen of the Holy Hymnographer Stephen the Sabbaite moves in order to praise the great Father and Hymnographer of the Church, John of Damascus. First, his struggle against heresy — against all those of corrupt dogma who distorted the Orthodox faith, both concerning the Holy Trinity and concerning the Lord Jesus Christ. Second, the vast hymnographic corpus of his poems, through which, beyond the Holy Trinity and the Lord, the Most Holy Theotokos (who, by her command, activated his hymnographic gift) and all the Saints of the Church are glorified. Third, the fundamental presupposition for the existence of the Saint’s entire work and his entire contribution to the Church — especially the very existence of the gift of God that he himself was: his inner, vigilant, watchful struggle, expressed through his whole ascetic effort and discipline.
And it is worth emphasizing from the first point that indeed the Saint fought in his time against all heresies, but chiefly against the heresy of Iconoclasm: the denial of the existence of icons in the Church — a heresy which in fact demonstrated the continuation of the Christological heresies of Monophysitism (that Christ is only God) and Nestorianism (that Christ is only man), and therefore led further back to the Trinitarian heresies such as Arianism and the Pneumatomachians. “You clearly refuted in writing, O John, the division of Nestorius, the confusion of Severus, and the deranged belief of those who said that the Lord has only one will and one energy, for you flashed forth to the whole world the light of Orthodoxy” (Ode 8). And again: “The enemy (the devil), as is his custom, sowed the tares of the heretics in the Church of Christ, namely, that the veneration of Him through the sacred icons be rejected. Yet he found you, O John, watchful, uprooting every illegitimate seed” (Ode 8).
Of course, the Saint’s anti-heretical struggle always had a positive orientation — that is, the simultaneous presentation and exposition of the Orthodox dogmas, which safeguard the truth of Christ’s revelation. The Hymnographer notes this clearly: “You overturned the heresies with your wisdom, O all-blessed and most wise John, and you gave the Orthodox dogma to the Church so that she might possess the right faith and rightly glorify the Holy Trinity as a tri-hypostatic Unity of one essence” (Exapostelarion). We do not wish to expand with further analysis and more references from the Saint’s Canon. But what we must not forget — especially every time we enter any church or even our own home with our icon corner — is that for the existence of the icons, which, even by merely seeing them, lift us with compunction toward the Lord and all the Saints, the first Father who theologized extensively about them, exposing the heresy of the iconoclasts, is precisely Saint John of Damascus. It was primarily on his theology that our Church relied during the Seventh Ecumenical Synod (787) in order to formulate its doctrine in a manner fitting to God.
From the second point - the hymnographic richness of his gift - we may say, following the Holy Hymnographer, that indeed the Saint hymned not only our God, the Holy Trinity and our Lord, but also our Most Holy Lady (above all) and all the Saints. We have seen that it was the Theotokos herself who, by her command, activated the Saint’s gift, to such an extent that many hymns of our Church which we hold on our lips and in our hearts (for example the Resurrectional hymns or the Iambic Canons of Christmas) are by Saint John of Damascus — and even more so his so-called Trinitarian Canons of the weekends, wherein the mind of the believer is literally opened to behold the fullness of the faith in all its dimensions. It is no coincidence that the great Venerable Porphyrios loved these Canons exceedingly; he chanted them, learned them by heart, and immersed himself in their theology. He had these above all in mind when he told a young man who desired to study theology that careful and prayerful immersion in the Trinitarian canons is equivalent to receiving a degree in theology.
“You taught all the sons of the Church to hymn in an Orthodox manner the august Triune Unity, and to theologize the divine incarnation of the Word of God, clearly proclaiming, O John, the difficult-to-understand things of the sacred writings” (Ode 9). And also: “You hymned, O venerable one, the ranks of the Saints, the pure Theotokos, the Forerunner of Christ, as well as the Apostles, the Prophets, the wise Teachers together with the ascetics, the Righteous and the Martyrs; therefore you now dwell in their tents” (Ode 9). It is good, even merely for knowledge, to mention that his name is attached to 531 Heirmoi, at least 115 Canons, 453 Idiomela and 139 Prosomoia, as well as the Funeral Idiomela.
The third point is the one on which Saint Stephen, his Hymnographer, truly spends himself. We might say he has a constant concern lest anyone consider the work of Saint John of Damascus as the fruit merely of intellectual pursuit or even of profound reflection. From beginning to end he directs our thought — and our prayer — toward the inner life of the Saint: his heart and the spiritual struggle he undertook, so that he may help us understand that everything the Saint wrote and did was the radiance of his deeply prayerful heart — an inspiration of God (to recall Saint Sophrony of our time). He never ceases to tell us that the Lord and the Holy Spirit were the sources of the Venerable John’s inspiration, because through the warmth of his love for God he rendered himself — his soul and body — fertile ground to be watered from Heaven.
A few examples: “The eye of your soul was illumined by the radiant light of the Trinity. You entered into the dark cloud of the Spirit” (Vespers Stichera). “Glorious Father John, you withdrew from the turbulent confusion of the world and ran to the peace of Christ; and indeed thus you were enriched with divine theoria and praxis” (Vespers Aposticha). “You subdued your body with the many labors of asceticism, and thus you easily ascended to heavenly heights, where the divine melodies are given to you, which you chanted with power, O father and venerable one, to the friends of the Lord” (Kontakion). “Having set aside the deception of earthly life and taken up the Cross of the Lord, you wrestled mightily with your asceticism against the Evil One” (Doxastikon of the Matins Kathisma), and so on.
In the person of Saint John of Damascus we see what it means to be a great Father of the Church: to reign together with the Lord, and also to be our friend and protector in all the difficulties of life.
Source: Translated by John Sanidopoulos.
