The Guardian of the All-Holy Sepulchre
By Archimandrite Kallinikos Georgatos, Preacher
By Archimandrite Kallinikos Georgatos, Preacher
(The present text is an expanded version of a sermon delivered at the Solemn Vespers of the Fifth Sunday of Great Lent in 2014, at the Sacred Metropolitan Church of Saint Demetrios in Nafpaktos.)
Behind the wondrous life of Venerable Mary of Egypt, which amazed both men and angels; behind the theological prayers and the beautiful hymns of our Church; behind the struggle of the Orthodox against the Monothelites and other heretics of the 6th and 7th centuries A.D.; behind the beneficial regime for the Orthodox Romans concerning the Holy Pilgrimage sites and the All-Holy Sepulchre — there stands a great saint of our Church, Saint Sophronios, Patriarch of Jerusalem, who throughout his entire life sought the will of God and fulfilled it at all cost, despite the whirlwind of historical events in which he lived; and Christ rewarded him by granting him His rich blessing.
To this great Saint, and to those things which make him the “Guardian of the All-Holy Sepulchre,” we shall refer below — briefly, but with reverence and gratitude for what he offered to the Church of Christ.
His Early Years and His Dedication
Saint Sophronios was born around the year 550–560 in Phoenicia of the Middle East, near Damascus, where he studied and received an admirable education, so that at the age of twenty he was an excellent teacher of rhetoric and received the title of “Sophist.” At this young age of 20–25, the very talented youth hastened toward “postgraduate” and “doctoral” studies in the great “research centers” of the time.
That is, he abandoned the world and settled in the desert of Judea, seeking people who had knowledge of God and who pursued the perfect application of the Gospel, with the aim of knowing the unseen mysteries. He first dwelt in the new Lavra of Saint Savvas, near the Hieromonk John Moschos, who would become his spiritual father, as well as his brother, fellow ascetic, and companion. Together they traveled and visited the renowned monastic communities of Egypt and Sinai, gathering the “wild honey” of the hermits.
Later, John Moschos would compose the famous Leimonarion (“Spiritual Meadow”), an anthology of desert stories which became a “didactic manual” and nourishment for countless monks and a precious reading for the Romans (Byzantine faithful) down to our own days. He dedicated this remarkable work to his disciple and companion Sophronios, whom he often calls in the various stories “Sophronios the Sophist.”
During these travels, the monk Sophronios fell ill with an incurable disease of the eyes. However, he resorted to the renowned healing sanctuary of the Holy Unmercenaries Cyrus and John at Abu Qir (from “Abba Cyrus”) in Alexandria of Egypt, and he was healed through their miraculous intervention. Filled with gratitude, he later composed an encomium to Saints Cyrus and John the Unmercenaries, in which he recounts their lives and records dozens of their miracles which he heard or even witnessed while he stayed at their healing shrine-church.
Afterward, in the year 594, the two fellow ascetics were at the Monastery of Saint Theodosios, where Sophronios was tonsured a monk. Here the Saint likely composed the encomium to the Holy Unmercenaries, from which we will cite its concluding dedicatory epigram, which also constitutes a brief autobiography of his life up to that point and reveals both his cultivation and poetic sensitivity. The Saint writes — of course in poetic Homeric language, here presented in translation and necessarily with diminished literary value due to the transfer:
—Who wrote these things? — Sophronios.
—From where? — From Phoenicia.
—Which part of Phoenicia? — Livanostefano.
—And from which city? — From the distinguished among others, Damascus.
—Are his parents alive? — No; both have died.
—Tell me their names. — The mother was called Myro, and the father was called Plinthas.
—Did he have a sweet marriage and a multitude of children? — He never acquired either marriage or children; he is unmarried (he has no spouse).
—In what land did he become a monk, and in whose monastery? — In a God-receiving land and in the mountains of Jerusalem, in the great enclosure of the great Theodosios.
—And for whose sake did he complete and compose this wonderful hymn? — For Cyrus and John, the divinely-minded martyrs.
—And why did he labor so much for this work of his mind? — Because they granted healing to his diseased eyes.
To Cyrus, who received the highest measures of healing power,
and to that John, the wondrous martyrs,
Sophronios, healed from the disease of the eyelids that caused pain to his soul,
offering them a small recompense, dedicated this book.”
Beyond the autobiographical details, these verses express the cultivated and saint-loving soul of Sophronios, who, despite his education, approached the Holy Unmercenaries as a humble pilgrim and a simple man of the people — those saints who were the consolation of the people — received healing with faith, and repaid them by composing their magnificent encomium.
In the year 602, the pious Emperor Maurice was murdered, who had maintained peace with the Persians, keeping them away from the borders of the empire. After his death, the Persians under Chosroes II began attacks on the eastern provinces, reaching even the borders of Jerusalem. The two friends and fellow ascetics were forced to abandon their beloved desert and the Monastery of Saint Theodosios, and after wandering for a time in Cyprus and Samos, they went down to Alexandria of Egypt shortly before 607.
There they met Patriarch Eulogios, then his successor (Scribo), and afterward the great Patriarch John the Merciful (609–619), to whom they submitted and with whom they formed a deep friendship in Christ.
These three blessed churchmen worked together with divine zeal and Christian love for the Church. The Patriarch had an extraordinary philanthropic activity, combined with unwavering struggles against the Monophysites. In this struggle against the heretics, “Sophronios the Sophist” assisted him with his powerful rhetorical ability, and the pen of his elder John Moschos also contributed.
A real battle was taking place in Egypt, in which these holy men, at the head of the Orthodox, sought through their word and teaching to protect and reclaim entire villages and parishes from the hands of the heretics. At the same time, they also led by example: the great Patriarch was foremost in caring for the poor and for refugees from regions seized by the Persians and from Jerusalem itself, without distinction between Orthodox and non-Orthodox. Indeed, the aid sent to him from Constantinople by the Emperor and the Patriarch was distributed equally by Saint John to both Orthodox and Monophysites. However, he did not accept their heresy and made great efforts through teaching to lead them to the truth of Orthodoxy.
After the capture of Jerusalem by the Persians (614), countless refugees flooded Alexandria, which itself came under threat. The Patriarch took the lead in caring for them. Because of the Persian danger, Sophronios and John Moschos left Alexandria and fled to Rome, where John Moschos fell asleep in the Lord around 619, leaving us the precious legacy of the Leimonarion, which nourished generations of struggling Christians up to our own day, as well as his wish that Sophronios transfer his relics to the monastery of their repentance.
In the following years, from 619 to 633, Sophronios disappears from the historical record. We do know, however, that he founded the Monastery of Eukratas in Carthage, where he cared for refugee monks from the eastern parts of the empire.
Among the monks whom he served, even as abbot, was Saint Maximos the Confessor, who regarded Sophronios as his spiritual father. About thirty years younger than Sophronios, Maximos (580–662) came from a wealthy Byzantine family and, after a period at court as imperial secretary under Emperor Heraclius, left and was tonsured a monk in Constantinople.
When the Persian Sassanid Empire conquered Anatolia, Maximos fled to North Africa with his disciple Anastasios, where they entered Sophronios’ monastery near Carthage. It was there, under Sophronios’ guidance, that Maximos began his path as a theologian and spiritual writer, later becoming one of the most important theologians and a Father of the Church, organizing earlier patristic thought into a brilliant synthesis of Orthodox theology along with extensive original works.
We again lose track of Sophronios after the burial of his teacher and friend at the Monastery of Saint Theodosios. He was likely in Jerusalem in 629 to witness the return of Emperor Heraclius with the Honorable Cross, which had been seized by the Persians.
Sophronios reappears in the historical record in 633, when he travels to Alexandria and Constantinople in order to persuade, through his rhetoric, the respective Patriarchs and Emperor Heraclius to renounce Monothelitism. Emperor Heraclius had adopted Monothelitism as a compromise between the Chalcedonians and the Monophysites, and this doctrine had been followed by the three eastern Patriarchs — the patriarchal throne of Antioch being temporarily vacant — and also by Pope Honorius of Rome.
Unfortunately, his effort failed, and at his enthronement as Patriarch of Jerusalem the following year, Sophronios was the only patriarch of the “Pentarchy” who remained Orthodox. After his repose, however, the struggle of the Orthodox was taken up — almost as a duel — by his spiritual son and disciple, Maximos the Confessor, who was eventually persecuted, mutilated, and exiled by the Monothelites, dying in 662.
The Orthodox faith ultimately triumphed at the Sixth Ecumenical Synod (680–681).
Patriarch of Jerusalem
In the year 634, after his seemingly fruitless visits to the eastern Patriarchs and to Emperor Heraclius in order to urge them to renounce Monothelitism, Sophronios — at about eighty years of age, perhaps even older — is called to the greatest mission of his life, and indeed to one of the greatest missions that any man could ever undertake. He is called to this mission by our Lord Jesus Christ Himself through His Church: Sophronios is elected Patriarch of Jerusalem at a time when the Holy City is in danger of falling into the hands of the barbarian Arab tribes, who after the death of Muhammad poured out to conquer the West with sword and fire. And this time its fall into the hands of non-Christian enemies would be permanent.
When Saint Sophronios ascends the throne of the Holy City, he composes a remarkable Synodical Letter, which he sends to the Patriarch of Constantinople Sergios and to the other Patriarchs, in which he confesses his faith. From this extensive letter, two or three characteristic excerpts are presented here.
The first describes the life and manner of Sophronios up to his election as Patriarch. It is noteworthy how blessedly he lived in humility and poverty:
“To the most holy and most blessed of all, brother and concelebrant Sergios, Archbishop and Patriarch of Constantinople, from Sophronios, the unworthy servant of the holy city of Christ our God.
Alas! alas! O most blessed ones, how now the quiet life is dear to me and far more beloved than before, since from undisturbed stillness I have come into a turmoil of affairs and am drowned by waves on dry land!
Alas! alas! O God-honored ones, how now the least thing is pleasant to me, and before it was not moderately sweeter, since from dung and earth and unspeakable and great humility I have ascended to a hierarchical throne. And together with these I see joined the storm, and following the storm, danger....
Therefore, rightly also I, O most blessed ones, together with the much-suffering Job shall cry out, remembering the advantages I formerly had.
I had a life calm and quiet, and a humility that knew no storm.
Who would turn me back one month to my former days, in which God preserved me without sorrow,
when His lamp shone above my head,
when I lived a peaceful and untroubled life,
when by His light I walked through darkness,
when I gathered the fruits of stillness,
when I was full of the produce of calm,
when I enjoyed the shoots of tranquility,
when I rejoiced in the flowers of freedom from care,
when I was crowned with the blossoms of fearlessness,
when I tasted the gifts of quiet withdrawal,
when I enjoyed earthly simplicity,
when I plowed the furrows of harmless lowliness,
when I sailed the sea of untroubled poverty,
when I delighted in the beauties of a poor dwelling,
when I ate the honey-flowing manna of simple food gathered from the earth,
when I too appeared as another Israel and enjoyed peaceful and heavenly delight without murmuring or ungrateful thought?”
The second excerpt refers to the confession of his faith and strikingly reveals his ecclesiastical mindset:
“Since therefore these things, O most wise ones, have come to an end for me the thrice-wretched, after great compulsion and pressure from God-loving clergy and devout monks and faithful laymen — all the citizens of the holy city of Christ our God — who by force brought this about, for reasons unknown to me, I entreat you the most holy and exhort you not only with pure prayers to the Lord to help me who am in the sea and in danger and to support me who am bowed down by faintheartedness, but also to guide me by God-inspired teachings toward what I ought to do — on the one hand as my spiritual fathers and begetters, and on the other as brothers and sharers with me of the same spiritual blood. Therefore, satisfy my just requests in a fatherly and brotherly manner, and I will follow your guidance and walk together with you in a unity in which faith binds those of the same mind, in which hope unites those who think sincerely, and in which love joins together those who think according to God. This threefold cord, when woven from these three virtues, is neither loosened nor cut, nor does it allow those who are united to be separated, but is truly unbreakable and gathers into one piety those who are enriched by its divine weaving. Moreover, an apostolic and ancient tradition has prevailed in the holy Churches throughout the world, that those who assume the Hierarchy should sincerely declare to those who confer it upon them all that they think and believe — a tradition handed down to us by the exceedingly wise Paul, so that our course may not be in vain. For our whole course becomes vain when the faith is in any way wronged....
Therefore we also, serving this custom and considering as the best law whatever the ancients rightly did — especially when it is something handed down from the Apostles — write how we stand concerning the faith. And we send it to you who possess the wisdom of God for examination, so that we may not move the eternal boundaries set by our Fathers — to you who not only know how to distinguish the genuine from the false, but also have the power to supply what is lacking for perfect love in Christ. Therefore I shall say those things which from the beginning I learned, being born and raised in the holy and catholic Church, and which I received to hold from my earliest childhood, and which I heard from you as you proclaimed them by divine inspiration.
I believe, therefore, O blessed ones, just as I believed from the beginning, in one God, the Father Almighty, wholly without beginning and eternal, the maker of all things visible and invisible. And in one Lord Jesus Christ, the Son of God, the Only-begotten, who was begotten eternally and impassibly from God the Father; who knows no other origin except the Father, nor has His existence from anywhere outside the Father; Light from Light, consubstantial, true God from true God, co-eternal. And in one Holy Spirit, proceeding from God the Father, known also as Light and God, and truly co-eternal with the Father and the Son, consubstantial and of the same essence and nature and likewise of the same divinity. A Trinity consubstantial, equal in honor, and co-enthroned, united and akin and of one glory, summed up in one Godhead and gathered into one dominion, without confusion of persons or division of hypostases. For we believe in a Trinity in unity and glorify unity in Trinity: Trinity with respect to the three hypostases, but unity with respect to the oneness of the Godhead.”
In another place he confesses his devotion to the Tradition of the Church and to the Holy Synods, expressing with remarkable force his ecclesiastical consciousness:
“Having received these things to think and believe, O most wise ones, from apostolic and evangelical, prophetic and lawful, paternal and teaching proclamation, and presenting them openly to you the most wise without concealing anything, it is also fitting and proper, and in accordance with ancient tradition, to declare in writing the Holy Synods of our Fathers and most sacred assemblies, which we have as lights guiding our souls and pray to have forever, so that through these gatherings of the Fathers and their blessed life we too may partake, as their noble children and successors. Therefore we accept four great and holy Ecumenical Synods which examined the divine dogmas of the Church…” (Note: at that time five Ecumenical Synods had taken place; however, the last one, in Constantinople in 553, had not yet been formally recognized as Ecumenical by a subsequent synod, which would occur toward the end of the 7th century; therefore he simply appends it below without numbering it among them.)
Elsewhere he enumerates and anathematizes the heretics — not out of blind attachment to certain theories or ideologies, but dispassionately, as a careful physician lists and “anathematizes” diseases, or as a modern programmer catalogs and condemns malicious software.
Finally, he describes the pitiable condition of Jerusalem due to the attacks of the barbarians and seeks the blessings and guidance of the Patriarch of Constantinople.
Defending the Holy City of Jerusalem
We return to the ordination and enthronement of Saint Sophronios upon the Patriarchal throne of the Holy City. What is the work of Patriarch Sophronios:
(a) He preaches repentance to the people, and
(b) he strives, from within the endangered Holy City, to bring back Pope Honorius and the Eastern Patriarchs to the Orthodox faith of the Fourth Ecumenical Synod of Chalcedon.
The extensive writings of Sophronios on Orthodoxy and Monothelitism at this time include an anthology of about 600 texts from the Fathers of the Church in support of the Orthodox position. Unfortunately, both the anthology and the synodical letter have been lost, as well as any possible responses. Already from the first year of his enthronement (634), he was prevented from celebrating Christmas in the Church of the Nativity, because Bethlehem was occupied by the Arabs.
Three years later, in 637, Patriarch Sophronios speaks on the day of Theophany, being aware that the days of Jerusalem as a Christian Roman city are numbered. The advancing Saracens, he says, leave behind them a bath of bloodshed, destruction, devastation, and a path of corpses as food for wild birds. The “wretched and God-hating Saracens” seize cities, destroy crops, burn towns, burn churches, attack monasteries, and defeat the Roman army. He considers all this as the natural result of sin on the part of Christians, and he himself calls his flock to repentance. With the defeat of the Romans (Byzantines) at the battle of Yarmuk, Damascus has also been conquered, and there is little hope for military reinforcements from Constantinople to defend the Holy City.
At the end of the spring of 637, the Muslims began a six-month siege of Jerusalem. In November of 637, the Arab general Abu Ubayda Ibn al-Jarrah, who was conducting the siege, issued the ultimatum: the Romans must choose either conversion to Islam and immediate surrender, including the payment of compensation and taxes, or the plundering and destruction of the city and its inhabitants if they resist. Jerusalem had already been destroyed during the Persian attack in 614, and had only just been recovered by the Romans in 629. Another complete destruction was unthinkable. Equally unthinkable was the possibility of conversion to Islam. Even as a Christian heresy (as Saint John of Damascus later characterizes Islam), conversion to Islam was inconceivable. Damascus had already been surrendered by its bishop in 634, and later Alexandria by Patriarch Cyrus of Alexandria in 641.
During the negotiation of the surrender, Patriarch Sophronios had little room to maneuver. The age-old diplomatic experience of the Romans-Greeks, who had made the Persians a familiar enemy, was lacking, and the Patriarch could not effectively use his gifts. The beliefs of Islam were still largely obscure to outsiders, and even if the Patriarch clearly understood the intentions of the invaders, his classical rhetoric would have little effect in dealing with an almost illiterate tribal leadership.
For Patriarch Sophronios, the heresy of Monothelitism seemed rather a much greater spiritual danger than the primitive and unknown Islam. Moreover, the constant hope that divine or human help would turn back the Arabs remained until the last moment — until finally the enemy was at the gates and famine was imminent. Sophronios was alone. The two great friends of his life (John Moschos and Patriarch John of Alexandria) had fallen asleep, his eminent spiritual son (Maximos the Confessor) was far away, and there was no effective military or political presence in the city to help share the decision, which was now entirely his. Although he maintained his strong faith in the providence of God, yet as a shepherd and as a man he must have felt a dark loneliness.
In any case, he was called to bear alone a decision of enormous historical weight. What man has ever received such great responsibility and such a heavy burden? Responsibility for the life of his flock; responsibility for the faith of his flock and their eternal salvation; responsibility for the empire; responsibility for the Holy City; responsibility for the holy shrines; responsibility before history; responsibility for the Church.
Yet the wisdom and simplicity of Patriarch Sophronios, and his faith in the Orthodox dogma, granted him stability and faithfulness in handling this incredible dilemma. His response to the ultimatum of the Saracen general was clear, though we do not know how he arrived at it. The city would surrender, but only in agreement with the second Caliph of Islam, Umar ibn al-Khattab (634–44), a close companion of Muhammad who had defeated the Persian Sassanid Empire in less than two years.
Historians wonder about the reasons that led Patriarch Sophronios to make this decision. In any case, the result was that the Caliph, after receiving Sophronios’ request, immediately traveled from Syria, arriving in Jerusalem on a camel in February 638. Umar camped on the Mount of Olives, where he met with Patriarch Sophronios. In one account of the meeting, Sophronios offered him a clean tunic, while the cloak in which he had traveled was being cleaned, a custom that continues to this day as a sign of Middle Eastern hospitality. Immediately after the signing of the surrender, the two descended the Mount of Olives and entered Jerusalem, where Caliph Umar was ceremonially received at the Christian holy places by Patriarch Sophronios.
In another account of the story, recorded three centuries later by the learned Melkite Patriarch of Alexandria, Eutychius Said ibn Batriq (935–40), when the gate of the city was opened, the Caliph entered with his retinue and first went to the Church of the Resurrection. As the time for Muslim prayer approached, the Caliph expressed his desire to pray, and the Patriarch, to whom the request was neither strange nor problematic, answered, “…pray in the place where you now stand.” The Caliph replied that he did not wish, nor would he pray, in the next place, the church of Saint Constantine. Instead, he went out through the eastern gate and prayed alone on the steps, saying to the Patriarch that if he had prayed inside, the Christians would have lost the church after his death, because the Muslims would say, “Umar prayed here.”
The Caliph then composed a decree, the famous Ahtiname of Umar Khattab (also known as the Covenant of Umar or al-'Ahda al-'Umariyya), which forbade Muslims to gather in the churches of Jerusalem or Bethlehem for communal prayers, nor could they be called there by a muezzin. They could pray in a church only as individuals. This decree preserved the holy shrines through the centuries and maintained them under the authority of the spiritual descendants of Patriarch Sophronios, that is, the Orthodox.
Despite the fact that no record of the surrender itself or of the Patriarch’s feelings about it survives, Greek sources concerning the conquest of Jerusalem emphasize the advantages of the negotiations he conducted for the city. His insistence on meeting the Caliph face to face secured protection for Christian Jerusalem.
“It Is Finished”
Within a few weeks, relations with the Arabs took a difficult turn. Sixty Christian soldiers were captured after the surrender of Gaza following a siege; they were imprisoned in Jerusalem, where they were given the choice of conversion to Islam or martyrdom. Hearing of their sufferings, Patriarch Sophronios cared for them, administered to them the Holy Mysteries, and encouraged them spiritually; and after the execution of the first nine (the others were martyred a month later), he buried their bodies beneath a new church which he built in memory of Saint Stephen the Protomartyr. Thus, shortly before his repose, Saint Sophronios was also deemed worthy to tend and venerate the bodies of martyrs.
A month later, in March of 638, Patriarch Sophronios reposed in the Holy City of Jerusalem. Some accounts hold — not without reason — that his death was hastened by his grief over the surrender of the Holy City. It was the end of a great course marked by many changes and experiences: from the halls of the academies of his time to the desert; from the psalter to polemical and dogmatic works; from noetic prayer to hymnography; from ascetic caves to the Patriarchal throne; from the life of a monk to the responsibilities of a Patriarch; a course marked by holy friendships and an unceasing struggle for holiness, for the integrity of Orthodox dogma, and for the defense of the Christian Empire — found Patriarch Sophronios full of faith and love and of the blessing of Christ.
In Summary
From the brief presentation of the life of Saint Sophronios, and especially from the final years of his life, the following points should be emphasized: Christ looked upon His servant, the monk Sophronios, and called him through His Church to entrust to him the most difficult mission, at an age when other people are considered “finished” and await death. He was over eighty years old when he was called at once to the Priesthood, the Episcopacy, and the Patriarchate. He was called by Christ, the Great High Priest, to become High Priest in the Holy City of Jerusalem, shortly before it would be irreversibly lost from the hands of the Christian Roman Emperor. He was called by Christ through His Church to bear an immense historical burden. He was called by Christ to become the last — and at the same time eternal — guardian of His All-Holy Sepulchre.
Christ chose Sophronios for his Orthodoxy, his faithfulness to the dogmas of the Synods, his love for the Church, for the Fathers and the holy hermits, his love for monasticism, his love for the hesychastic life, and his humility. And Sophronios fulfilled the mission for which Christ chose him; he was shown to be a great Patriarch of the Holy City and proved worthy of His favor. For this reason Christ blessed him to be eternally the guardian of His All-Holy Sepulchre. Of course, Saint Sophronios did not then have the perspective that we have today, seeing history from afar and after it has passed, nor did he evidently feel that he was fulfilling such a specific mission. On the contrary, at that time he stood in a true whirlwind, where everything around him showed that the end of the world was approaching.
Amid those apocalyptic conditions, Saint Sophronios remained unshaken in his Orthodox faith, remained faithful to the providence of God, remained faithful to the footsteps of his holy friends whom he loved so much in his life. He asked for and was given wisdom from above; therefore his decisions were firm, prudent, and wise — not because of his own reasoning, but because of the indwelling Spirit, Who is the cause, the giver, and the sustainer of harmony.
Christ even transformed the hearts of the barbarous Saracens, who respected the sanctified and venerable Hierarch, and in the end they themselves created the conditions to protect the Holy Shrines from their own barbarity by drafting the famous Ahtiname of Umar Khattab, which preserved the All-Holy Sepulchre not only from the Arabs and the Ottomans, but also from ill-believing and heterodox “Christians.” It appears as a divine sign that the Holy Shrines remain in Orthodox hands, although the Orthodox Christian Empire possessed them for only three centuries, while for fourteen centuries they have passed under the rule of dozens of conquerors, who bore not only national hatred against the Romans but also religious hatred against the Orthodox — especially the heretics: Monophysites, Nestorians, Latins, etc., who even today, like beasts, seek to seize the Holy Shrines and especially the All-Holy Sepulchre from the Orthodox. But Christ entrusted it to His servant Sophronios and to his spiritual descendants in the faith. Humanly speaking, the Orthodox presence and liturgical life in the Church of the Resurrection and at the All-Holy Sepulchre up to our own day is owed to Sophronios. Sophronios guarded the All-Holy Sepulchre from desecration, and Christ granted the All-Holy Sepulchre to His own Church — to the Orthodox Romans, the spiritual descendants of Patriarch Sophronios.
This could also be a message for us: none of us has the difficulties of Saint Sophronios. Saint Sophronios gives us his example: faithfulness to the Orthodox dogma and to the Tradition of the Church, love of the Saints and of the Fathers, preserve us unharmed and peaceful amid various storms and make us capable of discerning and keeping the will of God in our lives.
And one last thing about this great Patriarch: although great — even today and glorified in heaven — he remains hidden. In his monastic life, he hides behind the hermits of the deserts of Judea, Egypt, and Sinai; behind the heroes of the Leimonarion; behind his Elder John Moschos and Saint Mary of Egypt. In his writings he also hides behind the Leimonarion of John Moschos and behind the Life of Saint Mary of Egypt.
In his philanthropy, he hides behind the likewise great Patriarch of Alexandria, John the Merciful. In the struggle for Orthodoxy, he hides behind the great theologian and his disciple, Saint Maximos the Confessor. In Jerusalem — his own Archbishopric and the seat of the Patriarchate — he hides behind Saint Helen the Great. And at the All-Holy Sepulchre he hides behind our Lord Jesus Christ Himself, Who suffered, was buried, and rose again.
May we have the blessing of Saint Sophronios and his prayers, that we may belong to his company on the day when he will be revealed in glory, when also “Christ, who is our life, shall appear” (Col. 3:4).
Bibliography:
Migne, Patrologia Graeca, vol. 87.
Mother Nectaria McLees, The Marvelous Life of Patriarch Sophronius I.
Source: Translated by John Sanidopoulos.
