Monday, October 12

Byzantine · 949 – 1022

St Symeon the New Theologian

Abbot, mystic, third to be named Theologian

Only three saints bear the Church's title 'Theologian': John the Evangelist, Gregory of Nazianzus, and this Byzantine abbot. A young courtier in Constantinople under the guidance of the elder Symeon the Studite, he experienced as a layman a vision of God as living light — an experience that never left him. As abbot of the monastery of St Mamas he preached what he had seen: that the baptized are meant to know the grace of the Holy Spirit consciously, not by hearsay; that a Christianity of routine without the felt presence of God falls short of the Gospel. His fire made enemies. Church authorities exiled him across the Bosphorus in 1009 after disputes over his teaching and his veneration of his departed elder, and he refused rehabilitation on terms that compromised him. His Hymns of Divine Love and Catechetical Discourses became foundational for the hesychast tradition and for the Philokalia.

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