A brief description of the life of Abba John, abbot of the holy Mount Sinai, nicknamed the scholastic, truly a holy father

Compiled by the Raifa monk Daniel, an honest and virtuous husband. I cannot say with certainty in which memorable city this great man was born and raised before his departure for the feat of war; and what city now rests and feeds this wondrous one with imperishable food, I know this. He now dwells in the city about which the great-voiced Paul speaks, crying: our life is in heaven (Phil. 3:20); with an immaterial feeling he is saturated with goods that cannot be satiated, and enjoys invisible kindness, he is spiritually consoled by the spiritual 2, having received rewards worthy of exploits, and honor for labors not difficultly endured - that is the heritage there; and forever uniting with those whose foot is in righteousness (Psalm 25:12). But how this material one reached the immaterial forces and copulated with them, I will try to explain this as much as possible. Being sixteen years old in body and a thousand years old in the perfection of his mind, this blessed one offered himself as some kind of pure and spontaneous sacrifice to the Great Bishop, and ascended in body to Sinai, and in soul to the heavenly mountain; with the intention, I think, that from what is visible from this place I will have benefit and better instruction for achieving the invisible. And so, having cut off dishonorable audacity by becoming a hermit, this owner of our mental youths 3 , having accepted the graceful humility, he, at the very beginning of the feat, very prudently drove away from himself seductive self-indulgence and self-confidence; for he bowed his neck and entrusted himself to the most skillful teacher, so that, with his trustworthy guidance, he could safely cross the stormy sea of ​​passions. Having killed himself in this way, he had in himself a soul, as if without reason and without will, completely free from natural properties; and what is even more amazing is that, possessing external wisdom, he was taught heavenly simplicity. It's a glorious thing! For the arrogance of philosophy is not compatible with humility. Then, after nineteen years, he sent his teacher to the Heavenly King as a prayer book and intercessor, and he himself goes into the field of silence, carrying strong weapons to destroy strongholds - the prayers of the great (his father); and having chosen a place convenient for the exploits of solitude, five furlongs from the church of the Lord (this place is called Thola), he spent forty years there in unrelenting exploits, always burning with burning jealousy and divine fire. But who can express in words and praise in legend the labors he endured there? And how can we clearly represent all his labor, which was a secret sowing? However, although through some main virtues we will become aware of the spiritual wealth of this blessed man. He consumed all kinds of food that were permitted to the monastic rank without prejudice, but he ate very little, wisely crushing and through this, as I think, the horn of arrogance. So, by malnutrition he oppressed her mistress, that is, the flesh, which lustfully desires much, with hunger crying to her: be silent, stop, by the same thing that he ate a little of everything, he enslaved the torment of the love of glory: and by living a deserted life and moving away from people, he quenched the flame of this (that is, bodily) furnace, so that it was completely incinerated and completely extinguished. Through alms and poverty in all things necessary, this courageous ascetic courageously avoided idolatry, that is, the love of money (Col. 3:5), from the hourly death of the soul, that is, from despondency and from relaxation (and) he uplifted the soul, exciting it with the memory of bodily death, like a rest; and resolved the interweaving of addiction and all sorts of sensual thoughts with the immaterial bonds of holy sadness. The torment of anger had previously been killed in him by the sword of obedience; With inexhaustible solitude and constant silence, he killed the leech of cobwebby vanity. What can I say about the glorious victory that this good secret man won over the eighth girl? 4 What can I say about the extreme cleansing that this Bezalel of obedience began, and the Lord of heavenly Jerusalem, having come, accomplished with His presence; for without this the devil and his horde cannot be defeated. Where I will place, in our present weaving of the crown, the source of his tears (a talent not found in many), whose secret work remains to this day - this is a small cave located at the foot of a certain mountain; she was as far away from his cell and from any human dwelling as was necessary in order to block his ears from vanity; but she was close to heaven with sobs and cries, similar to those usually emitted by those pierced with swords and pierced by a hot iron, or deprived of their eyes. He took as much sleep as was necessary so that his mind would not be damaged by vigil; and before sleep I prayed a lot and wrote books; this exercise served as his only remedy against despondency. However, throughout his life there was unceasing prayer and fiery love for God; for, day and night, imagining Him in the light of purity, as in a mirror, he did not want, or more precisely, could not get enough. One of the monastics, named Moses, being jealous of the life of John, convincingly asked him to accept him as a disciple and instruct him in true wisdom; Moving the elders to intercession, Moses, through their requests, convinced the great man to accept himself. Once upon a time, Abba commanded this Moses to carry from one place to another the earth that needed to be fertilized in the beds for potions: having reached the indicated place, Moses fulfilled the command without laziness: but when extreme heat came at noon (and then it was the last month of summer), he ducked under a large stone, lay down and fell asleep. The Lord, Who does not want to sadden His servants in any way, according to His custom, prevents the disaster that threatens Him. For the great elder, sitting in his cell and thinking about himself and about God, fell into the subtlest sleep and saw the sacred man who excited him, and laughing at his dream, said: “John, how do you sleep carelessly when Moses is in danger?” Jumping up immediately, John armed himself with prayer for his disciple; and when he returned in the evening, he asked him if any misfortune or accident had happened to him? The student answered: a huge stone almost crushed me when I was sleeping under it at noon: but it seemed to me as if you were calling me, and I suddenly jumped out of that place. The father, truly humble in wisdom, did not reveal anything from the vision to the disciple; but with secret cries and sighs of love he praised the good God. This monk was both a model of virtues and a doctor who healed hidden ulcers. Someone named Isaac, being very strongly oppressed by the demon of carnal lust and already exhausted in spirit, hastened to resort to this great one and declared his abuse to him in words dissolved in sobbing. The wondrous man, amazed at his faith, said: Let’s both stand, friend, to pray. And while their prayer ended, and the sufferer was still lying on his face, God fulfilled the will of His servant (Psalm 144:19), in order to justify the word of David; and the serpent, tormented by the beatings of true prayer, fled; and the sick man, seeing that he was freed from his illness, with great surprise sent thanks to Him who glorified and glorified. Others, on the contrary, instigated by envy, called him (Reverend John) excessively talkative and idle talker. But he enlightened them with his very actions and showed everyone that everything is possible through Christ who strengthens everyone (Phil. 4:12); for he was silent for a whole year; so that his detractors turned into supplicants and said: we have blocked the source of ever-flowing benefit, to the detriment of the common salvation of all. John, a stranger to contradiction, obeyed and again began to adhere to the first way of life. Then, everyone, marveling at his success in all the virtues, as if the latter-day Moses, involuntarily elevated him to the abbess of the brethren and, having elevated this lamp to the priesthood of the authorities, the good voters did not sin; for John approached the mysterious mountain, entering darkness where the uninitiated do not enter; and elevated to spiritual degrees, accepted the God-ordained law and vision. He opened his mouth to the Word of God, attracted the Spirit, opened the word, and from the good treasure of his heart brought out good words. He reached the end of his visible life in instructing the new Israelites, that is, monks, differing in one way from Moses in that he entered the heavenly Jerusalem, and Moses, I don’t know how, did not reach the earthly. The Holy Spirit spoke through his mouth; Witnesses of this are many of those who were saved and are still being saved through him. An excellent witness of the wisdom of this wise man and the salvation he provided was the new David 5. Good John, our venerable shepherd (Hegumen of Raifa), was a witness to the same thing. He convinced this new seer of God with his strong requests, for the benefit of the brethren, to descend in thought from Mount Sinai, and to show us his God-written tablets, which outwardly contain active guidance, and inwardly contemplative 6 . With such a description I attempted to conclude a lot in a few words; for the brevity of the word has beauty in the art of oration 7. In ancient times, rhetoricians, lawyers, or generally learned people were called scholastics. In glory “rejoicing with one mind about the Mind mentally contemplated.” That is, passions. See word 10, chapter 3. That is, pride, which is the eighth among the main eight passions. It is believed that the above-mentioned Isaac is named here as the new David. That is, in the Ladder, external words teach activity, and the internal spiritual mind instructs in vision. Examiners of church antiquity place the death of St. John at the end of the sixth or the beginning of the seventh century. As for the continuation of his life, the Raifa biographer says that he began the field of monasticism in the sixteenth year of his life; under the leadership of Abba Martyria he remained for nineteen years; After the death of his mentor, he spent forty years in silence. So, the Monk John was installed as abbot in the Sinai monastery in the seventy-fifth year of his life. How many years he ruled the monastery, and how many he spent in secondary silence, having installed Abba George as abbot in Sinai, is not known exactly. Some believe that the Monk John died at the age of eighty, or eighty-five; in the Followed Psalter it is said that he lived 95 years. The Eastern Church commemorates him on March 30; on the same day and Western. It is known about the Sinai monastery that even in the fourth century the Sinai mountains served as a permanent residence for many hermits, who were attracted there by the sacred memories of the Old Testament miracles and of Moses and Elijah, and the silence of the mountains and vale, and the sparse population of the peninsula. In the early days, the ascetics of Sinai did not have a common monastery: they lived in cells scattered across the mountains and valleys, and only on Saturday evenings they gathered in the church, built, according to legend, by Queen Helena on the spot where God appeared to the Prophet Moses in a burning and unburnt bush. In this church, the hermits spent the whole night in common prayer, on Sunday morning they received Holy Communion, and again went to their cells. In the fourth and fifth centuries, the Sinai hermits were repeatedly attacked by the Saracens, from whom many suffered martyrdom. Therefore, upon the accession of the blessed king Justinian the 1st to the throne, the Sinai fathers, hearing about his reverence for the holy places, asked him to create a fortified monastery for them. Justinian heeded their request, and by his command, the Sinai Monastery was erected at the foot of Mount Sinai, which still exists in the same place. The Raifa monastery, of which only ruins now remain, was located two days' journey from Sinai, in a very picturesque bay of the Red Sea, according to legend, near the place called Elim, where the Israelites, during their wanderings, found seventy palm trees and twelve springs (Ex. 15:27). And this monastery, like Sinai, was at one time rich in great ascetics. Due to the spirit of asceticism and the proximity of the distance, these monasteries had the closest connection and continuous communication with each other.