Страдание преподобных отцов наших Иоанна, Сергия и Патрикия

In the days of the most holy Patriarch of Jerusalem Elijah, who was the second patriarch of the same name in the holy city of Jerusalem, which was already then in the power of the Hagarians (and Constantine and Irina reigned in Constantinople at that time), civil strife arose among the Hagarians, which greatly devastated the country: the barbarians, fighting among themselves, devastated not only villages, but also cities, like Eleutheropol, Ascalon, Gaza, Scarifia and others. Attacking by surprise, if they did not kill all the people, they plundered all property and killed those who resisted them; setting up ambushes along the roads, they grabbed passers-by, beat, wounded them and robbed them of everything down to their last shirt; It was still good if a naked, beaten and wounded traveler was released alive. Then the holy city of Jerusalem was in great fear; residents of surrounding towns and villages flocked there; they guarded the walls and prepared to repel the predatory raids of the barbarians. At that time, the glorious monastery of Saint Chariton was so severely devastated that it could no longer recover, but fell into complete desolation; and the monastery of St. Sava also endured much grief; Holy fathers gathered in it from different places and, under Abbot Vasily the Reverend, they pleased God with their fasting life. During the Hagaran civil strife and robber attacks, they did not leave their monastery. Although they could have left the monastery to escape from the barbarians to Jerusalem, they did not want to leave that holy place where they initially accepted the yoke of Christ; Having once died for the world, they were not afraid of death, but, relying on Christ, they said: “Our Lord, if he wants, can save us from the hands of the barbarians, but if it pleases His righteous will to give us to the barbarians to be killed, then may the Lord quickly send us torment that is beneficial for the soul.” Let us accept, they said to each other, what is useful from the hand of our Master, we will not return out of fear from the silent desert into the vanity of the world, lest we all condemn us as timid, not observing the commandments of our Lord, who says: “And do not be afraid of those who kill the body, but are not able to kill the soul; but rather fear Him who is able to destroy both soul and body in hell” (Matthew 10:28). It is good to see those moving away from the world into the desert and following in Christ’s footsteps; but how bad it is to see if, after living a little in the desert, they flee from there out of fear of people and return to the world; Let not the common enemy of all, the devil, laugh at us, driving us out of the silent desert into the city through fear of the barbarians; he was defeated by us many times with the help of Christ our King, and fled from us like a dog, shamefully driven away. We do not need stone walls for protection: instead of an insurmountable wall, our protector is Christ, to whom we learned from Saint David to sing: “Be for me a rocky stronghold, a house of refuge to save me” (Psalm 30:3). We do not have armor and helmets, we do not have shields to repel the enemy’s arrows, but we have the spiritual weapon of love, the armor of hope, “the shield of faith and the helmet of salvation” (Eph. 6:16), with which we arm ourselves. We do not have military regiments that would protect us from enemies, but “the Angel of the Lord encamps around those who fear Him and delivers” (Ps. 33:8) us; “...for for us “to live is Christ, and to die is gain” (Phil. 1:21). After all, it was not love and passion for temporary life that convinced us to enter this desert! Why did we settle in this deserted place? Is it not out of love for Christ? If we are killed here, we will be killed for Christ, for whose sake we live here. With such words they consoled and encouraged each other and, entrusting their bodies and souls to God, remained in the monastery. Another very good reason held them back: the neighbors who lived around them harbored enmity towards that holy place and wanted nothing more than to see the Lavra of St. Sava destroyed, the place empty, not inhabited by monks; if the brethren left the monastery for a while, the enemies would immediately come, burn the church and cells and raze the entire monastery to the ground. To prevent this from happening, the holy fathers remained in the Lavra. And they were not like a reed shaken by the wind, but like pillars founded on stone, unshakable from the wind and storms of temptation; not only for the sake of defending the walls they did not leave the monastery, but moreover, for the sake of the glory of Christ the Lord, once glorified and glorified in their days in that place. So those holy fathers continued to live in the monastery, and the Supreme Defender, through the prayer of our reverend father Savva, kept them unharmed from the barbarians until the hour of His holy will came. Indeed, although the barbarian hordes, coming from Arabia or anywhere else past that deserted place to their camp, turned to the monastery many times, they did not cause any harm, but only demanded food; They looked furiously at the monks, gnashing their teeth, but against the will of God they could not do harm to God’s servants, and, taking food, as much as it could be found in the monastery, they went to their places, and instead of gratitude they boasted of someday destroying the monastery and devastating this area. One day, some barbarian horde, wanting to carry out the evil deed they had planned, went to the monastery to plunder and destroy the monastery; but by chance, near Saint Bethlehem, it met an army that was stationed there in case of a barbarian passage; A battle took place, the barbarians were defeated and put to flight, so that hardly any of them remained alive, as they later learned. Another time, another horde with the same evil intention headed from their camp to the monastery; but having arrived at some village that was not far from the monastery, the barbarians found a lot of wine hidden under brushwood; they got drunk, started a quarrel among themselves and many killed each other to death; So their plan was destroyed, and the horde dispersed. After this, God deigned to send temptation to His servants, as once upon the righteous Job, so that they, like gold purified in a furnace, would prove worthy of God; and He allowed barbarian hands to touch His saints, for whom He had prepared crowns of martyrdom. The monks, hearing how of those two hordes that wanted to attack the Lavra, one was defeated by the Jerusalem army, and the other disintegrated by itself, sat without fear in their cells, spending the Holy Pentecost in ordinary fasting and labor. At that time, at the devil's instigation, up to sixty Ethiopian barbarians gathered with bows, arrows and swords; They decided to make a robbery attack on the Lavra, hoping to find rich property from the monks. At the end of Great Lent, in the week before Palm Sunday, March 13, at two o'clock in the afternoon, barbarians attacked that deserted place; The monks quickly ran from the desert cells to the monastery and church, and the barbarians with drawn swords and drawn bows, as if in battle, rushed screaming towards the monastery. Some of the monks, wanting to tame their rage, came out to them and meekly began to admonish them with kind words: - Why did you come to us, unarmed and peaceful, as if to battle with an enemy who had done you harm? We live in peace with everyone and have never done harm to you or anyone else; This is why we live in this desert, leaving everything we have in the world, to be away from enmity, discord and battles, so that we can mourn our sins in peace and please God; and not only have we never done any harm to any of you, but, as much as we can, we try to do you good: we fed and housed many of you who came here and gave them food for the journey. Do not pay us evil for good; you should rather be grateful to us for the benefits we have shown you; and now we are ready to give you food and shelter you as strangers. The barbarians shouted with rage: “We didn’t come for food, but for silver and gold.” Choose one of two: either give us gold and silver (and they said how much is a liter), and you will live, or, if you don’t want to give, you will die at our hands. “Believe me,” the fathers answered, “that we are wretched and poor, and so poor that we don’t even have enough bread and clothing, but we never even dreamed of the gold and silver that you need; we use only what is necessary for living. The barbarians were angry at these words of the saints and shot arrows like rain at the monks, not ceasing to shoot until they emptied their quivers; So they immediately struck thirteen reverend fathers to death, while others were slightly wounded. Rushing to the cells, they broke down the doors with large stones and pulled out what they could from the wretched monastic property; then they lit the cells and wanted to do the same with the church, but, at God’s discretion, before they had time to bring brushwood and make a fire, they saw that some people were walking in the distance; Thinking that this was the Jerusalem army coming to protect the monks, the barbarians immediately fled, taking with them the plundered property of the monks. Father Thomas, who was a skilled doctor, began to remove the arrows from the wounded brothers, wash their wounds and give them the help that anyone needed. There were terrible wounds: some on the chest, some on the shoulders, some on the face and forehead, and some had their heads broken with stones - and everyone was bleeding; It was scary and pitiful for others to look at them. At the onset of the Vai holiday, during the all-night singing, someone informed the reverend fathers that the barbarians were gathering an even larger gang of robbers to attack the Lavra again. And the blessed fathers were in great fear and trembling, but they did not run, but prepared for death and, trusting in God, awaited the end. With the approach of the day of the Passion of the Lord, a day of suffering came for them too: on the twentieth of March, on Maundy Thursday, the Ethiopians another time in even greater numbers attacked the monastery and inhumanly beat the saints in various ways: some were shot with arrows, some were cut off with a sword, some were cut in half, some had their arms and legs cut off, and others were stoned to death. They gathered the survivors into the church and wanted to torture them so that they would indicate the church treasures and monastery property; They surrounded the monastery and looked over the mountains and hills so that none of the monks would run away from their hands: many rushed to run, but fell into the hands of the barbarians, and hardly anyone got rid of them. They grabbed the fleeing blessed John, the leader of the wanderers, still a youth, and tortured him without mercy on the mountain: they cut the veins in his arms and legs and dragged him by the feet over the stones from the top of the mountain to the church itself, so that all the skin on his back was torn off by sharp stones. The Monk Sergius, the keeper of the church vessels, seeing what torment the fathers were suffering, and fearing that, having not endured the torment, he would not reveal where he hid the church vessels, secretly fled from the monastery; He was already far away when the barbarian guards grabbed him and dragged him by force to the monastery, and when he began to resist, they cut off his holy head. Several other fathers hid from the killers in a cave that was outside the monastery, but a barbarian watchman standing on the hill saw them and, pointing with his hand, shouted to his comrades that the monks had fled into the cave; and immediately the terrible Ethiopian, with a drawn sword, standing at the entrance to the cave, began to shout in a loud voice, ordering those hiding to come out. The monks trembled with fear, and the Monk Patrick, who was among them, spoke in a whisper to the brethren: - Don’t be afraid, I will marry you alone and die, but you sit and be silent! He went out to the Ethiopian, ready to lay down his life for his friends. To the Ethiopian's stern question whether there were other monks there, the monk answered that he was there alone; then the Ethiopian led him to the church. Having gathered the holy fathers from everywhere into the church, the barbarians said to them: - Redeem yourself and your church for four thousand gold coins, but if not, then we will immediately kill you all with a sword and burn your church. The holy fathers meekly answered: - Forgive me for God’s sake, don’t shed our innocent blood in vain, we don’t have as much gold as you ask, and never have; There is not a single goldsmith now in our entire Lavra; if you want, take the clothes that you see on us, take everything that you see and find, leave us naked, but only spare our lives. The barbarians, full of rage, with even greater shouting, put swords to the necks of the saints, as if wanting to cut off their heads, and said: - Give us church vessels, gold and silver, and show us other monastery treasures. The holy fathers said that they had no treasure. And the barbarians said: - Tell us your bosses, who are your abbots and other builders? “Our father, the abbot, is not in the monastery, he went to the holy city on a common matter, but we are all equal.” There was a cave in the monastery of our venerable father Savva; Having taken all the holy fathers, the barbarians led them to that cave, and at the entrance to it they lit a fire and put brushwood and dung there; smoke and stench poured out, and with that smoke they killed the saints in the cave so that they would show them the church treasures and hand over the leaders. Then they led them to torture and forced them with cruel death to open the treasures to them, but they heard nothing from them except prayers to God. One cried: - Lord, accept my spirit! - Remember me, Lord, when you come to Your Kingdom! Then, having gathered everyone into the same cave, the barbarians again began to kill them with fierce smoke; and eighteen reverend fathers died from the smoke, among whom were the aforementioned John and Blessed Patrick; the names of others who died from smoke, sword or torment are known only by God, who wrote them down in the book of the belly. The cruel and inhuman barbarians severely wounded and beat those who survived from this torture of smoke, throwing them to the ground and trampling them underfoot. Having achieved nothing, but only being tired of torturing themselves, they took everything they could find, church and Lavra things and, loading them on the monastery camels, left. Then the brethren who remained barely alive, and others who had taken refuge in mountain clefts and caves, came late to the monastery, the bodies of the venerable fathers, killed in various ways and killed by smoke, were collected in the church (which was saved by God from burning) and spent the whole night of the saving passion 2052, in inconsolable sobbing, after which they gave the bodies an honest burial. And those who were found half-dead, wounded, the brethren tried to treat with the aforementioned doctor Thomas, who survived and later became the abbot of the so-called old monastery. Thus the venerable fathers died painfully in the monastery of the Monk Sava; and those barbarians, immediately after leaving the monastery, were struck by a sudden death from God and fell dead without a sword in the deserts and fields to be devoured by dogs, wild animals and birds; their damned souls went to hell, where the fire on them does not go out and the worm does not fall asleep, and the souls of the murdered reverend fathers ended up in the hand of God and were awarded martyrdom glory from Christ our God and Savior, to Him with the Father and the Holy Spirit honor and glory forever, amen. It was the night of Good Friday. You might be interested in: