Today November 19

Today is the feast of Saints Barlaam and Josaphat (4th century). Josaphat was a rich Eastern king's son and had been much protected since infancy. In fact, one might say he was overprotected, as he was never allowed out of the castle or off the castle grounds. He was never allowed to see anything sad, like pain, sickness or death. But he didn't know anything about that . . . his isolation just saddened him when he reached adolescence and though he didn't tell his father -- he put on a happy face for him -- one of the servants told the king. So the king allowed Josaphat to travel outside the castle, provided he have a large, cheerful retinue to shield him from any untoward scenes. Well, they didn't shield him completely, for he learned about the Four Things: sickness, poverty, old age and death. First he saw a leper, and then he saw a poor blind man. Astonished, he asked his followers who those people were and what was their trouble. Being told, he asked, "Do they happen to everybody?" They said no, and he responded, "Are those who are to suffer such things known in advance, or are the incidents unpredictable?" They said: "Who can know what is in store for him?"

Then he met a very old man who was stooped and drooling. Stunned, Josaphat asked what was wrong with him and being told "old age," he asked, "And what will be the end of this man?" They said, "Death!" "Is death for everybody or only for some?" He learned that all men die and asked, "In how many years do these things happen to us?" They told him, "Old age comes on at 80 or 100, and death follows." (And this in the Fourth Century! Who says they only lived til 35?) At this, the prince was much depressed, though he was a good actor and managed to keep his state of mind from his father.

Now Barlaam was a monk and a man of the Spirit. He came to the prince dressed in poor clothes and said he had a precious stone to sell to the prince. It had power to restore sight to the blind, hearing to the deaf, and wisdom to the simple. A guard tried to see the stone before he would let him in to the royal chambers, but Barlaam said, "If anyone looks on it who has bad eyesight, his sight will get worse." The near-sighted guard unhanded him. "And if any who live an unchaste life look upon it, it loses all its powers." The guard hurriedly let him in then.

What Barlaam had for the prince was not a magic stone, however, but marvelous words and edifying stories. It would take far too long to reproduce them here. One, though, I will paraphrase here, because it reminds me of another tale I heard long ago, but with a different moral.

Once upon a time a man was being pursued and running for his very life, when he fell into a deep abyss. Luckily he caught hold of a small bush on his way down. At the bottom of the abyss was a fire-breathing dragon, waiting to devour him. When he looked up at the bush to which he was clinging, he saw its roots were being nibbled away at by a black and a white mouse. Then he looked up and saw some drops of honey, which he gathered and ate, "giving himself entirely to enjoying the sweetness of the little bit of honey." Now when *I* first heard this story, the sweetness of the honey was the point, but when Barlaam tells the story, it's not. The abyss is the world, full of evil. The bush is the life of each man, eaten away at, some faster, some slower, by time. The dragon is eternal judgment, threatening. And the honey is the fleeting pleasures of this world, which really don't amount to much.

He told a more hopeful story. In a far country, the inhabitants would take a foreign man as their king, wine and dine him, give him his every wish and then suddenly exile him to a terrible island where he would suffer hunger and cold. Now one man noticed this and when he was seized on to be king, he used his power to send a great store of treasure ahead to the island, so when the people rebelled against him and kicked him out, naked, to the island, he was able to live in relative comfort. The wise man was he who sent riches ahead of him to the place of eternal life, by putting them now in the hands of the poor. And Barlaam told many other stories besides, and explained about the tenets of our Faith. Josaphat exclaimed that he wished to be baptized and he was, secretly. Besides this, he said he wanted to follow the monk back into the desert. Barlaam told him to wait.

The kind, whose name was Avennir, found out about this and angrily threatened to disown his son. Josaphat said, "Why, o king, are you saddened because I have become a sharer of good things? What father has ever appeared to regret his son's well-being?" Avennir, seeing threats weren't working, tried to cajole Josaphat with pretty arguments and even set up a contest of a Christian apologist against his pagan priests. That didn't work either. In fact, Josaphat saw through the scheme (for Avennir had a pagan monk substituted for the Christian Barlaam) and it backfired. When they trotted out the fake, Josaphat, playing along, said, "You know, Barlaam, how you taught me. If you now successfully defend the faith, I shall hold to it as long as I live. But if you are defeated, . . . I will cut out your heart and feed it to the dogs." Strong words. Nachor (for such was the imposter's name) went on to defend the Faith flawlessly. Avennir was defeated and allowed Josaphat to remain a Christian, which he did even when he succeeded his father to the throne. He ruled in justice, but heavy is the head that wears the crown, so a time came when Josaphat appointed a successor, retired to the desert and eventually embraced his old friend in a cave. After they died, the reigning king dispatched a party to find the bodies and bring them to a suitable tomb in the royal city in India. Saints Barlaam and Josaphat, pray for us.