Today March 27

Today is the feast of St. John Damascene (aka John of Damascus), poet, doctor of the Church and last of the Greek Fathers, (c. 645 - c. 749). He is also called John Chrysorrhoas, John the "Golden Speaker" for his great writings, and John Mansur, his real surname. It was conferred upon his father by the Muslim caliph in whose service he was and means "the Victorious". John was destined -- later in life, as he had a late vocation -- to fight the Iconoclast movement (one that felt there was no place for representational art in churches) and so to take on all the forces of the late Roman empire. The Emperor Constantine V Copronymus twisted his name to John Mamzer, or Bastard John, to show his displeasure with our saint's strong defense of art -- not only statues, icons and stained glass, but hymns, books and poetry as well. "One might have expected that a man named Copronymus would have been a bit more careful about playing the fool with people's names, seeing that the Copronymus he bore all his life recalls his own infantile indiscretion of having soiled the font while being baptized." - William Jurgens, Faith of the Early Fathers, vol. 3, p. 330.

John, educated by a profoundly gifted Sicilian slave named Cosmas -- whom the elder John had bought to secure his freedom only to retain as a tutor -- went into civil service just as his father had done. He became head of the internal revenue service under the caliph in Damascus. Ooh, he's a tax man! But then John precipitously left his job and retreated to the desert to the monastery of Mar Saba. (He didn't become a priest until years later when John V, patriarch of Jerusalem tapped him. But he immediately returned to his cell in the monastery to write.)

Now you'd think the monks at Mar Saba would be pleased and grateful to have a man of the stature and education of John in their midst, but no. They were deeply suspicious of his Aristotelian sensibilities and especially of his joy in creation and in his delightful hymns, of which he wrote not only the lyrics but also the melodies. But John accepted their scorn and obediently even cleaned out the filth of the cells as his punishment. This unfair situation continued until the head monk had a vision of Our Lady in which she castigated him for punishing John and told him to allow him to write all the books and hymns he wanted!

John wrote "The Source of Knowledge," which includes the extremely influential "Of the Orthodox Faith" -- still today a bedrock of theology, especially for the Eastern churches. John was a master of synthesis, able to take facts from many difference sources and blend them into a coherent whole. His special strength was theology (though he knew math and medicine, grammar and logic equally well). And he was able to speak his mind fearlessly and unmolested, in part because he was under Muslim authority and NOT (iconoclast) Christian.

Dear St. John Damascene, pray for us.