Saint (and Emperor) John III Doukas Vatatzes the Merciful

There was once a Christian emperor who ordered a census so that he could give a piece of land to the 7000 poorest people in his empire. How have I not heard of Saint (and Emperor) John III Doukas Vatatzes the Merciful before? This news comes to me this year just at the start of the Christmas Fast (November 15 to December 24).

For Orthodox Christians, it’s the start of preparations for Christ’s Nativity. This fast begins after the Feast of the Apostle Philip and is sometimes called “Philip’s Fast” because Philip told Nathanael to “Come and see!” (John 1:43-46) just as we are called to prepare and join all those who come to witness the baby born of Mary.

A visiting priest for vespers yesterday, told stories afterward of Saint John the Merciful during an informal homily. He connected this life of extreme mercy to our calling as we prepare our hearts to receive the child Christ.

As often happens (because the calendar is so filled with wonderful saints), the priest conflated two different saints with the same names and with similar feast days. John III Doukas Vatatzes ruled as Emperor of Nicea from 1221 to 1254 and is feasted on November 4 while John the Patriarch of Alexandria ministered from 606 to 616 and is feasted on November 12 (both are beloved as “Saint John the Merciful” and both left many incredible stories for us).

The Emperor John III Doukas Vatatzes of Nicea had a reign like no other that I’ve heard of in history, and it should be celebrated as a high point in the human story. His policy of appointing people of non-aristocratic descent in administrative posts was ground-breaking, causing much resentment among members of the aristocracy (on whom he relied heavily for military support). He took extraordinary steps to improve the living standards of both rural and city people such as conducting a census and bestowing on each subject of the empire a plot of land. He also took firm measures against the exploitation of the poor. Towards the end of his administration, he even requisitioned movable and immovable property belonging to great land-owners and the nobility (causing their further disgruntlement).

He was admired by all, however, for constructing new roads and distributing taxes with great equity. According to all the sources, he led a very frugal life, and took additional measures to curtail excessive spending of private wealth.

These internal policies were not only bold but successful. He is noted for achieving economic self-sufficiency for his empire through the improvement of domestic production as well as diminishing the import of foreign products (especially western luxury goods). He also had great military success, expanding his rule and establishing peace in an empire surrounded by warring rivals.

John Vatatzes also saw after the Church. In 1228 he issued a decree in which he forbade the interference of political authorities into ecclesiastical inheritance. He also made generous donations to ecclesiastical institutions and saw to the rebuilding of the existing churches and monasteries as well as the construction of new ones.

In periods of peace, Vatatzes also promoted the happiness of his subjects by patronizing arts, sciences and education. He was deeply committed to the collection and copying of manuscripts. The scholar, writer and teacher Nikephoros Blemmydes (the foremost representative of the educational movement of the 13th century) lived during his reign. Among Blemmydes’ students were Vatatzes’ heir, the learned Theodore II Laskaris, as well as the historian and statesman George Akropolites. The sources abound with references to the emperor’s great concern for the development of his state’s intellectual life, and he promoted the creation of many centers of learning.

With rare unanimity, Byzantine historians all praised him along with his successor. Seven years after his death, when his grave was opened, a sweet fragrance permeated the surroundings, and it was fond that his body and clothing were incorrupt. Miracles began to be connected with his memory, and a half-century after his death, he was recognized as a saint and the construction of a church in his honor was undertaken.

Not long after, his incorrupt relics were transferred to Constantinople right after it had been liberated from the Franks. With the fall of Constantinople to the Ottoman Turks, his relics were hidden in a catacomb. Many legends have proliferated since that time telling how the saintly emperor is awaiting the liberation of Constantinople. Some of these stories state that John has his sword with him in its sheath, and that each year the blade of the sword emerges a few millimeters, until the time comes when the entire sword will emerge to signify the time for the liberation of the city.

However colorful the mythologies, Saint (and Emperor) John III Doukas Vatatzes the Merciful remains most astounding to me for the matter-of-fact details from his own remarkable life. It’s a wonderful and merry way indeed to start this Christmas fast.

(See my main source here.)

Twelve Years with a Saint

The Gurus, the Young Man, and Elder Paisios by Dionysios Farasiotis was a gift to one of my children from godparents who far exceed me in wisdom and grace. I selfishly interrupted my child’s own reading of the book (just a chapter into it) to ask if we could read it out loud as a family (after our youngest, currently three years old, was in bed). We finished The Gurus, the Young Man, and Elder Paisios as an entire family only one day before I finished reading Roland in Moonlight to myself.

If you’ve read my recent review of Roland in Moonlight, you’ll know that David Bentley Hart’s beloved dog, Roland, insists that David is actually a Hindu. It was a little disorienting—but good—to be reading these two books at the same time.

In full disclosure, several books that I’ve read recently point out substantial and meaningful points of common ground between ancient ways of understanding our world, each other and our origin in God. Vedic, Jewish and Greek traditions are all placed within a common larger context in the ancient world by books such as Ancient Mediterranean Philosophy by Stephen R. L. Clark and The Experience of God: Being, Consciousness, Bliss by David Bentley Hart (as well as, without the same depth of Chrsitian understanding, The Shape of Ancient Thought: Comparative Studies in Greek and Indian Philosophies by Thomas C. McEvilley).

It was helpful to consider the experiences of a young man in Greece who found his fascination with a wide variety of far eastern traditions and new age beliefs (during the youthful cultural revolutions in Europe following World War II) to be entangled with dark and frightful experiences as well as controlling passions. In brief, The Gurus, the Young Man, and Elder Paisios by Dionysios Farasiotis is a translation from Greek of a book written by a man who knew Elder Paisios for 12 years (starting in the 1960s) and who was profoundly helped by the elder. Elder Paisios lived 1924 to 1994 and was canonized on 13 January 2015 by the Holy Synod of the Ecumenical Patriarchate as Saint Paisios of Mount Athos. Dionysios Farasiotis is a pseudonym used with the 2001 publication of The Gurus, the Young Man, and Elder Paisios, and the author has since identified himself as Athanasios Rakovalis (in a video posted online in 2018 and shared in several places since then). Following the publication of The Gurus, the Young Man, and Elder Paisios, Athanasios Rakovalis has published other books under his own name. These contain more collected teachings that Elder Paisios shared with him during their years together and that Athanasios kept in notebooks from his days with the elder. (Because Athanasios has identified himself, I will use his actual name for the sake of simplicity in the remainder of my review.)

The memories that Athanasios shares from his youth are gripping and heartfelt with an honesty, simplicity and sadness about them that are convincing and easy to relate to in terms of what it is like to be young and seeking earnestly for intellectual answers and for true love within the modern world. His experience of love and support from Elder Paisios are also wonderful (in the most literal sense), and I highly recommend the book for reading with young people because of these powerful elements.

As a young person in 1960s Greece, Athanasios was caught up in many sensational experiences of intellectual life as well as magic, new age and far eastern mystical teachings. He was clearly a charismatic and delightful young man who enjoyed many friends in diverse circles, but he ultimately found himself feeling false, unloved and unloving. At one point, he spent an intense period of months seeking to eliminate any false displays of meaningfulness, attractiveness or impressiveness from himself and his life so that he might find out what it would be like to be loved simply for who he was and not for any false pretenses of his own making. In the midst of such intense (and somewhat self-absorbed) experiments, he found that there was one person who loved him more deeply and profoundly than anyone he had ever known—even more than his own parents. This was a hermetic monk that he had met on a trip to Mount Athos, Elder Paisios, taken initially on a whim with a friend. This love that Athanasios experienced from Elder Paisios never left him despite his years of wandering and an extended trip to India during which he wanted to give the greatest yogis the opportunity to provide their own guidance and to demonstrate their own capacities.

Athanasios recounts these experiences with an admirable reserve and care. His narrative is convincing because you can feel the intensity of his memories but also his effort, in every sentence of his book, to be matter-of-fact and careful in his recounting. His content is sensational at times, but he makes every effort to avoid sensationalism and to withhold judgement. In some of his accounts, however, Athanasios is describing deeply personal memories from dark and confused periods of his early life. He focuses upon an intense contrast between dark and menacing spiritual powers and the love and light that he continually finds whenever he turns toward Elder Paisios.

This love for and from Paisios slowly gives way to a love for and from Jesus Christ, who Elder Paisios is continually pointing him toward. These words from Elder Paisios were a beautiful example of his teaching:

Man is worthy of being loved just because he’s in the image of God. It doesn’t matter at all if he’s good or bad, moral or sinful. Man is worthy of being loved for what he is. Christ loved and sacrificed Himself for sinful, corrupt people. ‘I came not to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance.’ We should be the same way: we should love everyone without making any distinctions. Just like the sun rises on everyone, intelligent and unintelligent, good and evil, beautiful and ugly, our love should be like the love of God—love that’s like the sun and shines on His whole creation without making distinctions.

Elder Paisios even tells Athanasios that he has prayed for Satan himself when Satan came to harass him. However, Elder Paisios added, Satan had no interest in repentance. At home again, not long after recording this answer from Elder Paisios about the love of God, Athanasios shares about having this experience of God’s presence:

Then, on one of those evenings, when I was praying alone in my apartment, I felt Him approaching me. I came to know ‘the perfect love that casteth out fear.‘ …He touched me, but not just on the surface. He touched the innermost depths of my being, filling me and permeating me. He united Himself with me so closely that we became as one. I was intoxicated by God, and I became like fire so that my very body burned. I wanted to be completely open towards Him, without a single corner of my soul remaining hidden, no matter how ugly or filthy it was. I wanted everything to be known to Him, so I confessed to Him and showed Him all my crooked and filthy Ways, all of my vices. I longed for every corner of my soul to be visited by Him, by this vast infinite Love coming from all directions and filling all things. As Saint Symeon the New Theologian cried, ‘O Deifying Love that is God!’ This Love holds the universe together, connecting every part of it, giving it the strength to exist, and being the very cause of its continued existence.

Not long after this experience, Athanasios recounts his travels in India. Despite his deep love for the elder and multiple experiences of profound blessing, Athanasios still desires to find out for himself if other religious traditions offer similar blessings. He records his extended stays in three different ashrams in different parts of India. In two of these, the leading disciples are largely Westerners. Within both of these communities, and in connection to both of their leaders, Athanasios remembers several disturbing and negative experiences as well as several impressive and powerful ones. Some of these experiences pick up on experiences of demonic oppression from his youth and carry over into strong feelings of this same kind oppression and eventual relief under the ministry of Elder Paisios. Athanasios also has some more restful stays within a less prominent ashram, where the only residents are local India practitioners. This distinction is not made in the book, but I suspect that there is some degree to which the ashrams wrapped up with impressive international connections tend to involve more manipulative and spurious spiritual powers. Many instances of gurus in this book involve a highly commodified exportation of Hindu religious traditions, no doubt with some money and prestige heavily involved.

There is also a strong theme of competition from the author who was interested from a young age in finding the truth through manifestations of power as well as of love. One positive and dramatic example of this is posted here in which Elder Paisios shows Athanasios the sweet, immaterial, noetic light of God as an answer to his having been impressed with a light that was visible coming from a prominent yogi under whom he spent some time in India.

With these experiences of competition as well as manipulative and demonic oppression, I can see many important lessons to be learned regarding the ways in which we can become fascinated with spiritual powers. There is also much to consider in terms of how modernity invented the category of religion as an abstraction made up of competing ideologies rather than a universal aspect of our humanity (see books such as The Invention of World Religions: Or, How European Universalism Was Preserved in the Language of Pluralism by Tomoko Masuzawa or Before Religion: A History of a Modern Concept by Brent Nongbri or The Meaning and End of Religion by Wilfred Cantwell Smith). Among other problems, this false construct of religion allows us to turn religious or spiritual practices into commodities to be bought and sold in ugly ways.

One contrast to Athanasios and his experience of Indian religion is Christine Mangala Frost. The author of The Human Icon: A Comparative Study of Hindu and Orthodox Christian Beliefs, she brings to bear her own experience as a cradle Hindu who embraced Orthodoxy (via the Anglican Franciscans, who have an inculturated approach rooted in the missionary experience of founding a Christian ashram in India) to encourage nuance and give Christians the conceptual tools they need to navigate a foreign tradition with respect and honesty yet without compromising the integrity of their own faith or relativizing its commitments. Frost read The Gurus, the Young Man, and Elder Paisios and spent what she describes as a long delightful evening with Athanasios and his family talking with Athanasios about his experiences. She did this while writing her own book on Hinduism and Orthodoxy which can, to some degree, be seen as a sympathetic response to Athanasios and his story, although it provides a different approach from an Orthodox Christian who has her own life story. While I have not read Frost’s book, I’m confident that it would be a valuable read alongside the account by Athanasios of his experiences in India.

In the end, one of the most meaningful passages in this book by Athanasios was his description of an experience with the elder outside of Mount Athos, when Athanasios was driving Elder Paisios from one place to another through a mountainous part of Greece. In a moment that Athanasios describes in hindsight as somewhat foolish and irreverent, Athanasios asked the Paisios to tell him what God was really like:

The elder didn’t say a word, so I simply continued to drive up the curving mountain road in silence. Suddenly, I began to feel God’s presence everywhere: in the car, out in the hills, and to the reaches of the farthest galaxies. He was “everywhere present and filling all things,” without being identified with any of them. He permeated everything, without being mixed or confused with anything. Being Spirit, the ever-existent God permeated the material cosmos, without ever being identified with changeable matter. Being Spirit, God dwelt in the eternity of an infinite present containing past, present, and future.

…Indeed, His power is everywhere present, yet beyond all perception and beyond the reach of arrogant human attempts to discover it, able to be known only when it reveals itself. This power is what brought the trees, the mountains, the stars, and man himself into existence and what sustains them. In a moment, this power could make them all vanish without any uproar, any tumult, or any resistance, as easily as the flick of a light switch can plunge a well-lit room into total darkness.

Simultaneously, I felt in my heart that God’s almighty power is also infinitely noble, with a refinement that could never allow His power or His presence to pressure anyone. Although He is so very near us, He remains unseen, so that we feel neither weighed down nor obligated even by His presence—for He in no way wishes to restrict us, but instead desires us to be completely free to do as we wish. He not only avoids compelling us through fear, power, and might, but He even avoids swaying us with His beauty, His love, and the irresistible sweetness of His presence. He does this out of an unfathomable respect for human freedom. Of course, He loves us with a fiery love and desires to draw us towards Himself, resorting to manifold other ways that reveal His boundless wisdom, personal attention, and tender loving care for each one of us. Indeed, the vastness of the universe which He watches over in no way lessens His love and concern for us. In turn, He seeks but does not demand, our love, which can be found only with complete freedom.

My soul felt such joy, contentment, and repose in the presence of Gods Who is so simple, yet so mysterious. I now understood what One of the Church Fathers meant when he write about how God becomes all things for those who love Him?

…In God’s embrace, I was filled with a deep calm that cast out all fear. Resting in the palm of His almighty hand, I had nothing to fear, for He knows all things in perfect wisdom and love. I felt a certainty about the origin of this world, its path through time, and its ultimate destination. And I rejoiced, forl knew that in the end He would be victorious and that His kindness and holiness would prevail.

I wasn’t in this state very long—perhaps for about two or three miles along the winding mountain road—but it was a very distinctive state, set apart from other altered states one experiences under the influence of alcohol, drugs, pleasure, pain, distress, or fear. It was as though someone lifted a veil from my mind, enabling my soul to live, not in a different world, but in the same world—the same world in its entirety. Like a deaf man who suddenly begins to hear the sounds of the world surrounding him, like a blind man who suddenly begins to see the images and colors of this world, hitherto invisible.

…I suddenly began to sense God in the world, with all the immeasurable wealth, beauty, and significance that this sensation contained. For a moment, I was taken out of thc tomb of my passions and lived as man was meant to live. I imagine that in an earlier age such a sensation was more common among the sons of men. In Paradise, before man’s Spiritual senses were damaged by the fall, Adam and Eve no doubt had an even more vivid sense of God’s presence than I did at that time, since Holy Scripture relates how they saw, heard, and spoke with God. Alas, the thick scales of vice have now coated my spiritual eyes and the muck of sin has stopped up my spiritual ears.

It is certainly worth noting that the elder responded to my request to hear a few words from him with fervent prayer that moved God to grant even a wretch like me such an inestimably rich and bountiful experience.

Whatever sophisticated commentary I might wish to make after reading this book by Athanasios, it is clear to me that this is an honest account by a humble man regarding a great love and profound gifts that he received from Elder Paisios over the twelve years that he knew the elder. What a blessing to us in the modern world to have witnesses such as Saint Paisios and those such as Athanasios who are willing to share these accounts.

the Good God will of course take into account the age and conditions in which we live

From With Pain and Love for Contemporary Man by Saint Paisios the Athonite:

Question:

Geronda, why does St. Cyril of Jerusalem say that the Martyrs of the last days will surpass all Martyrs?

Answer:

Because in the old times we had men of great stature; our present age is lacking in examples—and I am speaking generally about the Church and Monasticism.  Today, there are more words and books and fewer living examples. We admire the holy Athletes of our Church, but without understanding how much they struggled, because we have not struggled ourselves.  Had we done so, we would appreciate their pain, we would love them even more and strive with philotimo to imitate them.  The Good God will of course take into account the age and conditions in which we live, and He will ask of each one of us accordingly.  If we only strive even a little bit, we will merit the crown more than our ancestors.

In the old days, when there was a fighting spirit and everyone was trying to measure up to the best, evil and negligence would not be tolerated.  Good was in great supply back then, and with this competitive spirit, it was difficult for careless people to make it to the finish line.  The others would run them over.  I remember once, in Thessaloniki, we were waiting for the traffic light to cross the street, when I suddenly felt pushed by the crowd behind me, as if by a wave.  I only had to lift my foot and the rest was done for me.  All I am trying to say is that when everybody is going toward the same direction, those who don’t wish to follow will have difficulty resisting because the others will push them along.

Today, if someone wishes to live honestly and spiritually, he will have a hard time fitting in this world.  And if he is not careful, he’ll be swept by the secular stream downhill.  In the old days, there was plenty of good around, plenty of virtue, many good examples, and evil was drowned by the good; so, the little disorder that existed in the world or in the monasteries was neither visible nor harmful.  What’s going on now?  Bad examples abound, and the little good that exists is scorned.  Thus, the opposite occurs; the little good that exists is drowned by an excess of evil, and evil reigns.

It helps so much when a person or a group of people has a fighting spirit.  When even one person grows spiritually, he does not only benefit himself, but helps those who see him.  Likewise, one who is laid back and lazy has the same effect on the others.  When one give in, others follow until in the end there’s nothing left.  This is why it’s so important to have a fighting spirit in these lax times.  We must pay great attention to this matter, because people today have reached the point where they make lax laws and impose them on those who want to live strict and disciplined lives.  For this reason, it is important for those who are struggling spiritually, not only to resist being influenced by the secular spirit, but also to resist comparing themselves to the world and concluding that they are saints.  For when this happens, they end up being worse than those who live in the world.  If we take one virtue at a time, find the Saint who exemplified it and study his or her life, we will soon realize that we have achieved nothing and will carry on with humility.

Just as in racing, the runner speeding for the end line does not look back toward those lagging behind, but fixes his eyes forward, so too in this struggle we don’t want to be looking back and thus left behind.  When I try to imitate those who are ahead of me, my conscience is refined.  When, however, I look back, I justify myself and think that my faults are not important compared to theirs.  The thought that others are inferior consoles me.  Thus, I end up drowning my conscience or, to put it better, having a plastered, unfeeling heart.

Jesus’ own mind was the defining locus of humanity’s capacity to hear and obey the historical summons of God

In other words, the Old Testament and the redemptive work of Christ are not related simply by way of objective semantic reference, but also through the living subjective experience of the Redeemer—Jesus’ own understanding of Holy Scripture. The conjunction of the Sacred Text and the redemptive event was originally discerned in the active, self-reflective understanding (phronesis) of Jesus of Nazareth, who heard in the words of the Hebrew Bible the Father’s personal summons to obedience. Jesus’ own mind was the defining locus of humanity’s capacity to hear and obey the historical summons of God.

…Divine revelation—God’s Incarnate Son included—is available to us only through the specific men and women in whose lives the revelation took place. This fact is most obvious in the Sacred Writings. Our access to the events of Sinai, for instance, comes to us through Moses and the myriad authors, editors, and scribes—Jewish and Christian—who transmitted the experience and content of what took place in the Exodus and the Sinai encounter. Likewise, our historical access to Jesus, the Son of God, comes through Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John—and, prior to them, through Peter and Paul and the congregations to which they and their companions ministered. In short, none of this revelation is available to us except through that corporate, historical body: Israel/ the Church.

…For this reason I have always wondered about the adequacy of the expression solus Christus (“Christ alone”). Christ is, in fact, never alone. God’s Son did not simply show up here one day. He came to us through a believing Mother (whose consent in faith was absolutely essential to the event of the Incarnation), and He gathered around Him disciples and apostles, whom He commissioned to evangelize the nations. In the Bible we hardly ever find Jesus alone. He stands always with the saints. We know our Lord—and, in the strict sequence of history, He is certainly our Lord before He is my Lord—through the experiences and writings of the saints.

…Thus, the experience of the saints is essential to the matter and form of the revelation. The Church—the body of the believers, the saints—pertains to the very substance of the Gospel. Those who mediate the Good News are an integral component of the Good News. This is the reason the Creed includes “the one, holy, catholic, and apostolic Church” within its articles of belief. It is an extraordinary thing to reflect that God reveals Himself to us through the responsive experience of others who preceded us. Their Spirit-given response to God’s revelation became a component of the revelation. Consequently, it is crucial not to mute the historical quality—the sequential and transmitting process—of the revelation. When we speak of the historical, factual nature of revelation and redemption, we mean something very clear and definite: Certain historical events actually constitute the substance of revelation and redemption. Redemption and revelation are identical to those events.

…With respect to the second meaning of “time” (chronos), the aforesaid events took place sequentially, in the formal process of a Tradition (paradosis). They were transmitted—and in the Spirit-given memory of the Church, the very historical identity of the Church, continue to be transmitted—in a specific historical, accumulative sequence; revelation and redemption are chronometric. All of sacred theology, including the theology of salvation, comes through salvation history. It is essential to the Christian faith to insist that at absolutely no point do revelation and redemption lose their historical quality.

From Patrick Henry Reardon’s book Reclaiming the Atonement: An Orthodox Theology of Redemption (Volume 1 of 3: The Incarnate Word).

how gloriously different are the saints

C.S. Lewis in Mere Christianity:

At the beginning I said there were Personalities in God. I will go further now. There are no real personalities anywhere else. Until you have given up your self to Him you will not have a real self. Sameness is to be found most among the most “natural” men, not among those who surrender to Christ. How monotonously alike all the great tyrants and conquerors have been: how gloriously different are the saints.