- St John Cassian the Roman (435)
- The Synaxarion calls him "Our Father
Cassian, chosen by God to bring the illumination of Eastern monasticism
to the West". He was born in Scythia of noble parents, and was well
educated in secular things. But, thirsting for perfection, he left all
behind and travelled with his friend Germanus to the Holy Land, where he
became a monk in Bethlehem. After becoming established in the monastic
life for several years, St John felt a desire for greater perfection,
and sought out the Fathers of the Egyptian Desert. He spent seven years
in the Desert, learning from such Fathers as Moses, Serapion, Theonas,
Isaac and Paphnutius. Through long struggles in his cell, St John
developed from personal experience a divinely-inspired doctrine of
spiritual combat. Many say that it was he who first listed the eight basic passions: gluttony, fornication, avarice, anger, sadness, acedia, vainglory and pride.
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In time, struggles in the Alexandrian Church made life so difficult for
the Egyptian monks that St John (still accompanied by his friend
Germanus), sought refuge in Constantinople, where they came under the
care and protection of St John Chrysostom. When the holy Archbishop was
exiled, St John once again fled, this time to Rome, where he came under
the protection of Pope Innocent I. This proved to be providential for
the Western Church, for it was St John who brought the treasures of
Desert spirituality to the monasteries of the West. He founded the
monastery of St Victor in Marseilles, then, at the request of his
bishop, wrote the Cenobitic Institutions, in
which he adapted the austere practices of the Egyptian Fathers to the
conditions of life in Gaul. He went on to write his famous Conferences,
which became the main channel by which the wisdom of the desert East
was passed to the monastics of the West. Saint Benedict developed much
of his Rule (which at one time governed most monasteries in the Latin world) from St John's Institutions,, and ordered that the Conferences be read in all monasteries.
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Saint John reposed in peace in 435, and has been venerated by the monks
of the West as their Father and one of their wisest teachers. His
relics are still venerated at the Abbey of St Victor in Marseilles.
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St John's writings were soon attacked by extreme Augustinians and, as
Augustinianism became the official doctrine of the Latin Church, his
veneration fell out of favor in the West. Outside the Orthodox Church,
his commemoration is now limited to the diocese of Marseilles.
source:http://www.abbamoses.com |
