Simeone

A third of one of the Hagia Sophia tablets hosts a saint well known in the Eastern Christian world and in the tradition of the Church Fathers. So much so that, although born in Syria at the end of the 4th century, he is found in the same icon next to John the apostle and evangelist, and Philip the Apostle. A tough saint, of the caliber of the apostles. Let's talk about Simeon Stylites (the Elder). Various sources tell us about him, including Theodoret (c. 440), Evagrius Ponticus, a Syriac writer who wrote about his life and also his disciple Anthony.

We read, precisely from Antonio, that his vocation began as a boy, when he still grazed his father's flock and went to church on Sundays. One day, he heard a passage from Saint Paul and asked an old man to explain to him the meaning of those words. The old man replied to him: «Continence is the salvation of the soul, which leads to the light and which leads to the kingdom of heaven. [...] Consider these things in your heart: in fact, you must suffer from hunger and thirst and must be insulted, slapped and mocked, must groan, cry, be oppressed and suffer the reverses of fate, must you renounce being in health and to have desires, that you are humiliated and suffer many evils from men and so that you are consoled by angels; behold, after having understood all these things, may the Lord of glory give you a mind capable according to his will."
Having heard these words, Simeon leaves the church, goes to a solitary place and prostrates himself for seven days, crying and praying to God without taking food or drink. And after the seven days, relieved, he runs off to the monastery.

From this moment a path of increasingly harsh mortifications that he imposes on himself begins for the young Simeone. Simeon continues this path which leads him to live in solitude and to go on very long fasts and live on nothing other than prayer. However, this way of life first attracts the curious and then more and more faithful people, who realize that he is not crazy, indeed the various sources ascertain that he managed to effect many healings, liberations, and that his prayer was very powerful. So much so that to maintain his "detachment" she invents a small tower in which he decides to go and live. He, however, does not turn away the people who come to him, but allows them to climb up with a ladder and demonstrates his humility on several occasions. His vertical "distancing" from the world does not correspond to a hatred or disinterest for human beings, but is necessary for him to maintain a more intimate relationship with God. So soon even public authorities and powerful people turn to him to ask advise. And despite changing the stele two or three times, building it higher and higher, the people and the interest around him increase and groups of monks are also formed who want to imitate his example.
He dies on the last stele, apparently more than 15 meters high, in the Qal'at Sim'an area, in Syria, where a monastery was built after his death.

This is how this icon, through the image of a monk sitting on a tower, gives us a "visual" synthesis of the path of a soul who tried to go against any form of comfort. She stripped herself and came to such a detachment from herself and from earthly goods, to such spiritual freedom as to obtain that internal "capacity" of being able to be entirely of God, and entirely filled with God, so much so as to be able to be a "channel of grace”, capable of distributing to his brothers the very graces of God, his gifts of healing, conversion, liberation. Who knows if, despite his radicality which in our eyes appears excessive, this holy stylite is not telling us something: his search for "emptying the senses" and essentiality is also an indication for us, today, to help us direct our our efforts towards the true meaning of life, to seek a personal relationship with God.


Chiara Dal Corso
NP October 2023