St. John the Russian. By Photios Kontoglou

THE LIFE OF
ST. JOHN THE RUSSIAN
WHOSE VENERABLE RELICS ARE FOUND IN NEW PROCOPION ON THE ISLAND OF EUBOIA

IN GREECE, a land filled with the relics of a multitude of Saints, many of whom are incorrupt, such as St. Spyridon of Corfu, St. Gerasimos of Kephallonia, and St. Dionysios of Zacinthos, St. John the Russian along with St. Nectarios of Pentapolis has become the most widely loved of all the Saints.

Miracles beyond number flow from his relics and icons, and there is no Orthodox home which does not contain bis holy icon.

Two recent miracles of St. John were the miraculous healings of two severe cases of meningitis one a nineteen year old shepherd boy in southern Greece and the other a three year old boy in London.

He is especially venerated by travellers, and his icon is found in buses and other transport vehicles because of his miracle of transporting the pilaff from Procopion to Meсса.

The multitudes who visit his shrine are such that there is hourly bus service to the shrine from Athens. On his feast day thousands of pilgrims gather from all parts of Greece, some even coming bundreds of miles by foot.

BY PHOTIOS KONTOGLOU

Full of graces was the prisoner seen to be, Leading the ruler of darkness away captive.

LET US GIVE GLORY AND CHANT HYMNS, thanking the greatly-compassionate Lord because He deems us worthy in these evil times to see rising in the dark sky of unbelief the new luminaries of the spiritual firmament of our Orthodox Church. These luminaries cheer and gladden the faithful and put unbelievers to shame. And shut are the mouths of the ungodly who say (in order to find an excuse for their unbelief) that nowadays people no longer become saints, as though our Faith and Christ, its Head, of Whom the Apostle Paul says: "Christ – the same yesterday and today and unto the ages," had changed.

Besides the ancient saints, righteous ones, hierarchs and martyrs, a great and shining cloud of new saints, the majority of them martyrs, has appeared from the time of the taking of Constantinople by the Turks until today. By their martyrdom they strengthened the Faith and adorned with new and unfading crowns our venerable Orthodox Church, which alone stands unchanging and immovable from the time of the Apostles by whom she was founded. And this recalls the word of Haggai the Prophet, who said: "Great shall be the glory of this house (the Church); the last greater than the first" (Haggai 2:9).

One of those new saints is St. John the Russian, whose sacred tabernacle is the boast of the blessed island of Euboia, for here did this saint wish to rest and to sanctify the place even more, though it had been sanctified from before by the righteous David the Elder  and many other saints.

The righteous John was born in a village of southern Russia, of parents pious and Orthodox, for the blessed race of the Russian has the same spiritual Mother as we--the Orthodox Church--and has given birth to many great saints. St. John came into this world around the year 1690, when Peter the Great was reigning in Russia. I surmise this from the fact that when John was a brave young lad he was a soldier in the war which that daring Tsar waged against Turkey in the year 1711. In that war, John, together with thousands of other Russians, was taken prisoner by Tatars. The Tatars sold him to a Moslem cavalry officer who was from Procopion in Asia Minor, which is near Caesarea of Cappadocia. The Agha took him to his village. At that time Turkey was filled with an innumerable multitude of Muscovite slaves who groaned under the harsh yoke of the Moslems, and the majority of them, in order to lighten the burden somewhat, denied the Faith of Christ and became Moslem, alas!

John, however, from childhood was nurtured "in instruction and admonition of the Lord," and he loved God and the religion of his fathers exceedingly. He was one of those young men whom the knowledge of God makes wise, as the wise Solomon declared saying, "The just man is wise even in his youth. For honorable age is not that which standeth in length of time, nor that is measured by number of years. But wisdom is the gray hair unto men, and an unspotted life is old age" (Wisdom 4:8,9).


SAINT JOHN THE RUSSIAN, NEW MARTYR Reproduced from a Russian Lithograph of Fesenko, Odessa, 1897.

At left is the church in Procopion of Cappadocia, where the Saint's relics reposed until 1924.


Procession with the relics of St. John on his feast day.


The church of St John in New Procopion, on the feast day of the Saint.


Thus also the blessed John, having that knowledge which God gives to those who love Him, was patient in slavery and in the ill-treatment of his master and the insults and annoyances of the Moslems who called him kiafir, that is, unbeliever, thus showing their contempt and aversion Procopion was the army camp of the Christian-hating Jannissaries,  and John was their abomination because to his master and to all who urged him to deny his Faith he answered with firm conviction that he preferred to die rather than fall into such a fearful sin. To the Agha he said, "If you leave me free in my religion, I will be very eager to carry out your commands. But if you force me to change my faith, know that I will rather surrender you my head than my Faith. A Christian I was born and a Christian shall I die."

God, seeing his faith and hearing his confession, softened the hard heart of his master and, with time, the Agha came to bear with him. The great humility and meekness which adorned John contributed to this also.

The blessed John, therefore, was left in peace without further promises and threats from his Moslem lord, who had him in his stable to care for his animals. In one corner of the stable he would lay down his tired body and rest, thanking God because he had been deemed worthy to have as a bed the manger in which our Lord Jesus Christ Himself had lain at His birth as Man. He was dedicated to his work, affectionately caring for the animals of his lord, and they, perceiving the love which the saint had for them, would look out for him when he was absent. When he petted them, they would look at him with love, and would whinny with joy as though they were talking with him.

As time passed, the Agha and his wife came to love him. They gave him as a dwelling place a small room near the hayloft. Yet John did not accept it, but continued sleeping in his beloved stable so that he might be able to bring his body into subjection by a life of privation and asceticism amid the smell of the animals and the stamping of their feet. At night, however, that stable would be filled with the prayers of the Saint, and the smell would become an odor of a spiritual fragrance. The blessed John made that stable into a hermitage. There he lived according to the rule of the Fathers, kneeling and praying for hours, taking a little rest by curling up on the hay without any covering except for an old coat. Many times he ate only a little bread and water, fasting most days and chanting with a quiet voice the psalms of David, which he knew in the Slavonic tongue: "He that dwelleth in the help of the Most High shall abide in the shelter of the God of the heavens. He shall say to the Lord: Thou art my helper, and my refuge is my God, and I will hope on Him. For He shall deliver thee from the snare of the hunter and from every cause of vexation (Ps. 90:1-3). They laid me in the lowest pit, in the darkness and shadow of death (Ps. 87:6). Unto the Lord in my affliction have I cried, and He heard me (Ps. 119:1). The Lord shall keep thy going out, from henceforth and forevermore (Ps. 120:8). Unto Thee have I lifted up my eyes, unto Thee Who dwellest in the heavens. Behold, as the eyes of servants look unto the hands of their master, so our eyes look unto the Lord our God, until He take pity on us" (Ps. 122:1,2).

He would even silently chant the psalms while he followed the horse of his master, according to the duty of a stable-boy, when his master was taking a ride in the country. With the blessing which the Saint brought to his house, the Turkish cavalry officer became rich and was one of the powerful men in Procopion.

The holy stable-boy – besides the prayers and fasting which he did day and night inside that stable, winter and summer, lying upon the dung like another Job – would go at night and keep vigils standing in the narthex of the chapel of St. George, which was built in the hollow of a rock near the house of his Turkish master. He would go there secretly at night, and every Saturday he would partake of the immaculate Mysteries. And the Lord, Who examineth the hearts and the reins, looked upon His faithful slave and caused his fellow slaves and other believers to cease from mocking and insulting him. And the Lord also gave many riches to John's master, who understood whence such blessing had come unto his house and proclaimed it to his fellow citizens.

When he had become wealthy, therefore, he decided to go to Mecca on a pilgrimage. One day he left Procopion and, after the many hardships which pilgrims suffered in those times, he arrived at the sacred city of the Moslems.

When some days had passed after his departure, his wife gave a banquet and invited the relatives and friends of her husband to rejoice and pray that he might return well from his journey. The blessed John served at the table. They also put a dish on the table which was a favorite of the Agha, one which is called pilaff, and is a very common food in the East. Then the mistress remembered her husband and said unto John, "How much pleasure your master would have, Guvan, if he were here now and ate this pilaff with us!" John then asked for a plate full of pilaff from his mistress, saying that he would send it to his master in Mecca. The guests, upon hearing these words, all laughed. But the mistress told the cook to give a plate of the food to John, thinking to herself that either he would eat it himself or would take it to some poor Christian family as was his custom. Taking it, the Saint went to the stable and there knelt and prayed from the depths of his heart unto God to send the food to his master in whatever manner He would dispense in His almightiness. With the simplicity which the blessed one had, he believed that the Lord would hearken to his prayer and that the food would go to Mecca supernaturally. He believed "without doubting," according to the word of the Lord that is, without having any hesitancy – that this supernatural thing could be done by God. As St. Isaac the Syrian, great among the ascetics, says, "These supernatural things will occur for those who are more simple in mind and more fervent in the hope" which they have unto God. And truly, the plate with the food disappeared from before his eyes. The blessed John then returned to the dining room and told the mistress of the house that he had sent it to his master.

But after some time his lord returned from Mecca and to the great amazement of his household, brought with him the copper plate which had held the food. Only the blessed John was not surprised. The Agha therefore said unto his household: "On that certain day (and this was the day of the banquet at which John had said that he sent the food to his master), at the time when I was returning from the Great Mosque to the house where I stayed, I found this plate full of pilaff on the table in a room which I have locked. I stood in doubt, pondering who could have brought that food. And above all, I could not understand how he had opened the door which I had locked well. Not knowing how to explain this strange thing, I examined the plate on which the pilaff was yet steaming. I saw with amazement that my name was engraved upon the copper plate, just as it was upon all the copper vessels of our house. In spite of all the confusion which I had from that unexplainable circumstance, I sat down and ate the pilaff with great relish. Behold the plate which I brought with me: it is truly ours. For the sake of Allah, I cannot understand how it came even unto Mecca and who brought it."

When the household of the cavalry officer heard this narration, they stood in amazement and marveled. But his wife told him how John had asked for the plate with the food saying that he would send it to Mecca, and that when they heard him say that he had sent it they had laughed. But behold now, what he had said was true.

This miracle was made known to the whole village and the surrounding area, and henceforth all considerd John as a man righteous and beloved unto God. They looked upon him with fear and reverence, and no one of them dared to bother him. His lord and his lord's wife cared for him all the more, and entreated him again to leave the stable and live in a dwelling which was near the stable. Yet he did not wish to change his dwelling place. He passed his life, therefore, living in the same manner as an ascetic, laboring as before in the care of the animals and performing with eagerness the commands of his master. The nights he passed with prayer and psalmody, and these things he did according to the word of the Lord Who says: "Render unto Caesar the things which are Caesar's, and unto God the things which are God's."

But after a few years, during which the blessed John lived with fasting, prayer, and sleeping on the ground, the end of his life approached. He became ill and lay upon the straw in that stable which he had sanctified with his supplications and the privation of his body for the sake of the name and the love of Christ, Who became man like unto us and was crucified for our love. Foreseeing his end, he called for a priest and asked to partake of the immaculate Mysteries. But because of the fanaticism of the Turks, the priest was afraid to bring the Holy Mysteries into the stable openly. However, he was made wise, according to divine enlightenment, and taking an apple he dug it out, lined the cavity with beeswax, and placed the divine Communion inside. Thus he went to the stable and gave Communion to the blessed John, who, upon receiving the immaculate Body and Blood of the Lord, surrendered his holy soul into the hands of God Whom he loved so much. This took place on the 27th of May, of the year 1730.

In this manner reposed St. John the Russian, the new Job, who passed his life upon a dungheap, the second Lazarus who endured the mockings of his fellow servants and whose wounds his master's dogs who also slept with him – licked.

At the time he reposed, I surmise that he must have been some forty years old. Because he was beloved by God, He took him near Him quickly so that he might not be tormented any more in this sinful world, and so that he might rejoice, being glad in the tents of the righteous where there is neither pain, nor sorrow, nor sighing, but the untroubled sound of those that keep festival and cry unceasingly, O Lord, glory to Thee.

Let us here recall the words of the prophet Solomon concerning the death of a righteous man: He pleased God, and was beloved of Him: so that living among sinners he was translated Yea, speedily was be taken away, lest that wickedness should alter his understanding, or deceit beguile his soul. For the bewitching of wickedness doth obscure things that are honest; and the wandering of concupiscence doth undermine the simple mind He, being made perfect in a short time, fulfilled a long time: for his soul pleased the Lord; therefore basted He to take him away from among the wicked. This the people saw, and understood not, neither laid they up this in their minds, that His grace and mercy is with His saints, and that He hath respect unto His chosen" (Wisdom 4.10-14).

Yes. The world lives the carnal life seeking to please only its senses, eating, drinking, revelling and caring only for "the things of vanity and the much-afflicted flesh." The senses, together with tangible things and delights of this world, were fashioned by God and it is not sin for a man to rejoice in this world, yet he should not be consumed wholly by material things, but should take care also for the spiritual things, placing in his mind that in his temporary body there dwells an immortal soul which is as more honored and valued than the body as the body is more than its clothing, as the Lord said If a man truly believes this, he will take care for his salvation and he will be blessed in this world, having the joy of a pure conscience, and in the next (which is eternal and immortal) he shall rejoice in the bosom of Abraham. But if he does not believe in God and in His Word, he will be the most wretched and unhappy man in the world, even though he acquire many possessions and great glory and honor from men, according to the words which that all holy and unlying mouth said: For what will it profit a man if he win the whole world and lose his soul? Or, What can a man give in exchange for his soul?

Blessed therefore and thrice-blessed is the man who has put these words into the depths of his heart, keeping them as a treasure, and hearkens to them until his last breath and is conformed to them and walks in accordance with them throughout his life.

Blessed and thrice-blessed was also this holy John, whose memorial we celebrate today with great compunction and spiritual joy. He did not know many letters. The evils of the world he did not know. He lived far from the complex systems of demonic knowledge, being simple, poor in spirit, and for this reason full of faith. In his heart there dwelt the Holy Spirit. Within that disdained and tyrannized body, within that taciturn and ragged slave, there burned the mystical spark of faith.

But "the people saw, and understood not, neither laid they up this in their minds." For the carnal men around him who were inwardly dark like an extinguished lantern, saw the Saint but understood nothing because they saw him with bodily eyes, not having wretched as they were spiritual eyes that they might see the mystery of his life. And with the pride which men have they considered him insane for desiring to sleep with animals and having no association with other men, for fasting, for dressing in rags, for enduring abuses and insults without answering back, for not lifting his eyes to the face of a woman. Who of the clever of this world would have surmised that this "crazed one," this fool for Christ, was the most wise of the wise because he had "the foolishness in Christ" which makes manifest the revelation of great and terrible mysteries unto him who has it and grants unto him the great hope of immortality?

At this present hour in which we celebrate this feast to the memorial of the righteous John with psalms and hymns and spiritual odes and feel with assurance that the Saint is found in our midst, living and crying unto us the salutation: "Rejoice" – in the midst of glory and effulgence – at this moment, then, where are they who saddened and despised him? Where are the mighty of the earth? Where is the Ottoman lord of this unenslaved slave? Where the fearsome Janissaries and the Tatars who bound him and beat him and sold him as though he were an animal? Where are their pampered bodies?

O! They are dispelled as a morning mist, "their bones are scattered in hades," according to the Prophet-King David. The tombstone of forgetfulness has covered them.

And in Jerusalem on high, in the dwelling of the first-born where there are found the blessed souls of the Saints who lived in privation in this world so that they might pass through "the narrow and afflicted way that leadeth unto life," there rejoices also with the holy spirits the humble and ragged John whom we celebrate today, he who was a brother of the animals, the new Job, the second Lazarus.

There, in the other life, all they that grieved the righteous one and were given over to their passions shall sigh. Behold again what the Prophet Solomon says concerning the righteous man and his persecuters, when they open their eyes after death: "Then shall the righteous man stand in great boldness before the face of such as have afflicted him, and made no account of his labors. When they see it, they shall be troubled with terrible fear, and shall be amazed at the strangeness of his salvation, so far beyond all that they looked for: And they repenting and groaning for anguish of spirit shall say within themselves: This was he, whom we had sometimes in derision, and a proverb of reproach: we fools accounted his life madness, and his end to be without honor: now is he numbered among the children of God, and his lot is among the saints! Therefore have we erred from the way of truth, and the light of righteousness hath not shined unto us, and the sun of righteousness rose not upon us. We wearied ourselves in the way of wickedness and destruction: yea, we have gone through deserts, where there lay no way: but as for the way of the Lord, we have not known it. What hath pride profited us? Or what good hath riches with our vaunting brought us? All those things are passed away like a shadow, and as a post that hasted by: and as a ship that passeth over the waves of the water, which when it is gone by, the trace thereof cannot be found, neither the pathway of the keel in the waves! Even so we in like manner, as soon as we were born, began to draw to our end, and had our wickedness. For the hope of the ungodly is like dust that is blown away with the wind, like a thin froth that is driven away with the storm, like as the smoke which is dispersed here and there with a tempest, and passeth away as the remembrance of a guest that tarrieth but a day.'" (Wisdom 5:1-14)

Yes. These things shall the lawless say in the other world where the right-judging Lord shall judge men. But they shall receive no benefit from their change of heart after death, since in hades there is no repentance.

But St. John reposed in the Lord and received the recompense of the labors and toils which he endured for Christ, Whom he loved more than all corrupt and fleeting things. And now, wearing a crown in heaven, he rejoices with the choirs of the Saints and beholds in glory the Prizebestower, our Lord Jesus Christ. To Him be glory and dominion and worship unto the unending ages. Amen.

SOME MIRACLES OF ST. JOHN

In the year 1832, during the time of civil war in the Ottoman Empire, Moslem troops plundered the city of Procopion and entered the Church of St. George where the relics of St. John were kept. They opened the reliquary of the Saint hoping to find gold. Not finding anything but the relics, they became angered and desired to burn them. They took them out into the court of the church and gathered dry grass, and having placed the relics upon it they set the grass afire. But the fire did not harm the body of the righteous one because the flames only licked at it. And at one moment the barbarians saw the Saint as though he were alive and rising in the midst of the fire. When the Turks saw this wonder, they fled, terrified, and narrated it to the other Moslems Out of their fear they left behind the gold and silver vessels and offerings which they had seized. The next day some elderly Christians went to the Church and placed the holy relics back into the reliquary.

Esset Agha, an old man who was a descendent of the Moslem cavalry officer who was the master of St. John, narrated with simplicity to the many Christians of Procopion the many and various benefactions of which his family had been deemed worthy by God through the prayers of the righteous John. He would speak with elderly sobriety and say: "My children would not live except for a short time, and would die while yet infants. They would not reach that which we call "childhood" so that we might rejoice in them. Their unfortunate mother, after she had lost hope in the wisdom of medicine, fled without my knowledge to the relics of the slave John, so that he might grant her a little child which would not die while yet young, so that we also might rejoice to see it as a young man or even a young girl. She offered beeswax and other gifts to the lamplighter so that he might entreat John for her, and she promised furthermore that if her supplication was heard and John granted her a child she would call it 'the child of John.' In truth the righteous John heard the supplication of my wife. God granted us a strong little boy whom we called, as you know, Kole Guvan Oglu (that is, "Son of the Slave John"), and he lives through the power of God and the prayers of John even until today, and he is studying in a school." The child was known to all, both at home and at school, by the name of Kole Guvan Oglu. And if anyone who did not know him would ask, "Who is Kole Guvan Oglu?" He immediately would answer with childish pride, striking his chest and saying with joy, "I am the Son of Kole Guvan."

In the year 1862, after the Liturgy had been celebrated in the Church of St. Basil, one pious woman told the others that she had dreamed of St. John: that he had gotten out of his reliquary and was holding with his two hands the roof of the school, which was ready to fall. The school was next to the temple of St. Basil. As soon as she finished speaking, a loud noise was heard. The people in the church ran out, terrified, and saw with amazement that the roof of the school had collapsed. They cried out, lamenting, because at that hour the children were in school. They ran, therefore, with cries of anguish and lifted the roof and – O the wonder! – there came out from under it the twenty children, totally unharmed. The children said that before the roof fell they heard a frightening creaking, as though it were a forewarning that the roof was about to fall, and they had time to jump underneath their desks. And when the roof fell, its beams came down upon the desks without striking even one of the children.

In the year 1834, the Christians of Procopion built a large and beautiful church in memory of St. Basil. In the yeat 1845, it was decided with one accord that they transfer the relics of St. John to this new church. But, strangely, the holy relics vanished together with the reliquary and were found again in the temple of St. George where they were formerly. In spite of this, the Christians again transferred them to the temple of St. Basil. Yet once again they were found in the Church of St. George. For a third time they took the reliquary to St. Basil's and made supplications and vigils, and thus the sacred relics remained in the Church of St. Basil by the condescension of St. John.

Certain Christians out of piety would secretly take pieces from the holy relics at the time when they were venerating them. But they would see the Saint in their dreams telling them angrily to put the piece of the relics which they had stolen back in its place. In the year 1881, the hieromonk Dionysios was sent from the Monastery of St. Panteleimon on Mount Athos with the request that the people of Procopion give him the right hand of the Saint. They decided to give it to him so that the name of St. John might become known to the ends of vast Russia (which in fact came to pass). In this case the Saint consented and did not show displeasure at all. The hieromonk Dionysios, together with certain foremost citizens of Procopion, carried his holy relics to the Holy Mountain, where the monks of St Panteleimon's welcomed them with joy and compunction.  The people of Procopion were guests there for one month. When they were about to depart from the Holy Mountain for their country, the fathers of the Monastery gave them precious gifts for the church and financial aid so that they might build a small temple over the grave of the Saint. But instead of a small chapel there was built to the memory of the righteous John a great and most beautiful temple, the foundations of which were laid in the year 1886, and which was completed five years later. This temple also became the cathedral church of Procopion since the church of St George, which was in a cave, fell into ruin because the rock was full of fissures and one night there fell large stones which rolled down into the street of the marketplace as well as upon certain shops, without, however, anyone suffering injury.

In the year 1924, when the exchange of populations between Greece and Turkey took place, the relics of St. John were transferred from Procopion of Cappodocia to Halkis, where they were temporarily placed in the temple of St. John the Forerunner in the cemetery. From there they were transferred to the newly-built village of New Procopion of Euboia and were placed in the village church, which was dedicated to Sts. Constantine and Helen. In the year 1930, from the gifts and alms of worshipers, there was built a majestic temple in a beautiful location in honor of the Russian Saint who came from the East.