Among the great saints of our Church, great ascetic and monastic figures hold an important place. Saint Savvas the Sanctified is one of them.
He was born in the year 439 in the village of Mutalaski in Cappadocia. His parents were called John and Sophia, who were rich and pious. The father was a military man and consequently he was forced to emigrate. When Savvas was young, he was forced to emigrate with his wife to Alexandria, leaving his child to be raised by a relative named Hermia. But for a while he left him because of his wife's bad behavior towards him. He decided to renounce worldly things, taking refuge in the Flavian Monastery, where, despite his young age, he showed an unusual zeal for solitary life and exercise. In a short time he surpassed the monks in virtues. In fact, the signs of his holiness began to appear. Once, making the sign of the cross, he entered a red-hot oven, to save the monks' clothes, which the baker had forgotten, without suffering the slightest damage.
After ten years of staying in the Monastery, he asked for a blessing from the abbot to move and settle in the Holy Land. The abbot, after a divine apparition, gave him permission and thus Savvas arrived in Jerusalem, where he was accommodated in the Monastery of Agios Passarionos, in the winter of 456-457. Despite the pleas of the brothers of the Monastery to stay with them, he decided to leave for the desert, near the famous ascetic M. Euthymio.
Saint Euthymios, foreseeing the spiritual path of the young monk, refused to accept him in his Lavra and sent him to the Monastery of Abba Theoktistos. There Savvas indulged in ascetic struggles, demonstrating perfect obedience and humility. He especially loved services and prayer. For twelve whole years he practiced under the abbotship of Theoktistos and Maridos. He then asked Abbot Longinos to retire to an adjacent cave for more exercise and quiet. There, for five whole years, he fasted all week and ate only on Saturday and Sunday, praying and working at his work. During M. On the 473th they retreated deeper into the desert of Rouva, together with Saint Euthymius, praying and keeping vigil. Their food consisted of a few wild bitter desert grasses and water. This exercise continued until the death of Saint Euthymius in XNUMX.
Then Savvas, reaching the thirty-fifth year of his age, went deeper into the desert, where he associated with the famous holy ascetics Theodosius Coinoviarch and Gerasimos Iordanitis. In 483 he founded his own Lavra, east of the Cedars stream, gathering about seventy ascetics under his spiritual guidance. He himself resided in an adjacent cave, where he fought hard against the incessant attacks of the demons. As a sign of his holiness, myrrh flowed from his cave. A little later, the leavers of his Lavra reached one hundred and fifty. Some monks slandered him to Patriarch Sallustius and demanded the replacement of his abbotship. But the Patriarch, not only did not believe the slanders, but ordained him elder in 491.
The fame of his sanctity reached far and for this reason many monks flocked to his Lavra, some to receive his blessing and others to stay near him. As time went by, he intensified his spiritual struggle and his exercise. In the year 494, the reconstruction of the church of the Annunciation of the Theotokos began, because the previous church was not sufficient for the religious needs of the numerous monks of Lavra. But again he received new slanders against him. To calm Lavra down, she decided to leave. For five years he toured Palestine and M. Asia, founding Lavres. In 512 he arrived in Constantinople, where he asked Emperor Anastasius (491-518) to dethrone the heretical Monophysite Patriarch of Jerusalem Ilias (494-512). Returning to Palestine, he led the struggle of the Orthodox against the terrible heresy of Monophysitism.
In 530 he arrived for the second time in Constantinople, where he asked the emperor Justinian (527-565) to protect the population from foreign raids and from local riots. He was already ninety years old. Upon his return to Palestine, he fell ill and slept peacefully on December 5, 532. In 547, his holy relic was found incorrupt, which was transferred to Constantinople. In 1204 the crusaders seized it and took it to Venice. In 1965 it was returned to its Lavra, in Palestine, where it remains there, as a precious treasure, sanctifying and working miracles for the numerous pilgrims who flock from the ends of the world. After all, his famous Monastery remains to this day a bright spiritual beacon of Orthodoxy. His memory is celebrated on December 5th, the day of his final sleep.
Saint Savvas was given the name Sanctified by the Church, because he was indeed a sanctified manifestation of the Grace of God. With his deep faith in God, with his personal struggle against his passions and with the cultivation of his virtues, he sanctified himself and sanctified and continues to sanctify others. That is why he remains in the consciousness of the faithful as a model of a true Christian and human being, because he himself had clothed himself in Christ from a young age and lived throughout his life with this divine garment.
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Greek Radio FL
