Ukrainian Orthodoxy		Orthodoxie ukrainienne

The Beauty of the Saints

Very Reverend Ihor Kutash kutash@unicorne.org

“After forty days I shall go to be judged with him before Christ the Saviour”:

Venerable John of the Goths in Crimea.

It is a wonderful thing to be full of joy in walking in the way of the Lord Jesus Christ Who said: “I am the Way and the Truth and the Life” (John 14:6).  The Lord gives us a joy that is more profound than any of the buffets and challenges that sometimes assail us in our daily walk through this rapidly changing world which has much beauty but also much that can make us sad.  Sometimes we want to be so sure of this joy that ought to be ours that we forget the Source of that joy and strive to hold on to this assurance by adherence to formal rites and formulas, and especially by depending upon our membership in a community that we believe to be the one most (or even the only one) approved by the Lord.  Then we can be quite self-righteous and judgemental of those whom we perceive to be not as observant as we, and especially those who do not belong to the community so approved.  We can even sometimes hear ourselves saying (if only in our minds) that such people will go to hell, while we shall go to paradise.

Today July 9 (which is June 26 according to the Julian Calendar) we celebrate the memory of a Man of God who is remembered for saying something quite different.  It is Saint John, Bishop of the Goths who laboured in the Lord’s Vineyard in the eighth century at a time when the Eastern Church was assailed by the controversy over Icons. 

John was born in answer to the fervent prayer of his parents. From an early age, he lived a life of asceticism.  The saint made a pilgrimage to Jerusalem, and spent three years visiting all the holy places. Then he returned to his native land which was Crimea in the midst of the community of Christian Goths who flourished there. They were under the authority of the see of Constantinople and at that time the emperor Constantine Copronymos the Iconoclast (741-775) banished the Gothic bishop. 

The Goths fervently entreated St John to become their bishop.  St John went to Georgia, which was isolated from the Iconoclast heresy and there he was ordained. He returned to his brothers and sisters, the Crimean Goths, but was soon compelled to depart from them under attack by the Khazars, a war-like semi-nomadic Turkic people most of whom had converted to Judaism.  Hidden away from the pursuing Khazars, he settled at Amastridia (likely a form of the name “Amastris”, which is today Amasra, a small Black Sea port in Turkey – across the sea from Crimea) where he dwelt for four years.  There is a possibility that Bishop John represented his flock at the Seventh Ecumenical Council held in Nicea in 787 which upheld Icons, even though the controversy continued to rage right up until their final establishment by the Empress Theodora in 842. 

It was shortly thereafter that St. John heard about the death of the Khazar kagan (ruler).  Someone who was not so close to the Lover of Mankind, Who wishes that all people should be saved and come to the knowledge of the truth (as we proclaim in the Orthodox Baptism Service), might have expressed pleasure at the demise of the leader of a people whose actions had prompted his flight and exile from his land – especially when those people were not of his faith community.  Instead the Saint humbly – prophetically - said, "After forty days I shall go to be judged with him before Christ the Saviour."  He placed himself not over, but alongside the Khazar kagan, before the Throne of the Lord.  And so should we all – with everyone and at all times.

And indeed St. John of the Goths did repose in the Lord forty days later. This took place when he returned to his people, in the year 790 (according to some sources).   The saint's body was conveyed to the Parthenit (from the Greek word for “Virgin” – “Parthenos”) monastery in Crimea, at the foot of Mount Ayu-Dag, where the saint once lived in the large church he built in honour of the holy Apostles Peter and Paul, whose memory we shall be commemorated three days from now. 

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