Venerable Symeon the Stylite, Archimandrite (+459), and His Mother Martha (+c. 428)
The Venerable Symeon the Stylite was born in the Cappadocian village of Sisan, into the family of poor Christians, Susotion and Martha. In his youth he tended his father’s flock of sheep, and carried out this first obedience of his conscientiously. Once in church, at the Divine Liturgy, Symeon heard the Beatitudes of the Gospel; he was amazed at their depth and asked a monk standing nearby to explain the reading. The answer of the spiritually advanced old man aroused in him the desire to leave this world in order to inherit the Kingdom of heaven; he withdrew to pray and for a long time fervently besought the Lord to lead him on this most difficult path of the service of God. When, exhausted in prayer, he fell asleep, he saw in a dream that he was digging the foundation for some building. Several times he stopped, thinking that the trench was deep enough, but a man standing beside him told him to deepen the foundation more and more. At last Symeon set to digging without stopping, and worked until the same voice “told him that the depth was enough, and thereafter commanded him to build.” By this vision the young man understood that tireless and unwearying labour was needed for salvation.
After the vision the Lord’s chosen one got up, went to a nearby monastery, and for seven days stood at the gate, hungry and thirsty, asking with tears to be admitted. At the end of the week he was enrolled in the brotherhood. At the age of eighteen Symeon was already tonsured a monk, and soon surpassed all the brethren in the strictness of his life. He treated himself so harshly that the superior feared that others, weaker ones, imitating him, might go as far as suicide, and he ordered the saint to leave the monastery. The valiant ascetic wandered a great deal in the desert and the mountains, and at last settled at the bottom of a dried-up well. Some time later the abbot saw angels in a vision who commanded him to bring Symeon back to the monastery. The superior with the brethren found the father at the point of death and brought him to the monastery, but he did not stay there long. The Lord’s chosen one took refuge in a narrow cave near the village of Telanissos, where he spent three years in tireless labour. Once he decided to take no food or drink for the whole of Great Lent. With God’s help he carried out his intention, and after that he spent the holy Forty Days in this way every year. Moreover, for twenty days he prayed standing, and for twenty days sitting. Three years later Saint Symeon began to labour on the top of a mountain. Here a great many people came to him from various countries, and all wished to touch the saint to receive his blessing. Such veneration and commotion weighed heavily on the blessed one and gave rise to a labour never seen before: he built a pillar six cubits high, settled in a narrow cell made on top of it, and gave himself up to intensified prayer and fasting. The pillar gradually grew higher: first it was raised to twenty, and then to thirty-six cubits. The venerable father patiently endured the scorching heat of summer and the bitter cold of winter; his food was dried fruit and water.
The fathers living in the desert learned of Symeon’s unheard-of labour and, to test him, sent messengers to Symeon, “that they might be angry with him for his strange invention, and teach him to walk the trodden way which other saints had travelled before him”; at the same time they instructed the messengers that if Symeon did not listen to them, they were to bring him down from the pillar by force, but if he was willing to come down, they were to leave him, for then it would be clear that his new form of labour was from God. When the messengers came to the saint and told him the decision of the assembly of fathers, he at once made to come down. Seeing this, the envoys stopped him, told him the will of the fathers, “and besought him to stand upon that pillar for ever and without change.”
The evil one constantly tried to shake the saint’s firmness, but with the Lord’s help the blessed one always overcame the temptations. Once the devil took the form of an angel, appeared to Symeon in a chariot drawn by fiery horses, and told him: thy holy life has so pleased the Lord that He has sent me to carry thee up to heaven alive. The Lord’s chosen one was tempted and stepped forward with his right foot to climb into the chariot, and at the same time made the sign of the cross; then the demon vanished. Symeon understood that it had all been the enemy’s tricks.
The Venerable Symeon spent eighty years in monastic labour, forty-seven of them standing on the pillar. Endowed by the Lord with the gifts of foreknowledge and wonderworking, the ascetic was also distinguished by wonderful humility and understanding.
The Venerable Symeon commended his soul to the Lord in prayer in 459. His remains were committed to the earth near the pillar by Martyrius, Patriarch of Antioch (456–468), accompanied by the clergy and a multitude of people. Afterwards his disciple Antony founded a monastery at the place of the blessed father’s labours.
