Venerable Chariton the Confessor (+c. 350)
The Venerable Chariton the Confessor suffered at Iconium between 270 and 324. The godless seized him and demanded that he offer sacrifice to the false gods. The saint firmly refused. The executioners stripped Chariton and beat him with ox sinews, and then by the ruler’s order he was thrown into prison. The tormentor tried to win him over first with flattery, then with promises of honour, and at last brought new torments upon him: “he burned his breast with fire like meat for eating”, put him in fetters and sent him back to the dungeon. Meanwhile the persecution of the Christians died down. The Orthodox prisoners were released. Saint Chariton too found freedom, and “as one now dead to this passing world and wishing to live the life of Christ” he set out for the holy city of Jerusalem. On the way robbers seized him and locked him in a cave, while they themselves “ran to and fro about the ways” lying in wait for other travellers.
Left alone, the saint gave thanks to the Lord and waited in obedience for His will to be made known. Meanwhile a viper crept into the cave, slid into a jar full of wine, left its venom in it and went away. When the robbers came back, parched with thirst, they drank the poisoned wine and every one of them died.
Chariton began his ascetic life in the cave where, by the will of God, he had been granted miraculous deliverance. Part of the goods the robbers had collected he shared out among the poor and the desert fathers, and with part he built a church, around which the lavra of Pharan, famous in Palestine, gradually grew up. The saint himself composed a rule for the house. He appointed a new superior for the lavra and himself went deep into the desert. The blessed father sought solitude, but those who wished for the monastic life found him even there. So a new house was founded, at Jericho, followed by yet another, the so-called “Old Lavra” of Souka.
For his unwearying labours the Lord granted His chosen one the gift of miraculously healing illnesses of soul and body. The day of his repose too was revealed to the saint beforehand. He wished to meet his end in the lavra of Pharan. He called together all his disciples and instructed them for the last time.
The Venerable Chariton departed this world around the year 350, in deep old age. The saint’s precious body was buried in the church he himself had built on the site of the robbers’ cave.
