Saint Symeon the Stylite

2015-09-01

 

Saint Symeon was born around the year 392AD in a village called Sis, between Syria and Cilicia. He grew up in a poor, pious home, and started tending sheep, like his father who was a shepherd.

 

 

 

He entered a monastery at the age of fifteen.

 

There, he became acquainted with the fundamentals of monastic life. And it seems that he surpassed all other monks in obedience and austerity. But he did not stay there more than two years, because he had a strong inclination for a more austere life than what prevailed in his days.

 

 

 

The saint lived a very in extreme ascetic life in the monastery. So the abbot was forced to send him away, fearing that the monks would be tempted by weakness and despondency at the sight of so much austerity in the way Symeon worshiped God.

 

The saint left the monastery in obedience and settled in a region called Telanissa, not far from the city of Antioch. There, he found an abandoned hut where he lived for three years. A priest named Blasos who used to visit the place would call on him regularly.

 

From Telanissa, Saint Simon moved to the top of a mountain and built a simple hut for himself, making it open, without a roof. He practiced fasts and prayers, remaining indifferent to the weather conditions.

 

 

 

People flocked to the saint in his hut, so he started fearing their honor. He did not want the efforts in all those years to be wasted by the spirit of silence, the pure spirit of prayer, so he fled to a farther place, in the mountains, and took for himself a pillar base on which he ascended and lived. However, the crowd discovered his new location and followed him, so he raised the pillar little by little. As Symeon was raising of the pillar, he was ascending the stages of divine light. Finally, the height of the pillar reached thirty-six, to forty cubits.

 

 

On the pillar, he spent more than thirty years in worship, as he challenged the freezing winter and the scorching summer heat. He used to spend all his nights and part of his days in prayer.

 

 

 

Saint Symeon breathed his last on the pillar on September 1rst, 461, or perhaps in the year 459. He remained three days on his knees before someone discovered that he had reposed. They thought he was in deep prayer; but when they went up to him to ask him about the reason for his silence, they found that he had departed.

 

God performed many miracles through his relics, even more than the miracles in his life, and the scent of perfume kept emanating from his pillar for a long time. His body was transferred to Antioch and laid in the Church of Saint Cassianos. Later, a church was built in his honor, known as the Church of Repentance.