Christopher of Palestine
Our Venerable Father Christopher the Roman, of the Lavra of Saint Theodosius in Palestine
Venerable · d. 6th century
Commemorated 30 August — Commemoration of the ascetic of the Lavra of Saint Theodosius
Christopher, called the Roman because he came to the East from Italy, was a sixth-century monk of the great Lavra of Saint Theodosius in the Judaean desert outside Jerusalem, and afterwards of Mount Sinai. He is known entirely from two chapters of the Spiritual Meadow of John Moschus, where Abba Theodulus reports his sayings — a first-hand witness of the generation immediately after him — and he survives in the calendar for two things: the ravens he saw holding a brother back from the door of the church, and the lamps of the fathers burning in the cave, among which he asked whether his own was lit and was told to pray.
A Roman in the Judaean desert
He was a Roman, and the tradition preserves nothing of his origins beyond that word. He came to Palestine and was tonsured at the coenobium of Saint Theodosius the Cenobiarch (feast January 11), the great house east of Bethlehem which Theodosius had founded and which, with the Lavra of Saint Sabbas, anchored the monasticism of the Judaean wilderness. The whole of what is known of him comes from the report of Abba Theodulus, preserved by John Moschus in the Spiritual Meadow (Limonarion), chapters 105 and 234.
The two ravens
Going up to Jerusalem to venerate at the Holy Sepulchre and the Life-Giving Cross, Christopher saw at the gate of the church a monk standing still, not going in, and two ravens flying before his face. He understood that they were demons keeping the brother out, and asked him why he stood at the door. The brother answered that two thoughts were contending in him: one saying go in and venerate the Cross, the other saying do not go in; find an excuse; come another day. Christopher took him by the hand and led him inside; the ravens vanished at once, and the brother venerated the Cross and the Sepulchre. Christopher told the story afterwards to a man who was letting his affairs crowd out his prayer — which is why it was remembered: the demons' method here is not violence but plausible postponement.
The lamps of the fathers
By day he did his monastic obedience; by night he went down into a cave where Theodosius and the elders had prayed before him. On each of the eighteen steps that led down into it he made a hundred prostrations, and passed most of the night in prayer, until the semantron sounded for Orthros. He kept this for eleven years.
One night, going down as usual, he found the cave full of burning lamps, tended by two radiant young men. "Why have you set the lamps here," he asked, "so that I cannot go in and pray?" — "These are the lamps of the fathers." — "Tell me, then: is mine burning, or not?" — "Pray," they said, "and we will light it." And he answered: "Pray? And what have I been doing until now?" Then he said to himself, Christopher, if you want to be saved, more is needed than this.
Sinai
At dawn he left the monastery without taking anything with him and went to Mount Sinai, where he laboured for fifty years. At the end of them he heard a voice: Christopher, go back to the monastery where you struggled before, so that you may rest there with your fathers. He returned to the Lavra of Saint Theodosius and died there.
Feast and commemoration
August 30 (church date; Old Calendar civil September 12). He is kept on this day in the Constantinopolitan synaxarion and in the Slavonic books, where he appears as "Venerable Christopher the Roman (6th c.)", and in the OCA calendar as "Christopher of Palestine." He has no proper office; the day's service belongs to the three patriarchs of Constantinople, and he is commemorated at the sixth ode of the canon with the other saints of the day.
Hymns
Apolytikion — Tone 8 (common of a venerable father)
In thee, O father, was preserved unfailingly that which is according to the image; for taking up the cross thou didst follow after Christ, and by thy deeds thou didst teach us to despise the flesh, for it passes away, but to care for the soul, a thing immortal. Wherefore, O venerable Christopher, thy spirit rejoices with the angels.
Iconography
He is shown in the manner of the Palestinian desert fathers: an old monk, long-bearded, in a plain dark habit with the koukoulion thrown back or drawn up, holding a scroll or with both hands raised in prayer. Where a scene accompanies him it is one of the two the Spiritual Meadow gives: the brother halted at the church door with two black birds flying at his face, or the cave with its steps and its many burning lamps and the two shining youths among them. He is not otherwise individualised, and in menologion cycles he is easily interchanged with any of the anonymous fathers of the Judaean lavras. No pre-1900 image inscribed with his name has been located for this collection, and the Menologion of Basil II — the usual first resort for a minor saint of the fixed year — covers only September to February and cannot supply one for an August day.
Disputed questions
- The apparent arithmetic. Eleven years in the cave, fifty on Sinai, and an unknown span before and after, would make him well over a hundred at his death. The numbers in the Spiritual Meadow are of the conventional monastic kind and are not to be pressed; what the account fixes securely is only that he was a monk of the house of Saint Theodosius in the generation before John Moschus, that is, in the sixth century.
- Not to be confused with the martyrs of the name: the dog-headed Christopher of Lycia (May 9), the most famous bearer of the name in the East, nor Christopher of Antioch, nor the neomartyr Christopher of Mela. This Christopher is a desert-father, not a martyr, and his epithet is the Roman.