John of the Ancient Caves
Our Venerable Father John of the Ancient Caves (the Old Lavra of Saint Chariton)
Venerable · Confessor · d. 8th century
Commemorated 19 April — Repose of the ascetic of the Old Lavra
John was a monk of the Old Lavra — the ancient cave-monastery of St Chariton in the wilderness of Judea near Jerusalem, called "the Ancient Caves" (Palaia Lavra) — who lived in the eighth century and shone in the ascetic life. A confessor of the holy icons in the age of iconoclasm, he is honoured for his labours of prayer, fasting and struggle in the desert, and reposed in peace. His memory is kept on April 19.
John embraced the monastic life in the Old Lavra of St Chariton, one of the oldest of the Palestinian monasteries, set in the desert cliffs south-east of Jerusalem, whose caves had sheltered ascetics since the fourth century — whence his byname, "of the Ancient Caves." He lived there in the eighth century, in the years when the Church of the empire was torn by the first iconoclast persecution, and the monasteries of Palestine — under Muslim rule, and so beyond the reach of the iconoclast emperors — became strongholds of the veneration of the holy icons and of Orthodox theology (it was in the neighbouring Lavra of St Sabbas that St John of Damascus wrote in the icons' defence).
In that place and time John gave himself to the full rigour of the desert life — solitude, vigil, unceasing prayer, fasting and the warfare against the passions — and to the confession of Orthodoxy against the iconoclast heresy. He is remembered as a confessor and a wonderworker of the Old Lavra; and having spent his life in these labours, he reposed in peace. The synaxaria keep his memory among the venerable fathers of Palestine.
Feast and commemoration
April 19 (church date; Old Calendar civil May 2). John is honoured as a venerable father and confessor of the Old Lavra of St Chariton; his service is that of the common of an ascetic.
Hymns
Troparion — Tone 8 (common of an ascetic)
By a flood of tears thou didst make the barren desert fruitful, and by thy sighs from the depths thou didst bear fruit a hundredfold in labours; and thou becamest a beacon, shining upon the world by thy miracles, O John our father: intercede with Christ God that our souls may be saved.
Original translation from the Greek
Iconography
John is painted as an aged desert-monk in the tunic and mantle, bearded, holding a scroll or cross; the cliffs and caves of the Judean desert may form his background. No pre-1900 icon of him alone has been identified for this collection.