Sophronius, Patriarch
of Jerusalem
March 11th
When the end finally came, it was very difficult to accept.
He was an old man by then, and he was saddened to watch the Caliph Omar marching into the Holy City of Jerusalem. After ten years of serving as the deeply humble and exceedingly wise Holy Father of the ancient capital of Palestine, St. Sophronius, the Patriarch of Jerusalem (634-644), was forced to watch his starving fellow Christians surrender the ancient metropolis to the victorious Mohammedans.
At the bitter conclusion of a two-year siege, however, the Christian Primate of Jerusalem had no choice. To refuse the demands of the invaders would mean instant death for thousands of innocents, most of whom would be women and children. And so the old man went out and humbled himself before the mighty Omar, and begged him to respect the Holy Sites within the city walls. Of course, the Caliph readily promised that these sacred shrines would be spared the depredations that seemed certain to occur everywhere else in Jerusalem, once the gates fell open to the invading armies. TAKEN FROMBut the Caliph did not keep his word.
And so the old man put one hand over his heart. He closed his eyes and begged Almighty God for death – so painful was it to watch the Infidels swarming over the place where Christ Jesus had been nailed to the Cross, along with the tomb where He had been laid, and from which He had risen to Eternal Glory. How could this be happening to one of the most sacred places on the entire earth? How could God Almighty have permitted so much suffering?
The Primate struggled with his grief. He also prayed for the understanding that would help him accept the violation of the Church’s sacred sites. During a lifetime of service to God and His Holy Church, the Patriarch had often comforted those who were undergoing the agony of personal loss. A father grieves for his son, killed in warfare; a widow weeps for her youthful husband, killed in an accident on the road. We cannot understand the will of God, he would tell them, but if we have faith, we will eventually see that our suffering was shaped by Providence, and that what happened to us was part of God’s plan for our salvation.
Sitting alone in the bare, unfurnished room that the momentarily victorious enemies of Christ had assigned him, the grieving Primate reviewed his long life of dedication to the Holy Gospel of Jesus Christ.
He was born in Damascus, around the year 550, according to most Church historians of the period. As the son of affluent parents who were also pious Christians, the youthful Sophronius received a marvelous education and worked very hard at studies. Known for his skill at philosophical disputation, the young man emerged from his schooling with a powerful hunger to know more about the tradition of mystical knowledge that had been gathered by the Desert Fathers of the Middle East over the centuries. An eager traveler, he soon found himself walking the fabled streets of Old Jerusalem, where the Holy Redeemer himself had walked and preached more than five centuries before.
By the age of 28, the ardent truth-seeker had found his way to the famed monastery of St. Theodosius in Palestine, where he could see for himself what was required for this arduous form of devotion to the Holy Gospel. He stayed there for more than a year, then set sail for Alexandria – the greatest center of knowledge and scholarship in the world at that time. There he would study with the renowned monastic John Moschos and become his eager acolyte in the mysteries of monastic life. By the year 600, the two of them had journeyed together throughout Syria and Palestine, and their footsteps had once again taken them back to the Lavra of the Blessed St. Theodosius near Jerusalem.
In 606, the Persians arrived in force, and the Venerable Sophronius once again found himself on the road. After another sojourn in Alexandria (where he was cured of a severe eye ailment by St. Cyrus and John Moschos and wrote out a compilation of all their miracles as an act of veneration), he visited the great capital city of Rome . . . and wound up burying his dear teacher and fellow monk there.
When the great Emperor Heraclius finally delivered the Holy City from the grip of the Persians in 628 (and then carried the Cross of Christ into the city on his own shoulders), Sophronius returned to the monastery where everything had begun for him, and settled down to a life of ascetic prayer. Increasingly visible as a leader of the Church, he was called upon to help combat the fast-spreading Monothelite heresy, and played an important role in preserving the doctrinal purity of Orthodoxy during the struggle over that theological error.
Elected Patriarch of Jerusalem in 634, St. Sophronius followed in the footsteps of the Patriach Modestos – and he did everything he could to prevent the dreaded assault on his city by Caliph Omar I, whose forces finally managed to breach the walls and gain entry in 637. Broken-hearted and wearied by a life of endless struggle, the great Patriarch died a year later, on the 11th of March in the Year of Our Lord 638.
The life of the Holy Patriarch of Jerusalem, St. Sophronius, teaches us an important lesson about the struggle to accept the inscrutable Will of God. Though the great teacher and writer died in sorrow, he also died in faith – secure in the knowledge that the fall of his great city was necessary as part of God’s Providence – and that all those who weep in the loss of what they love will one day rejoice again.
Apolytikion in the Fourth Tone
The truth of things hath revealed thee to thy flock as a rule of faith, an icon of meekness, and a teacher of temperance; for this cause, thou hast achieved the heights by humility, riches by poverty. O Father and Hierarch Sophronius, intercede with Christ God that our souls be saved.
Kontakion in the Second Tone
O divine thunder, spiritual trumpet, cultivator of faith and destroyer of heresies, in whom the Trinity is well pleased, O great hierarch Sophronius, as thou ever standest before God, with the Angels, pray unceasingly for us all.
