"You have appeared as a preacher of noetic prayer,
a rule of divine sobriety,
an instrument of wisdom and a trumpet of deification."
(Hymn at the Stychera, Tone 2)
The Orthodox Church has named only three of its saints as Theologians: the Apostle and Evangelist John, St Gregory of Nazianzus, and St Symeon the New Theologian.
St Theophan the Recluse held the writings of St Symeon in high esteem and often recommended this "priceless treasure" to his spiritual children. Of St Symeon, the bishop said: "None inspire such yearning for the inner life of grace... With what conviction he reveals the heart of Christian living, showing how it flows entirely from our Lord Saviour. Every word rings with such clarity that the mind bows in obedience and longs to follow."
Paphlagonia – the birthplace of St Symeon the New Theologian
The year 946 saw Symeon's birth in Galati, Paphlagonia (Asia Minor). Basil and Theophano — the saint's parents — were wealthy and influential Byzantine aristocrats. Symeon received a solid secular education in Constantinople. His father groomed him for a career at the imperial court, and for a time, the young man held a high position there.
Panorama of Constantinople, 18th century
Yet at 25, Symeon felt called to the monastic life. He fled his home and, two years later, retired to the Studion Monastery, where he undertook obedience under the guidance of the elder Symeon the Pious. Zeal for God, unquestioning obedience, and trust and love for his elder distinguished the young ascetic. However, the depth of their bond and his rapid progress aroused unease among the abbot and the brethren, and the elder blessed Symeon to transfer to the nearby Monastery of St Mamant.
There, the blessed novice received monastic tonsure, was ordained a priest, and embraced an even stricter ascetic life. He constantly sought solitude for deeper prayer and contemplation. Over time, he attained a state of abiding purity and spiritual illumination, particularly evident when he celebrated the Divine Liturgy.
The Stoudios Monastery in Constantinople (19th-century engraving)
Around 980, St Symeon became abbot of St Mamant's Monastery, where he served for 25 years. He restored order to the monastery's neglected affairs and renovated its church. His stirring sermons attracted new monks, and many patricians and government officials became followers of the zealous abbot, whose every word and exhortation sprang from his own experience.
St Symeon felt it wrong to conceal his spiritual insights from his monks, whom he held to be brothers in Christ. Moved by spiritual love, he bared his soul in his sermons, hoping they too would follow his example, seek God with all their hearts, and be granted, like their teacher, a visitation of divine light.
However, not all his listeners could embrace St Symeon's teachings or follow his example. The strict monastic discipline he instituted sparked anger among the brethren. After one Liturgy, some disgruntled monks attacked the abbot, nearly killing him. When the Patriarch of Constantinople expelled them from the monastery and sought to hand them over to the city authorities, St Symeon stepped in to plead for mercy and later helped these very men.
St Symeon's teachings stirred up heated debate even during his lifetime. In one of his epistles, he describes himself as "condemned and despised by all, not only by the laity, but also by monks, priests, and archbishops."
He writes: "Pray for me, a sinner, hated for Christ's sake, persecuted for my desire to live a godly life in Christ, condemned by all because, of all people, I alone venerate my spiritual father and teacher… because I teach everyone to seek grace from above and a conscious reception of the Holy Spirit… because those who partake of Him are not only freed from all lusts, passions, and impure thoughts, but become gods by grace, abide close to God, and exist beyond the flesh and the world; and not only do they themselves become holy and dwell as if bodiless in the body, but they also see all other believers as holy, and not only holy, but also as clothed in Christ and having become Christs…"
He continues: "As I speak and preach this, (…) all condemn me as proud and blasphemous, and the devil wages war so that I might cease to preach by word and fulfil by deed the commandments of the Gospel and the apostles of Christ. They have delivered me to hunger, thirst, and death because I do not deceive them and do not say: ‘Take courage, we will all be saved without labours and struggles, without repentance and precise fulfilment of God’s commandments,’ for those who speak like this distort the entire teaching of Christ and His apostles."
Around 1005, St Symeon handed over his responsibilities to his disciple Arsenius and retired to a life of quiet contemplation within the monastery. There, he composed his theological works, excerpts of which were included in the fifth volume of the Philokalia. The central theme of his work is the hidden life in Christ. St Symeon teaches about inner warfare, methods of spiritual growth, and the struggle against passions and sinful thoughts. He wrote instructions for monks, Theological, Contemplative, and Practical Chapters, A Discourse on the Three Modes of Prayer, and A Discourse on Faith. St Symeon was also a gifted hymnographer, composing the Hymns of Divine Love, some 70 poems filled with profound prayerful reflections.
Works of St Symeon the New Theologian
St Symeon intended to spend his remaining days in quiet seclusion, but new trials awaited him. His remarkable personality — mystical yet combative, burning with apostolic zeal to preach the vision of God to all Christians — proved too disruptive for the comfort of ordinary people. Many would have preferred to forget about him.
Due to a difficult relationship with Metropolitan Stephen of Nicomedia, St Symeon was compelled to settle in the village of Chrysopolis on the shores of the Bosphorus, near the Church of St Marina, in 1009. There, he established a small monastery. Soon, his devoted disciples and admirers managed to clear his name completely with the church authorities, offering him the chance to return to the Monastery of St Mamant and even to become a bishop. However, he chose to remain in the secluded monastery of St Marina with his loyal followers.
St Symeon peacefully departed to the Lord on 25 March 1022. Thirty years later, his incorrupt relics were discovered and transferred to St Mamant Monastery.
In 1852, twelve of St Symeon's “Discourses,” selected from a total of 35, were printed in Moscow in a Slavonic translation. Other works of St Symeon (92 “Discourses,” “Practical and Theological Chapters,” and “The Ascetic Discourse of the Elder Symeon the Pious”) were translated from Modern Greek by Bishop Theophan the Recluse. In 1917, Hieromonk Panteleimon produced a prose translation of St Symeon's “Hymns,” and in our own time, a poetic translation of selected hymns has been made by Metropolitan Hilarion (Alfeyev).
St Symeon at prayer, 20th-century icon
In 1986, with the blessing of Elder Porphyrios Kavsokalyvitis (Bairaktaris), a monastery dedicated to St Symeon the New Theologian was founded in Attica, near the town of Kalamos, Greece. The construction of the monastery was also blessed by Sts Paisios the Athonite and Iakovos of Evia.
The idea for the monastery arose when people in Greece became acquainted with the work of Archbishop Basil (Krivocheine), which noted that there was not a single church in the Orthodox Church dedicated to St Symeon.
St Symeon Monastery in Kalamos, Greece
The brethren of the monasteries where St Symeon resided often viewed his spiritual endeavours with scepticism. His mystical experiences during "noetic prayer" were questioned, and the title "New Theologian" was initially used ironically. Many disbelieved the visions the saint was granted during this practice. Eventually, this nickname became a badge of honour.
Several elements of the saint’s teaching and spiritual practice attracted criticism in his time, including:
- His veneration of his spiritual father, Symeon the Studite, and his teaching that dispassion and holiness could be attained in this life.
- His call to strive for a mystical life and a conscious, experiential reception of the grace of the Holy Spirit.
- His teaching on deification.
- His teaching on the vision of Christ as Light and participation in the Divine Light.
- His passionate calls to repentance and adherence to God's commandments, without which, he believed, salvation was impossible.
All of this, as well as St Symeon's particular reverence for the Eucharist and his practice of daily Communion with tears (which his opponents mocked), constitutes his "new" theology — a programme for the renewal of Christian life, which he understood as a restoration, not a revision, of Church Tradition, and a return to the traditional ideal of "evangelical living."
Many in the world viewed religious life more casually and opposed St Symeon’s dedication to the Gospel’s purest standards. The saint's monastic maximalism was the reason for his persecution by his contemporaries, including members of the hierarchy. Indeed, many other Church Fathers were persecuted for their uncompromising stance against the moral failings of their time.
For St Symeon, Christ is all in all. He found new, striking expressions of his rapturous love for Him, managing to describe the experience of divine light in words previously unheard. The dramatic nature of possessing and losing the Divine in the human heart is described by St Symeon with a power rarely encountered in other Fathers.
"A monk is one who does not mingle with the world,
but converses unceasingly with God alone;
seeing (Him), he is also seen by (Him), and, loving, is loved,
and becomes light, shining ineffably.
Being glorified, he considers himself all the more a beggar,
and, welcomed into homes, he is as a stranger.
O most extraordinary and unspeakable miracle!
From immeasurable riches, I am poor,
and possessing much, I think that I have nothing,
and from the abundance of waters, I say, I thirst.
Who will give me what I abundantly possess?
And where shall I find Him Whom I see daily?
How shall I hold fast what is also within me,
and beyond the world, for it is completely invisible?
He who has ears to hear, let him hear,
rightly understanding the words of the unlearned."
(St Symeon the New Theologian, Hymn 48. Who is a Monk and What is His Work)
St Symeon the New Theologian holds a place of unparalleled significance in Orthodox spirituality. His teaching on the illumination of the soul by divine grace was further developed by the Hesychast Fathers of the 14th century, including St Gregory Palamas.
The saint's freedom of spirit, which enriched both the dogmatic and ascetic Orthodox tradition, remains a source of inspiration. A distinctive feature of St Symeon, compared to other Church Fathers, is his autobiographical approach to mystical themes and the remarkable openness with which he speaks of his experience of God's presence.
"Come, You Whom my wretched soul has loved and loves!
Come, One to one, for I am alone, as You see!
Come, You Who have separated me from all and made me solitary on earth!
Come, You Who have become within me a longing and have made me yearn for You, Who are utterly inaccessible!
Come, my breath and life!
Come, consolation of my humble soul!
Come, my joy and glory and constant delight!
I thank You that You — the God Who is above all — have become one spirit with me, inseparably, immutably, unchangingly, and have Yourself become for me all in all: food ineffable and freely received, constantly overflowing the mouth of my soul and swiftly flowing in the spring of my heart, a garment shining and scorching the demons, a purification, washing me with immortal and holy tears, which Your presence grants to those to whom You come.
I thank You that You have become for me a light without evening and a holy sun…"
(Prayer of St Symeon, in which he calls upon the Holy Spirit)
All the elements of St Symeon's theological and mystical teachings are deeply rooted in Tradition, a Tradition he internalised and made his own. He was the first among Eastern Christian ascetic teachers to place the Eucharist at the centre of a person's spiritual and mystical life, assigning it a key role in salvation and drawing closer to God.
St Symeon was the first to identify the vision of Divine Light as the primary goal of ascetic striving. He was the first to speak of dispassion and deification in such a personal manner. While his mystical theology is seamlessly woven into the fabric of patristic tradition, he remains one of the most original spiritual figures the Orthodox Church has known.
"From the Psalter, the Son, a crimson cymbal, the divine organ of the Holy Spirit, the preacher of revelations of the Holy Trinity, the honourable tablet, inscribed with the mysteries of grace, with divine hymns, let us glorify blessed Simeon, the God-bearer, the praise of theologians."
(Stichera at Lord, I Have Cried, Tone 4.)
Material prepared by the team of obitel-minsk.ru
Images from the Internet
Sources used:
1. Selected Hymns of St Symeon the New Theologian in Poetic Translation from Greek – Part 2 – St Symeon the New Theologian
2. Archbishop Basil (Krivocheine). St Symeon the New Theologian (949–1022). – Nizhny Novgorod: Brotherhood of St Alexander Nevsky Publishing House, 1996.
3. Come, True Light: Selected Hymns / Poetic Trans. from Greek, notes by Bishop Hilarion (Alfeyev). – St Petersburg: Aleteia, 2004.
