SAINT NICHOLAS THE STUDITE

Saint Nicholas (793-868) was a disciple of Saint Theodore the Studite (759-826). Both saints received their names from the monastery where they lived and where they were abbots.

The ancient Constantinople abbey, called the Studite Monastery, in honor of its founder in the 5th century, had been in decline for a long time. Saint Theodore managed to revive it by the time the iconoclastic heresy was renewed in the capital. He restored the monastery with an extreme degree of monastic community life.

Thus, the brethren had the same ridiculous size of clothing for everyone. All of them, from the abbot to the novice, indiscriminately changed their clothes for clean ones after washing, having nothing of their own and nothing personal.

In 813, the second iconoclastic period began (813-843) in the history of Byzantium. Realizing that the powers that be and the hierarchs who had then embarked on the path of persecuting icons would simply destroy the monastery, as the iconoclasts had done to other monasteries for venerating icons, Theodore and Nicholas went into hiding, and the brethren went underground.

Nicholas was Theodore’s secretary, who guided the spiritual life of the brethren from exile with the help of special catechetical letters. For one of these letters denouncing iconoclasm, in 819 Nicholas and Theodore were eventually seized and flogged. They were inflicted with severe wounds, after which they barely survived. The persecutions they suffered before and after this were cruel and very numerous.

In 843, the Church Council in Constantinople restored icon veneration and proclaimed the Triumph of Orthodoxy. Theodore did not live to see this event, and Nicholas eventually returned to leading the Studion Monastery. But the external well-being of the Church was accompanied by violations of the canons in its internal life. Saint Nicholas resisted this. He did not yield to either the personal requests or the threats even of the Emperor and the Patriarch of Constantinople.

Beginning in 858, he was persecuted again, exiled, and forced to wander. Since the early Church, confessors had enormous authority. If they supported someone or some phenomenon in the Church or in civil society, it was colossal support. If they resisted, it was an insurmountable obstacle, and often led to the actual collapse of certain plans and people’s careers. Therefore, Nicholas was under enormous pressure for a whole decade. He was again cruelly persecuted. They tried to persuade, bribe, and then tortured, not getting what they wanted. Confessors were revered and… extremely feared.

“Greater love has no one than this, that someone lay down his life for his friends,” said Jesus in the Gospel (John 15:13). The fate of St. Nicholas the Studite is an amazing, paradoxical and tragic example of the fulfillment of this commandment. He was persecuted by his brothers in faith and friends in service, he held to truth and righteousness for the sake of spiritual benefit and, above all, the salvation of his neighbors.

The iconoclasts considered themselves Orthodox and were convinced that they were acting for the practical benefit of the Church. The persecutors of St. Nicholas in the later period of his life were Orthodox, and they justified the violation of the canons by the principles of good administration, that is, in the Greek terminology of the Church, “economia”. Only a year before his death, the saint was able to return to the monastery. On February 17 (4), he departed to the Lord and on this day the Church honors his memory as a saint ascetic and as a confessor.

We, Orthodox Christians, very often, having done some good deed, expect a reward from the Lord. If our circumstances do not improve, we become despondent. One can imagine what temptations the ascetics were subjected to, because they not only simply did good, but for the sake of the true faith they performed a feat, became confessors, received, as it seemed, universal recognition, but the labors and persecutions did not stop at all.

“The days of our life are threescore and ten years; or, if we be strong, fourscore and ten years; and the best of them is toil and sorrow; for they pass quickly, and we fly away” (Psalm 89:10). The life of St. Nicholas the Studite is an example of how long trials can be. Like Job, Goid seemed to test him with incredible force. The sufferings fell upon him at once, one after another; the persecutions to which Saint Nicholas was subjected were spread out over time and continued throughout his entire life.