STEPHEN THE SABBAITE

July 26 (13), the Church honors the memory of St. Stefan Sabbaite. Years of Stephen’s life: 725–794. The saint should be distinguished from his eponymous Stephen the Sabbaite, almost contemporary with him, who was the nephew of St. John of Damascus (675-749) and wrote liturgical texts. The very word “Sabbaite” meant belonging to the monastery of St. Sabbas in Palestine.

In some Local Churches, a similar tradition has been preserved to this day. Monks from Athos are called “Hagiorites”, or “Athonites”; Sinai ascetics - “Sinaites”; monks of the Kykkos monastery in Cyprus - “Kikkotis”. In Byzantine antiquity, a monk was officially considered dead, he was deleted from the “secular” lists, and he could no longer return to everyday life. An echo of this shortest “obituary” on earth in this practice serves.

Usually, some saint of the same name who lived later in time was called “younger” or “new” in liturgical calendars. But, in the case of contemporaries, such as the two “Stephen the Sabbaites”, such a name, apparently, was not always possible. The Church celebrates the memory of Stephen—the “Author of the Canons”, this ancient hymnographer, whose name coincides with the name of our today’s St Stephen the Sabbaite on November 10 (October 28).

Unfortunately, very little is known about our Stefan the Sabbaite, whose memory in July is celebrated. The place of his ascetic life was the monastery of St. Sabbas in Palestine. A short vita says that while laboring in the monastery, as well as in the desert, he, by the grace of God, acquired spiritual gifts, the gift of insight, and miracles. Thus, the day of his departure to the Lord was revealed to him. Since ancient monasticism was an eschatological phenomenon, in which ascetics seemed to suspend the normal course of history in themselves and their surroundings, such knowledge of the day of their own exodus indicated to the ascetic that God accepted his feat. In the eyes of contemporaries, such knowledge was biblically prophetic.

The time of Stephen’s life was an era of rapid spread of Islam, when previously Christian Orthodox lands had already been conquered by Arab rulers. The Muslim religion in its texts, in principle, questioned the very possibility and, most importantly, the value of monasticism before God. Therefore, the testimony of the authentic Desert Fathers at that difficult time for Orthodoxy was extremely important.

At the Liturgy of John Chrysostom, immediately after the Transubstantiation of the Gifts into the Body and Blood of Christ, the priest commemorates all the saints, listing their names. Monks and ascetics are called “venerables” and “abstinents.” The ability to abstain for the sake of Christ and God is what is so important to preserve in this Autumn of History—our unrestrained and insatiable age.

We know extremely little about St. Stephen. Invoking his intercession in prayer, the Church, as a Society of Believers, is called to thank God for the little that, from the memory of the saint, has been preserved at all. The life of Saint Stephen is an example of a humble monastic biography, renunciation of the world and its affairs to such an extent that ascetics were able to hide as much as possible even the most priceless and holy things given to them from above in the grace-filled experience of life.

Saints like Stephen seemed to themselves begging God so that the Church and subsequent generations would be worthy to forget them. Here on earth, during their lifetime, they followed Christ in order to live with Him and in Him. Here on earth, after their death, by the power of grace, and in this is the mystery of the unknown saints, they were forgotten, so that in the Lord Jesus, with Him and in Him, in Heaven, in intercession before God and the Father, they remember all those who, still on earth, wander in search of the Kingdom.