PRESBYTER SEVERUS

July 10 (June 27) The church honors the memory of the holy presbyter Severin. The saint lived in Italy in the 6th century. His memory is preserved in the Discourses on the Life of the Italian Fathers and on the Immortality of the Soul by St. Gregory the Great (590–604). In this “Italian Patericon” Gregory, called in our tradition “Dialogist” after the title of his famous work, preserved from oblivion the names of saints that no one else would remember.

The narrative of the Italian paterikon is extremely simple. Coming from an ancient Roman family, a highly educated and theologically gifted man, ordained a deacon and then a bishop, Gregory “knew how to discern the signs of the times” (Matthew 16:3). In his writings, he addressed the common people, knowing that, in modern terms, only an “analogue way” of narrating about divine things, similar to the biblical one, could make the gospel understandable to everyone. It is no coincidence that the later Western Orthodox tradition will call Gregory “Augustine for the People.”

Our Church, as if making some kind of trans-semantic translation, from “Western to Eastern Orthodox” language, called him “Dialogist,” that is, unexpectedly literally and, in fact, in a modern way, “Man of Dialogue.” For the meanings of the Holy Spirit are the Polyphony of God.

According to Pope Gregory’s Dialogues, Severus was a priest in the village of Interocrium, the modern Italian town of Antrodoco, in central Italy, relatively close to Rome. In the valley of the same name there was a temple in the Name of the Most Holy Theotokos, in which Saint Severus led the local community of believers.

With truly Roman laconicism, Gregory says only one thing about him: “Severus was a man of a wonderful life.” Let us remember the story from the Book of Judges: “The angel of the Lord said to him: Why do you ask about my name? It’s wonderful. (…) And He performed a miracle and rose up in the flames of the altar” (Judges 13:18-20). Priestly holiness in the Ancient Church grew from the constant offering of the Eucharistic Sacrifice in memory of the Last Supper of the Lord Jesus in His earthly life. The reproduction of this key event in gospel history, which made the Savior’s way of the Cross voluntary, in human everyday life, day after day, was and is a genuine daily miracle in the lives of Christians.

“Once they sent for a presbyter with a request to visit, as soon as possible, a house where the father of the family was dying. The dying man asked the priest to come to clear his conscience with the Sacrament of Repentance,” writes Gregory. In these simple words, the voice of the experience of piety of almost two thousand years and hundreds of generations of human history is present. This is a request for guidance with the Eucharist, whatever the geography, era, space and time in which a person lives.

At the same time, it is important to understand that in the time of Severus, the sacrament of repentance was truly the Second Baptism. It was performed once in a lifetime over those who had fallen away, through grave, irreparable, fatal sins from the Communion of the Church. Having been performed by the hands of Christ Himself before the Passion on the Cross, the Eucharist is celebrated in the Church everywhere, in every place, at every time, always.

Other sacraments were performed only once. Based on this theological logic of the Ancient Church, the request to Presbyter Severus to come and accept the Repentance of the “father of the family” was extremely important.

“When the messengers arrived, the elder was in the garden, clearing the trees.” Hearing the request, “he promised to come immediately. But seeing that there was little left to finish in the garden, the presbyter hesitated a little to finish what he started.” Behind these simple words of “analogue speech about God,” truly biblical images are revealed. This is the Gospel of John, where the Lord speaks of Himself as the Vinedresser:

“I am the true vine, and My Father is the vinedresser. Every branch of Me that does not bear fruit He cuts off” (John 15:1-2). This is the Apocalypse with inexorable evidence of finitude, and the end, finality and completion of everything living and abiding on Earth until the time: “And another Angel, who had power over fire, came out from the altar and with a great cry cried out to him who had a sharp sickle, saying: let use your sharp sickle and prune the grapes on the ground, because the grapes are ripe on it” (Rev. 14:18).

So Presbyter Severus promised to come immediately, but delayed. “The dying man has died,” writes Gregory. Here we recall Augustine’s reasoning about the uselessness of any reasoning about whether a person is mortal or not. “For we are already dead,” says Augustine. “To live is to die,” as in the famous Metallica song. Man is like a synonym for death, as in the thoughts of some modern philosophers.

According to Gregory, when Severus finally hurried to the dying man, the messengers were already returning to meet him and reported that the patient had already died. And here, in this very place, Gregory’s narrative almost literally reproduces what was said about the resurrection of Jairus’ daughter in the Gospel of Luke - “your daughter is dead, do not trouble the Teacher” (Luke 8:49).

Like Caliph Harun Al-Rashid on the streets of glorious Baghdad in the stories of Eastern antiquity, the word of the Father of the Church is clothed in the garb of a commoner in order to pass unnoticed among the people. Thus, the thought of the paths of the priestly vocation is revealed so that in some way it is immediately hidden again.

The dying man died without reconciliation with the Church. And, clearly understanding that the Second Baptism, genuine repentance and acceptance back into the bosom of the Ancient Church, which did not know profanation and formalism, simply could not take place due to the “end of time” (Rev. 10:6) for that specific, but forever remaining nameless man, we Christians living in the 21st century can, unlike perhaps most readers of Gregory’s Dialogues in the centuries following him—when confession became routine and repetition – we could probably understand what really happened.

“Hearing this, the presbyter was greatly frightened and loudly called himself the murderer of the sick man. In tears, he came to the bed of the deceased, with a sob he threw himself on the ground before him and called himself the culprit of his death.” Perhaps Severus, in principle, could not make it to the dying man due to lack of time. But his merciful heart, nourished by the “wonderful life” in Grace, the cultivation of God’s Vineyard and the Eucharist, accepted the guilt of the sinner’s death, identified itself with his sin, with his shame and his “lost glory,” which is one of the definitions of sin. Thus the holiness of the true and righteous priesthood bore fruit.

“Three took my soul from my body and led it to dark places. But suddenly a Beautiful One appeared to meet us. Turning to those who were leading me, he said: “Bring him back, because Presbyter Severus is crying tearfully for him, and the Lord gave this soul to his tears,” said the deceased, brought back to life through the intercession of the saint. For Saint Severus, in his weeping for the dead, laid down his life for his friend (cf. John 15:13). He managed not only to represent Christ in the Eucharist, who abides for centuries, but also to identify himself with the sinner who was dying forever.

Commemorating Presbyter Severus, the Church, in his person, simultaneously turns for prayerful intercession to all those “one hundred and forty thousand sealed” (Rev. 7:4), righteous priests and laity awarded holiness by God, whose names have not reached us. “They washed and made their robes white in the blood of the Lamb” (Rev. 7:14), says Revelation in the bold poetic beauty of the early Christian liturgical hymn, which this New Testament text originally was. Inspired by the New Testament text and the sacred narrative of life, we ask: “Holy Presbyter Severus, pray to God to save us from the oblivion of death.”