SAINT GERASIM OF JORDAN

The great Father of the Church and famous translator of the Holy Scriptures into Latin, St. Jerome (347–420), is often depicted with a lion. This is the lion of Saint Gerasim of Jordan (+475). Since the name Gerasimus, from the Greek “gerousia,” related to such concepts as ‘elder’ or “gerontology,” was too difficult for European ears and pronunciation, it was “replaced” by Jerome. Gerasim, as it were, lent his lion to the Latin Father, making the image of the beast serving a holy man a truly universal archetype and culture-forming symbol. Hence the bitter tragic irony of Turgenev, whose Gerasim is “speechless,” as animals were called in ancient times, and is forced to drown his friend, the dog Mumu. Is this why Lars von Trier, in Nymphomaniac, names his main character Jerome? The saint and his lion, as a symbol of reconciliation between animal and man. “You’re just an animal,” as Rammstein sings in one of their early songs.

The season of Great Lent is intended for remembering those men and women who once inscribed their names in the Book of Life, accomplishing great and memorable ascetic feats by the power of God’s grace. Ancient monasticism was not an institution, but rather an amazing gathering of various ascetic destinies and schools rooted in the Bible and guided by the Holy Spirit. There were Egyptian, Syrian, Palestinian, and other traditions of monasticism. They were all different. Each of these unique types of asceticism made its own invaluable contribution to the treasury of the Universal Christianity. Saint Gerasim of Jordan was one of the great fathers of Palestinian monasticism. He departed to the Lord on March 5 (18), 475. His memory is celebrated by the Church on the eve of the day of his heavenly birth on March 17.

Gerasim was born in Lycia, an ancient historical region of Asia Minor, where Saint Nicholas the Wonderworker (270–345) served as bishop a century before his birth. In the 4th and 5th centuries, Lycia was an autonomous Roman region. Here, in his homeland, Gerasim began his ascetic life in one of the monasteries and then became a hermit. Later, he moved to Palestine, where he continued his asceticism in the Dead Sea region. The middle of the 5th century was a time of prosperity for the Church of Jerusalem. At the Fourth Ecumenical Council in Chalcedon in 451, the bishop of Jerusalem was recognized as patriarch. Juvenal played a huge role in promoting this conciliar decision. His patriarchate consisted of two periods. First, he was in office from 422 to 451, and then from 453 to 453. For two years, Juvenal was in exile because a significant part of the Palestinian monks rejected the decrees of Chalcedon, raised an uprising, and elevated a Monophysite monk, named Theodosius to the patriarchal throne. Initially, Gerasim also supported this self-proclaimed heretical patriarch. However, thanks to saint Euthymius the Great (377–473), he abandoned Monophysitism and returned to Orthodoxy.

Unlike the Church of Alexandria, which, under the influence of the Monophysite Egyptian monasticism of the 5th–6th centuries, completely and, as it turned out, permanently broke communion with Orthodoxy in 537, and the Church of Antioch, half of which rejected Chalcedon in 519, the Church of Jerusalem initially wavered, but then remained faithful to the Fourth Ecumenical Council. Euthymius the Great (377–473), Savvas the Sanctified (439–532), and Gerasim made a great and invaluable contribution to this. The Church is infinitely grateful to them.

In 455, Gerasim came to Jordan, where he founded a cenobitic monastery, which, according to Palestinian tradition, was called Lavra. He also laid the foundation for a number of sketes, which had up to 70 cells for those who wished to live as hermits. The brethren gathered together from Saturday to Monday for joint worship. Every year during Great Lent, Gerasim went to saint Euthymius. There he fasted, interrupting his fast only to partake of the Eucharist—in the understanding of the Ancient Church, the Holy Gifts were truly food and drink, the Bread of Life—and then returned to his Lavra on the Sunday before Holy Pascha. The Spiritual Meadow by John Moschus contains a remarkable story about a lion that served Gerasim. A reed was stuck in the paw of the king of beasts. The ascetic healed the animal from the infection. The lion served him for five years. When Gerasim departed to the Lord, the lion died in grief on his grave.

Due to the similarity of names, the story with the lion was later attributed to saint Jerome, who also lived in Palestine, but half a century before Gerasim. Hence, the picturesque image of the great translator of the Bible with a lion found its way into art. The historic Lavra of St. Gerasimos existed until the end of the 13th century, when, after the fall of the Christian Kingdom of Jerusalem (1099–1291) and the departure of the Crusaders from the Holy Land, it was destroyed. The surviving monks of the Holy Lavra found refuge in the Kalamon Monastery, founded in 455 by the same Gerasimos and named after the reeds that grew there in abundance. Reeds, lions, and healed paws…

“When Abba Gerasim passed away and was buried by the fathers, the Lion Jordan was not in the Lavra. Soon he returned and began to search for the elder. The disciples told him, ”The elder has passed away." The lion did not want to eat, but constantly looked from one side to the other to the saint. The more they tried to comfort and encourage him with their words, the more he continued to weep…" (Spiritual Meadow 107). Gerasim was a great ascetic, founder of monasteries, and, as the episode with his renunciation of Monophysitism shows, a theologian and thinker. But he entered the memory of the Church thanks to a story about a lion that served him, which was preserved in the Paterikon as if by accident. Thus, in those difficult times of schisms in the desert, an image of Paradise was revealed. Very kind animals also want to live forever with the person they served, but being unable to speak, they cannot be baptized. Perhaps Saint Gerasim thought a lot about this mystery. That is why he named his lion Jordan.