St. John Damascene

Summary

Summary of "Catholic Saints" Podcast Episode: St. John Damascene

Podcast Information:

• Title: Catholic Saints
• Host: Augustine Institute
• Episode: St. John Damascene
• Release Date: December 4, 2024

---

Introduction

In the December 4, 2024 episode of Catholic Saints, produced by the Augustine Institute, host Mary engages in an enlightening conversation with Dr. Carl Venerstrom. The episode delves into the life, works, and enduring legacy of St. John Damascene, a pivotal figure in the history of the Catholic Church. As part of their mission to deepen the faithful's understanding of recognized saints, the Augustine Institute provides a thorough exploration of St. John's contributions under challenging historical circumstances.

---

Historical Context

Dr. Venerstrom begins by setting the stage for St. John Damascene's life, emphasizing the dramatic political and religious landscape of 7th-century Damascus.

Dr. Venerstrom [03:16]: "St. John of Damascus was born in 680 in the city of Damascus, which is in Syria. This was a dramatic time and place to be born."

He highlights the Islamic conquests that began in the early 620s, noting that Damascus became a central hub for the Islamic caliphate. This period saw Christians living under Islamic rule, where many held positions within the Muslim bureaucracy.

Dr. Venerstrom [04:14]: "St. John's father was an elite member of the Caliph's bureaucratic system. So basically he had a high place in the government."

This context underscores the complex interplay between Christian communities and Islamic governance, shaping St. John's experiences and perspectives.

---

Life and Path to Holiness

Dr. Venerstrom details St. John's early life and education, noting his elite philosophical training and multilingual abilities. Raised in an Arabic-speaking world and educated in Greek, St. John was well-equipped to engage with diverse intellectual traditions.

Dr. Venerstrom [05:00]: "He grew up in an Arabic speaking world, but was also educated in Greek and had ... a very elite philosophical education."

St. John’s transition to monastic life in Jerusalem marks a significant phase in his spiritual journey. Inspired by personal trials, including a public humiliation that led to his hand being severed and miraculously restored, he sought a deeper religious commitment.

Dr. Venerstrom [09:16]: "This event inspired him to take his adopted brother with him to go live the monastic life in Jerusalem ... eventually his strong intellectual gifts were recognized and he was ordained a priest."

---

The Iconoclasm Controversy

A major portion of the discussion centers on St. John's role in the Iconoclasm Controversy, a significant theological dispute within the Byzantine Empire.

Dr. Venerstrom [07:52]: "John wrote in response to this in defense of icons, and he connected it in a very beautiful way with the theological heritage that Christ truly took flesh."

St. John passionately defended the veneration of icons, arguing that the Incarnation justified their depiction. His stance opposed the Patriarch of Constantinople and the emperor, who viewed icon veneration as idolatry. This conflict led to his public disgrace and the severing of his hand, an act that was later reversed miraculously.

Dr. Venerstrom [07:53]: "He gets his hand cut off. And then ... he prays before this icon of the Madonna and Child. And he falls asleep ... his hand is attached."

This miraculous restoration reinforced the validity and sanctity of icon veneration within the Church.

---

Writings and Theological Contributions

St. John of Damascus is lauded for his extensive writings, which have left a lasting impact on Catholic theology. Although not the most prolific, his works are imperative and foundational.

Dr. Venerstrom [09:54]: "He's a great student of the Fathers who had come before him. So he's like almost kind of scholastic in that way."

His seminal work, "On the Orthodox Faith", serves as a comprehensive systematic theology, addressing major theological topics and countering various heresies, including Iconoclasm and early Islamic teachings, which he referred to as the heresy of the Ishmaelites.

Dr. Venerstrom [11:12]: "He was actually one of the first Christians to write about Islam, and he calls it the heresy of the Ishmaelites."

Additionally, St. John composed poems, homilies, and other theological treatises, cementing his role as a key intellectual figure at the end of the Patristic period.

---

Devotion to Mary and Liturgical Contributions

St. John of Damascus possessed a profound devotion to the Virgin Mary, which is evident in his liturgical contributions. Dr. Venerstrom shares excerpts from one of St. John's canons dedicated to the Feast of the Dormition, paralleling the Western Feast of the Assumption.

Dr. Venerstrom [14:48]: "These are the last lines of this particular canon ... Let us drink of God's gifts at his mother's tomb."

This canon emphasizes Mary's role as a mediator and protector, reinforcing her significance in Eastern Christian traditions.

---

Legacy and Continuing Influence

St. John Damascene's legacy is multifaceted, impacting various aspects of the Church today. He is recognized as the patron of icon painters, theology students, and intriguingly, pharmacists—a nod to his polymathic studies in medicine and nature.

Mary [11:19]: "I've learned that he is the patron of icon painters, theology students, which all reflect some of the writings and his lived experience."

Dr. Venerstrom highlights St. John's enduring influence on theological scholarship, particularly his method of synthesizing the Church Fathers' teachings, which prefigures later scholasticism.

Dr. Venerstrom [12:08]: "He's really a model for someone who is a man of the Church ... He knew there was a great gift in studying the teachings and writings of all of the Fathers of the Church that went before him."

Moreover, St. John's defense of icons continues to shape Eastern Orthodox and Catholic practices, illustrating the harmonious blend of faith and art in worship.

---

Notable Quotes

Throughout the episode, several poignant quotes encapsulate the essence of St. John Damascene's theology and legacy:

1. Defense of Icons:

   Dr. Venerstrom [16:50]: "We're physical beings with physical sense perceptions ... God has condescended. He's come down to us to be depicted in a material form."

2. Devotion and Liturgical Beauty:

   Dr. Venerstrom [15:31]: "Let us now draw from this spring of God's healing spiritual probity. Let us drink of God's gifts at his mother's tomb."

---

Conclusion

The episode concludes with a heartfelt reflection on St. John Damascene's resilience and faith amid adversity, emphasizing the relevance of his life for contemporary Christians.

Dr. Venerstrom [19:03]: "It's worthwhile attending to Christians like Saint John of Damascus and seeking their intercession for ourselves."

Mary and Dr. Venerstrom remind listeners to pray for and support Christians worldwide, drawing inspiration from St. John's unwavering commitment to the faith.

Mary [19:24]: "St. John of Damascus, pray for us."

---

Overall, this episode of Catholic Saints offers a comprehensive and engaging exploration of St. John Damascene—his historical context, theological contributions, devotion to Mary, and lasting legacy. Through insightful discussion and notable quotations, listeners gain a profound understanding of how St. John navigated and shaped the Church during a tumultuous era, leaving an indelible mark that continues to inspire the faithful today.

Transcript

[A]

You're listening to a podcast on Catholic Saints. This podcast is produced by the Augustan Institute, an apostolate helping Catholics understand, live, and share their faith. Welcome to Catholic Saints. My name's Mary, and I am with Dr. Carl Venerstrom here at the Augustine Institute in Florescent, Missouri. Thank you for joining us.

[B]

Very glad to be here, Mary.

[A]

Very exciting. What are you currently teaching on campus this fall?

[B]

I am teaching Light to the nations.

[A]

Okay.

[B]

Which is a history course.

[A]

Is that a new course? This is.

[B]

It is a new course in our. In the revision of the curriculum or in a new place with a new curriculum, which is mostly, you know, it's very similar to the last one, but Light to the nations is.

[A]

It's got a catchy title. I like it.

[B]

Yeah. It's a new course in the new curriculum, so.

[A]

Okay.

[B]

And fittingly for what we're about to discuss, it's focused on Catholic saints throughout the history of the church.

[A]

So how prophetically God brings his continuity of the gospel from age to age. Is that the heart of the class?

[B]

Yeah, that. That is. I think one of the main elements of the class is seeing the light of Christ, which is revealed in Christ followers in new ways, but really kind of the same way over and over again, just in different. Different circumstances. So a lot of the saints look a lot different. Justin Martyr.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

Or a philosopher's toga. And was a philosopher, but was martyred. Right. And then St. Francis wore rags and cleaned churches. So. Yes, both imitators of Christ.

[A]

Amen. And which saint will we be discussing today?

[B]

Today we're gonna be talking about St. John of Damascus.

[A]

Okay.

[B]

Yeah. So St. John of Damascus was born in 680 in the city of Damascus, which is in Syria. And this was a dramatic time and place to be born. Our listeners will recall that beginning in the early 620s, the Muslims started conquering. So first conquering the Arabian peninsula. So this was supposed to be during the life of Muhammad himself. And then turning north and east to Persia, going into the Persian Empire, but then sweeping through the Holy Land, and then Alexandria and Egypt and going further west, ultimately making it to Spain. They tried to go into France, but they were thankfully rebuffed. So in any case, Damascus was a central hub for the Islamic fate.

[A]

Was Damascus also mentioned frequently in the Old Testament? Is it a prophetic city that has scriptural connections?

[B]

Yeah, there was probably an Old Testament corollary name for it. It is mentioned in the New Testament in the Acts of the Apostles.

[A]

But to your point, it does seem that is part of St. John's unique mission too, that he hails from this city of Damascus.

[B]

Yeah, it certainly was. And one of the interesting things about Christians who lived under Islamic rule, and this would continue for centuries, is that often Muslims would use Christians in the bureaucracy. So St. John's father was an elite member of the Caliph's bureaucratic system. So basically he had a high place in the government.

[A]

Okay.

[B]

So he had a high title and office. And so St. John grew up in an Arabic speaking world, but was also educated in Greek and had. I mean, we don't know this directly necessarily, but his works give evidence that he had a very elite philosophical education. And we are told his father really wanted him to study Greek and to study the scriptures. So, yeah, this continued to be a kind of phenomenon for a long time. And it's worth remembering that for five or six hundred years, over half of the world's Christians lived under Islamic rule. They spoke Arabic, they worshiped in Arabic.

[A]

Yes. No, I agree. Especially being an American girl, I'm not sure what that dynamic is like. So I'm fascinated to learn more about St. John.

[B]

Yeah, and obviously the numbers of Arabic speaking Christians are greatly diminished now after so long, but there is a very rich heritage there to be explored.

[A]

What was he known for in this time period? Was he a teacher? Was he a hermit? What was his life, his path to holiness like?

[B]

Yeah, it was dramatic in a way. So while he was still living in Damascus and himself had taken up a place as the city prefect in Damascus, he found himself embroiled in a controversy within the Church at this point in time. So one of the Christian heresies was, and this is one that is often kind of gets forgotten in the history of the Church. We like to think about the trinitarian heresies, like to think about Arius, and then there's the Christological councils that address Christological heresies. But after those, there was this controversy over icons. So the Byzantine Empire, which was centered in Constantinople, that's like modern day Istanbul, there was in a loose sense, the head of the Eastern churches. And at this time, the head of the Eastern Church, the Patriarch of Constantinople, advocated the position that the reverencing of icons was a form of idolatry. And so John wrote in response to this in defense of icons, and he connected it in a very beautiful way with the theological heritage that Christ truly took flesh. And the Incarnation makes it possible for us to depict Christ and to depict the saints. Even though it's not like a perfect image of them, it's still a True, true image that deserves our respect. So the patriarch of Constantinople and the emperor especially, did not like this. And so the emperor actually wasn't able to touch John because he was part of the Islamic caliphate. He was under a different government. So as the story goes, the emperor sort of like, planted these false allegations against John that he was plotting against the caliph. The Islamic caliph. And so John gets his hand cut off. Wow.

[A]

I didn't know that part.

[B]

Yeah, yeah, he gets his hand cut off. And then this is the tradition is that the Muslims were kind enough to give the hand back. So after they parade him through the streets in a ignominious way, they give him back the hand, sort of puts it back on his wrist, and he prays before this icon of the Madonna and Child. And he falls asleep, as maybe some of us have while we're praying. And when he wakes up, his hand is attached.

[A]

Wow.

[B]

And there's just a little red dot. Okay. And so John attributes this to Our Lady's intercession. And again, as the story goes, he crafts a silver hand, and he adds that to the icon. So it's this icon in the Eastern churches that is known as the three hands icon. So the two hands of Mary. And then this silver hand that John.

[A]

He created, he wrote it.

[B]

Yeah, well, he added the silver hand.

[A]

Okay.

[B]

So now there's a feast day in the Eastern churches for the three hands.

[A]

Fascinating. Okay, so he. It sounds like definitely helping fight the heresy of iconoclasm. And, yeah, he was a religious high figure. He was a political high figure, kind of both in this.

[B]

Yeah. So he has a transition at this point. So the way the tradition about him goes is that this event inspired him to take his adopted brother with him to go live the monastic life in Jerusalem so that they go to this famous monastery in Jerusalem and start to live the monastic life. And there are stories about him about how he sought out this special spiritual father and then was heroically obedient to him. And eventually his strong intellectual gifts were recognized and he was ordained a priest.

[A]

Okay.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

Is he a prolific writer?

[B]

Yeah, yeah. He's maybe not. He's not the most prolific of the church fathers, but he did write a number of imperial, important works. And his writings are kind of interesting. He's sometimes seen as being at the end of the patristic period, and people categorize these things differently. But he's a natural stopping point, because in at least some of his works, a lot of his work is to assemble long quotations from all the fathers of the Church. So he was a great student of the Fathers who had come before him. So he's like almost kind of scholastic in that way, although that's not the right term, but. So, yeah, he wrote dogmatic works. He wrote a synthetic work called on the Orthodox Faith that is a kind of systematic theology that treats all the major topics in theology he wrote works against heresies. He's actually one of the first Christians to write about Islam, and he calls it the heresy of the Ishmaelites. So he actually treats Islam as a Christian heresy rather than as a completely separate religion.

[A]

Okay, interesting.

[B]

Yeah. He also wrote poems and we have homilies and a lot of different stuff.

[A]

Yes. I've learned that he is the patron of icon painters, theology students, which all reflect some of the writings and his lived experience.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

I also found he is a pharmacist. Is that a stretch? Do you know why that might be the case?

[B]

Perhaps not. I mean, he was a polymath, so he studied many, many different disciplines. So he wrote on nature and on medicine. So it makes good sense.

[A]

Are there any things we didn't highlight yet about how Saint John of Damascus really left a legacy for the Church or particular. Just things that he was so passionate about that continue in the life of the Church today?

[B]

Yeah, I think kind of like I was saying before, but he's really a model for someone who is a man of the Church in the sense that he wants to take as great an advantage as he can of the heritage of the Church, which is itself a kind of heritage that he knew there was a great gift in studying the teachings and writings of all of the Fathers of the Church that went before him. And he also did it during a time of great turmoil. So I think that's a great model for theology, that when we talk about God or we have conversations about theological matters, or when we write about theological matters, the virtue is not to have something new to say. Actually, until fairly recent in history, things that were new were considered bad. Insofar as something was old, it was good. This is how most humans in history have thought. And there's something very wise about it, I think.

[A]

Did he have a particular devotion to Mary?

[B]

Yes, he did. And in fact, I have right here his canon on the Feast of the Dormition. So we may not recognize this feast day, the Dormition. Right. So it's actually basically identical feast to the Feast of the Assumption. It's called the Dormition in the Eastern churches because of parallel traditions, I guess, of Mary's entrance into Heaven. And so in the Eastern narratives, which are the earliest ones, the story goes that Mary fell asleep, and then the apostles were all miraculously brought to her side. And so there are these icons of all the apostles gathered around what looks like a dead Mary. And the word sleep can mean different things in Greek. Like we have St. Paul talking about people falling asleep and referring to death, and they put her in the tomb. And then Thomas was the latest to arrive, in classic form, of course. And so when he arrives late, only because he's arrived late, does he see what happens, which is that Mary is brought up bodily into heaven. So this is the feast we celebrate, is the Feast of the Assumption.

[A]

Poor Thomas, he probably just was always teased.

[B]

Well, it's kind of great, though, because it's like we're all basically, Thomas. Well, there's that. But then what I was gonna say is that Thomas, even though he's slow to make his course, he maybe has the deepest encounter or the deepest experience with the mystery. It's his fingers that go into the wound of Christ. And then he's the one who sees Mary being brought up bodily into heaven.

[A]

So that is beautiful.

[B]

Yeah, he is a great treasure, even if people deride him.

[A]

Were you going to read us?

[B]

Yeah. So, yeah, I need to get off my soapbox about Thomas and read you this. So these are just the last couple of stanzas here. So this is on the feast of the Dormition. These are the last lines of this particular canon, which was chanted in the liturgy and I think still is chanted in Eastern liturgies. Come, people of God, Draw near to this sepulcher that is Mary's empty sepulchre filled with her memory. Show up veneration with the lips, the eyes, the heart of fidelity and in sincere humility. Let us now draw from this spring of God's healing spiritual probity. Let us drink of God's gifts at his mother's tomb. Take from our hands this solemn processional Mother of mysteries. Keep us in the shade of your protecting hand. From shadows deliver us. And to our King, give victory to all your people. Give peace to us sinners. Pardon and deliverance. Bring us all to that bliss which we celebrate.

[A]

Beautiful. And one last question for you. Can you summarize how Saint John of Damascus would explain the importance of icons in our churches or the proper role of how they lead people to prayer?

[B]

Yeah. So there's. There's one way to think about it, which is just that we're physical beings with physical sense perceptions. We also have spiritual sense perceptions. So we have spiritual sight, we have spiritual hearing, spiritual smelling even.

[A]

Wow.

[B]

So those are higher and they reach to a higher object. But God became man in order to bring about salvation, so he took material flesh. And so it's fitting that that materiality should be expressed to our physical senses because we don't need to be holy. We don't need to pretend that we're angels. And actually part of being holy is admitting that we're physical persons and using our physicality, our material bodies as the means of our salvation. And so God has condescended. He's come down to us to be depicted in a material form. Not that we mistake the material form for God and himself, but that through our physical senses we're brought into the presence of God. So really, in the Eastern churches, they're often thought more like we would think of a sacrament. In the west we think of the seven sacraments. And at least in some Eastern churches, that category is a little looser and icons would certainly fit into it.

[A]

Beautiful. I bet St. John of Damascus and St. Thomas are friends up in heaven. Even just with St. Thomas, you know, he touched the body of Christ and there's some correlation there too.

[B]

Yeah, that's actually a really good connection. And St. Thomas Aquinas, who loved to quote St. John of Damascus.

[A]

So, okay, yes.

[B]

Maybe he's standing next to the two Thomas's.

[A]

Yes. Well, thank you. This was fascinating to learn about. And even his witness of living the life of a Christian in a non Christian society where he was under Islamic rule as well. Yeah, I think it's an interesting application.

[B]

Yeah. And I think, yeah, it's worthwhile attending to Christians like Saint John of Damascus and seeking their intercession for ourselves. But then we can also, we can also remember all of the Christians who live in the Middle east now, often under very adverse circumstances, and we keep them in our prayers as we hope for theirs as well.

[A]

Yes, absolutely. Well, thank you, Dr. Venner Shrem.

[B]

My pleasure, yes.

[A]

St. John of Damascus, pray for us.