Glorification 1986

The Ecumenical Patriarchate’s glorification of St. Arsenios of Cappadocia in 1986, under Patriarch Demetrios I — the ecclesial act that received the Farasiot cult into the calendar of the whole Church, fixed his feast on 10 November (the day of his repose), and set the seal on the veneration that St. Paisios had fostered at Souroti.

Tradition: Greek Orthodox (Cappadocian)

The Act of Glorification

In 1986 the Ecumenical Patriarchate of Constantinople, under Patriarch Demetrios I, formally glorified (canonized) Arsenios of Cappadocia, numbering him among the saints of the Church (on the 1986 glorification by the Ecumenical Patriarchate under Demetrios I see the synaxarial notices of the saint and Hieromonk Isaac, Elder Paisios of Mount Athos, Chalkidiki, 2012). The act belonged to the Ecumenical Patriarchate both because Cappadocia lay within its historic canonical territory and because the cult’s centre, the Souroti convent near Thessaloniki, lay in the “New Lands” of northern Greece under the Patriarchate’s spiritual jurisdiction. With the glorification, the veneration that had grown up among the Farasiot refugees and been fostered by St. Paisios — the relics at Souroti, the reported intercessions, the pilgrimage (see The Translation of the Relics) — was received into the official calendar and commended to the whole Church.

[Disputed: the exact date within 1986 of the synodal act. The glorification is securely dated to 1986 under Patriarch Demetrios I; the precise day and the exact form of the synodal decision are given variously or left unspecified in the popular notices available to this collection, and are not asserted here beyond the year and the patriarch (Hieromonk Isaac, Elder Paisios of Mount Athos, 2012; synaxarial notices).]

The Feast: 10 November

The feast of St. Arsenios was fixed on 10 November, the day of his repose in 1924 (see Repose on Corfu, 1924) — the ordinary Orthodox practice of keeping a saint’s principal feast on the day of his death, his dies natalis or heavenly birthday (on the logic of the church calendar and the commemoration of saints on the day of repose see Orthodoxy: The Church Calendar). On the old (Julian) calendar the corresponding date is 28 October; churches and communities following the different calendars keep the feast accordingly, but the commemoration is the same day of his death, 10 November new style. The coincidence of feast and death-day underlines the tradition’s reading of his repose as the crown of his life (see The Prophecy of Forty Days).

The Cult at Souroti

The living centre of St. Arsenios’ veneration is the Holy Hesychasterion of St. John the Theologian at Souroti, the convent founded by St. Paisios, where his relics are enshrined (see The Translation of the Relics). It was from Souroti that his Life was published (1975), from Souroti that his cult was propagated, and at Souroti that the relics are venerated (Hieromonk Isaac, Elder Paisios of Mount Athos, 2012, on Souroti as the centre of the cult). Since the repose of St. Paisios himself in 1994 and his burial at Souroti — and all the more since St. Paisios’ own canonization in 2015 — the convent has become one of the most visited pilgrimage sites in northern Greece, and the two Arsenioi, godfather and godson, are venerated there together (see The Two Arsenioi).

The cult has also spread well beyond Souroti. Churches and chapels have been dedicated to St. Arsenios, his icon has become widely diffused, and a monastery bearing his name (the Holy Monastery of St. Arsenios the Cappadocian) exists in Chalkidiki — the community responsible for the English publication of St. Paisios’ works (Hieromonk Isaac, Elder Paisios of Mount Athos, Chalkidiki, 2012, published by the Holy Monastery of Saint Arsenios the Cappadocian). His veneration has travelled with the Greek diaspora and with the wider modern interest in the Athonite elders, so that a saint once known only in one Cappadocian valley is now commemorated across the Orthodox world.

Cult Preceding Canonization

St. Arsenios’ path to the calendar follows the classic Orthodox pattern in which veneration precedes canonization. He was regarded as holy by his community in his own lifetime and immediately after his death; his relics were recovered and venerated from 1958, nearly three decades before any official act; and the 1986 glorification ratified a veneration already long established rather than initiating it (see Attestation and Tradition). This is the ordinary shape of Orthodox glorification: the Church does not manufacture a cult but recognizes one, receiving the testimony of the faithful that a given person is a saint (cf. the account of ecclesial reception in St. Xenia: The Xenia Case). What the Church ratified in 1986 was the Farasiot memory, carried into exile, preserved and propagated by St. Paisios, and confirmed by the continuing reports of St. Arsenios’ intercession — the cult, not a documentary biography, being the thing glorified.

See Also

References

  • Hieromonk Isaac. Elder Paisios of Mount Athos. Greek original 2004; English trans., Holy Monastery of Saint Arsenios the Cappadocian, Chalkidiki, 2012. (The 1986 glorification under Patriarch Demetrios I; Souroti as the centre of the cult; the monastery of St. Arsenios in Chalkidiki.)
  • Elder Paisios the Athonite (Hieromonk Paisios). Saint Arsenios the Cappadocian. Souroti, Thessaloniki: Holy Hesychasterion “Evangelist John the Theologian,” Greek 1st ed. 1975; English translation, Souroti. (The Life whose publication fostered the cult; the repose on 10 November 1924 on which the feast is fixed.)