Feast and Cult

Arsenius the Great is commemorated on 8 May in the calendar of the Orthodox Church, and his cult, like his memory, is grounded in his sayings rather than in shrine or relic. This file sets out the date and the forms of his liturgical veneration — the synaxarion notice, the hymnography, the keeping of his feast — and the character of the cult of a desert father whose “presence” in the Church is the presence of his words.

Tradition: Pan-Orthodox (Desert Father; father of stillness)

The Feast on 8 May

The Orthodox Church commemorates St. Arsenius the Great on 8 May (in the Julian calendar kept by some Churches, 8 May falls on 21 May of the civil calendar). On this day he is named in the synaxarion among the saints of the day, his memory is kept in the monasteries and parishes that observe it, and the proper hymns assigned to him are sung (the synaxarion and menaion for 8 May; Ware and Mother Mary, The Festal Menaion and the fixed calendar). [Disputed: the feast of Arsenius the Great is fixed at 8 May in the standard Orthodox calendar, but some sources and local traditions note a secondary commemoration on other dates, and the Western martyrologies have given his memory on differing days; the 8 May date is the principal and widely attested Orthodox commemoration (the Orthodox synaxarion; cf. the variation noted in the calendars and martyrologies).]

The synaxarion notice for the day rehearses the substance of his life as the tradition received it: the well-born Roman who was tutor at the imperial court, the voice that bade him “flee from men,” the flight to Scetis, the life of silence and tears, the wandering after the desert’s ruin, and the death at Troe (the synaxarion for 8 May; drawing on the Apophthegmata and the Life; see The Roman Tutor; The Death at Troe). The notice is the liturgical compression of his whole story into the form by which the Church keeps his memory each year.

The Hymnography

The proper hymns for Arsenius’ feast — the troparion and kontakion and the verses of the menaion — celebrate him as a father of stillness, a model of the monastic and contemplative life, and a vessel of the gift of tears. They draw on the characteristic themes of his sayings: the flight from the world, the love of silence, the ceaseless weeping, the undistracted attention to God. The hymnography is the Church’s own theological reading of his life, and it fixes him liturgically as what the tradition made him — the great hermit of hesychia, the courtier who chose the desert, the weeper whose tears were a perpetual prayer (the menaion for 8 May; on the themes, Silence and Stillness; Tears and Vigil).

In the hymns Arsenius is held up not as a remote historical figure but as a present intercessor and a living model: the faithful ask his prayers, and the monastic hearer is set before his example. This is the proper function of the saint’s feast in the Orthodox understanding — not the commemoration of a dead hero but the celebration of a living member of the Body of Christ, whose holiness is offered to the Church as both intercession and pattern (on the veneration of saints generally, the Orthodox liturgical tradition).

The hymnography also performs a quiet theological work that is worth noticing. By gathering the disparate sayings — the flight, the silence, the tears, the vigils, the fear at death — into a single liturgical portrait, it does for Arsenius what the Life and the synaxarion do in prose: it gives the saint a unity that the scattered apophthegmata do not, by themselves, supply. The hymnographer reads the sayings as a whole and offers their distilled sense back to the worshipper, so that the monk who keeps the feast meets not a collection of anecdotes but a coherent image of a way of life. In this the feast continues the very process by which the tradition shaped Arsenius’ memory (see The Historical Arsenius); the liturgy is the last and most public stage of that shaping, and it fixes Arsenius for the praying Church as the father of stillness.

The Eastern and Western Calendars

The fixing of Arsenius’ memory at 8 May in the Byzantine synaxaria placed him in the cycle of the fixed feasts of the Church year, among the saints commemorated on that day, and it is by this date that the Orthodox Churches — Greek, Russian, and the rest — keep him (the synaxarion and menaion for 8 May). In the Churches that follow the older Julian reckoning, the same 8 May falls thirteen days later on the civil (Gregorian) calendar, so that the feast is kept on what is for the civil world 21 May; this is a difference of calendar, not of the liturgical date, which remains 8 May in the Church’s own count (on the calendar question generally, the standard Orthodox liturgical references).

In the West, Arsenius entered the martyrologies among the desert fathers received through Cassian and the Verba Seniorum (see Arsenius in the Monastic Memory), and the Roman Martyrology has carried his memory, though the Western and Eastern calendars do not always agree on the day. This divergence is unremarkable: the commemorations of the ancient fathers were fixed independently in the different traditions, and minor differences of date are common. What matters is the substantial agreement that Arsenius is a saint to be honored — a unanimity the divided calendars do not disturb (see Veneration). The variation in the precise day is noted in the disputed note above rather than resolved, since the sources genuinely differ and the principal Orthodox date is secure.

The Character of the Cult

The cult of Arsenius has a particular character, shared with the desert fathers generally: it is a cult grounded in sayings rather than in shrine, relic, or place. Arsenius founded no monastery, left no body in a famous tomb that became a pilgrimage center on the scale of the great shrine-saints, and is “present” to the Church above all through his words in the Apophthegmata (see Arsenius in the Monastic Memory). His own instructions, indeed, expressed a horror of being honored in the body (see The Death at Troe), and the cult that grew up around him honored the spirit of that wish: it venerates the teacher of stillness through his teaching.

This makes his feast above all a monastic and contemplative observance. It is in the monasteries — and especially in the centers of the contemplative tradition, where the desert fathers are read and imitated — that Arsenius’ memory is kept most fully, and where his example bears most directly on the life of those who keep it. His feast is, in a sense, an annual return to the desert: a day on which the Church remembers the great hermit of silence and is recalled to the ideal of stillness he embodied (Ware 2000; the monastic liturgical tradition).

There is a fitting irony in the cult of a man who refused to be honored. Arsenius fled the praise of men in life and gave instructions against the honoring of his body in death (see The Death at Troe); yet the Church has kept his memory for fifteen centuries and sings his praises every 8 May. The tradition was not unaware of the tension, and it resolved it in the only way consistent with the man: by honoring him through his teaching rather than through spectacle. The cult of Arsenius is quiet, monastic, and bound to his words — a veneration that asks not for shrines and processions but for the imitation of his stillness. In this the Church has honored even his refusal of honor, keeping his memory in the manner he would have chosen: not by magnifying the man, but by learning from him to be still. The wider veneration across East and West is treated in its own file (see Veneration); the final assessment of his significance follows (see Legacy and Assessment).

References

Ward, Benedicta, trans. The Sayings of the Desert Fathers: The Alphabetical Collection. Rev. ed. Kalamazoo: Cistercian Publications, 1984. (The Arsenius collection, the ground of the cult; introduction on his life as the synaxarion records it.)
Chitty, Derwas J. The Desert a City. Oxford: Blackwell, 1966. (On Arsenius’ life and death as commemorated.)
Ware, Kallistos. The Inner Kingdom. Crestwood, NY: St Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 2000. (On the veneration of the desert fathers in the contemplative tradition.)
The Synaxarion and the Menaion for 8 May. (The liturgical commemoration of Arsenius the Great and the proper hymns.)