Memorial Day of St. John Cassian the Roman (13/03)

The spiritual homeland of St. John Cassian the Roman has always been the Orthodox East, although according to the place of birth and the language in which he wrote, the monk belonged to the West. John received monasticism in the Bethlehem monastery, located near the place where the Savior was born.

After a two-year stay in the monastery in 390, the monk and his spiritual brother Herman traveled for seven years through Thebaid and the Scythian Desert, drawing knowledge and spiritual experience from numerous ascetics.

Returning to Bethlehem for a short time in 397, the spiritual brothers worked in complete solitude for three years, and then went to Constantinople, where they listened to St. John Chrysostom. In Constantinople, the Monk Cassian took the rank of deacon. In 405, the Constantinople clergy sent the monk to Rome to Pope Innocent I at the head of the embassy — to seek protection for the innocently suffering saint.

As a presbyter, the Monk Cassian was consecrated in his homeland. In Marseille, for the first time in Gaul, he built two dormitory monasteries, — male and female, according to the charter of the eastern monasteries. At the request of the Bishop of Apt Castor, the Monk Cassian wrote 12 books in 417—419 «On the decrees of the film of the Palestinian and Egyptian and 10 conversations with the desert fathers in order to give his compatriots samples of hostel monasteries and introduce them to the spirit of asceticism of the Orthodox East.

Saint John Cassian the Roman rested peacefully in 435.

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