John Damascene, priest and doctor of the Church

Biography

It is like an abundant river in two aspects that it makes the most of and in its wonderful and abundant works it will leave a perennial testimony: Tradition and fidelity to the past, to the fathers and Magisterium of the Church, and its love and deep knowledge of the Holy Scriptures. He is given two names: "DAMASCENO" because he was born in Damascus and "CHRISORROAS" which means "flowing gold." The ancients called him that because of the richness of his doctrine. The origin of his calling, from the son of a tax collector to Christians, to reaching the retirement of the Monastery of San Sabás, is beautiful and instructive. He learns the wonders of our faith, lives them, becomes deeply knowledgeable about the Doctrine of Jesus Christ and begins to preach it. But this does not satisfy him. He does not see himself mature, and for this reason he retires to the desert, to the famous Monastery of Saint Sabas, near Jerusalem. He, in his youth, had enjoyed all the praise the world can offer. His parents were very good Christians and he grew day by day in his faith, but that life did not fill his great heart. Therefore, now, in the solitude of silence and in the long hours spent in prayer, that soul is maturing that will be a furnace of fire with its word and with its pen, in defense of the values ​​of the Christian faith when it sees it attacked. With his captivating sermons and his abundant and solid writings, he will become one of the greatest luminaries of all time. In the year 726, the emperor of Byzantium, Leo the Isaurian, proclaimed a Bull prohibiting images. John stands up, strongly, to defend its use as a means to awaken faith. And he says: "What a book is for those who know how to read, those are images for the illiterate. What the word does through hatred, the image does through sight. The holy images are a memorial of divine works." His works are profound, elegant, full of zeal and solid doctrine that still retain their freshness today. Saint John Damascene was to the East what Saint Thomas was to the West. He died in the year 749.