Saints Abramios and Maria of MesopotamiaToday in the Orthodox Church – the twenty-ninth of October – is the feast-day of Saint Abramios the Hermit, and his niece Saint Maria of Mesopotamia. These ascetic saints lived in the fourth century in the vicinity of Edessa – today ar-Ruhâ in southeastern Turkey.
Abramios [Gk. Αβράμιος, L. Abramius, Ar. ’Ibrâhim إبراهيم] was born in Edessa in the year 290. His parents were observant Christians who loved him very much. However, they did not notice that Abramios loved the Church far more than he loved sæcular comforts, and they tried to persuade him to marry. Similarly to the later Saint Makarios, at first, the young man agreed. But after one week of marriage he fled from his new bride into the wilderness without so much as a word to anyone. He settled in an abandoned hut about half a mile outside the city, and with joy and the light of God in his heart he set to a discipline of prayers and fasts and vigils.
Naturally, though, his family were deeply concerned for him. They looked for him high and low, and after two and a half weeks his parents found him in the midst of prayer, kneeling in his cell. At first they could not understand why he had run away, but eventually he persuaded them that this was what God had called him to do. They blessed him and left him there, at his own request, and they did not come to visit him anymore or importune him to come out from his hermitage. He sealed up his hut, all except for one window through which he might converse with others and through which he might receive food and water. When his parents reposed from the world ten years later, they left him a goodly portion of their worldly substance, but this he asked a close friend to divide up and sell, and give the proceeds to the poor. His sole possessions were a garment, a hair shirt, his eating-bowl and his sleeping-mat.
Abramios acquired a spirit of compassion and wisdom through his daily battles with the passions and through his prayers. And the people who came to visit him were awed by his kindly insight, the gift of divine grace. His reputation grew and spread. Many came to visit him for consolation, or to sit and listen to him, and all of them left edified.
One of the villages near Edessa was at that time thoroughly pagan. Every time a priest, or a deacon, or a monk, had drawn near the village in attempt to convert the inhabitants, he had been driven out with unmatched ferocity. The bishop of Edessa, hearing of the reputation of Abramios, decided that he would go to him and make of him a priest, and send him into this village to bear the word of Christ among them. The bishop had a difficult time persuading Abramios to abandon his solitude. However, he prevailed upon him by convincing him that he would better please the Lord by bringing many to salvation through his prayers, than by bringing only himself.
The bishop brought Abramios into Edessa and ordained him a priest, and then sent him into the pagan village. When he had arrived there and saw the state of idolatry that the villagers were in, he wept for them. And at once he sent for the friend he had divide up his portion of the estate and give it to the poor, and asked him for a loan with which to build a church outside the village. He himself laboured in this task alongside the workers, and soon there was a fair temple of the true God standing there. He prayed every day inside this temple and never ceased from his ascetic labourers.
He went into the village and overturned the idols that were the centre of their worship, smashing them to pieces. Every time he went into the village after that, the pagans beat him mercilessly and flung him out. However, a few of the more curious ones went around the church both to admire its construction – they were far yet from prayer even of the most simple sort to Christ – and also to learn about this strange ascetic. When he began to speak to them, however, they lynched him – beat him with rods, tied a noose around his neck, dragged him through the village streets, left him in the road to die and lay a huge boulder upon his chest. But he was still alive, and with tears and fervent prayers he returned again to the church and continued to pray. Again the villagers found him, beat him, threw stones at him, tied a rope around his neck and dragged him out – and again he returned to his church to pray. This went on for three entire years. Never once did Saint Abramios raise his voice to them or revile them with harsh words, still less did he run away, but for every stone they cast he threw back a blessing upon them. Even the children who mocked and kicked him, he treated as gently and kindly as though they were his own.
At length, the people’s attitude towards him began to change. They began to think deeply upon how ever after that first day when Saint Abramios had destroyed the idols, he had never spoken a harsh word to anyone nor lifted a hand. They began to believe that what he said about the living God and of the kingdom of heaven might be true – and moreover, that the idols that they had worshipped were powerless to avenge themselves upon him, for he kept coming back into the village alive even after such mistreatment. Then several people entered the church. Then several more did. They were followed by still more and more of the villagers, longing to hear the words of truth and receive the waters of life æternal. Saint Abramios then held a great ceremony of baptism for all the villagers, who had come to believe in Christ.
He lived with them for twelve months, constantly preaching the word of Truth which they imbibed like ones insatiably thirsty. After this time he feared for his monastic vows that he would begin to grow too attached to his new flock. He fled into the desert and hid there. The villagers, who were shocked and dismayed at his departure, searched him out high and low, but could not find him. At length they came to the bishop and told him what had happened. In his wisdom, after joining the futile search for Saint Abramios for some time, the bishop – seeing that the village was steadfast in the Christian faith – instead appointed for them a cleric among their own number to attend to their spiritual needs. When Abramios came forth, and heard of this from the bishop, he fell to his knees and thanked the bishop profusely for his kindness to him.
Saint Abramios went back to his original desert cell, and fought a long, protracted battle against his own sins and against the Devil, who tempted and strategised against him in various ways. The Devil first tried flattering him with praises for his obedience, in an attempt to get him to succumb to vainglory. But Saint Abramios dismissed all such false visions, knowing himself to be a sinful man wholly dependent on the mercy of God. Then the Devil tried attacking him with frightening visions, with blood and fire, bringing the apparitions of bandits down upon his cell and even appearing at the head of a multitude of dæmons seeking to cast his whole cell down into the abyss. Each time he appeared, however, Saint Abramios defeated him by calling upon the name of Christ, making the sign of the Cross or singing from the Psalter. For years and years Saint Abramios waged war with the Devil, wept over his sins, and continued his ascetic feats.
It so happened that his parents had another son who remained in the world, married, and had a daughter, whose name was Maria [Gk. Μαρία, Ar. Mârya مارية]. When this brother of Saint Abramios died, the girl was left orphaned at the age of seven, and she was brought to Saint Abramios by her father’s friends. Saint Abramios kept the girl in the outer chamber of his hut while he retired to an inner chamber, and with this wall between them he began to instruct her in the præcepts of the Christian faith, in the ascetic life, in the Psalter and in the Holy Scriptures. She began to live as an anchoress, and Saint Abramios saw to it that her inheritance was divided up and distributed amongst the poor, just as his own had been.
Her uncle wept for her sake, and every day besought the Lord that her soul might be saved from every snare of the Evil One, and Maria herself welcomed his prayers for her. For ten years Maria grew in temperance, wisdom, meekness, kindness, love for God – in short, in every conceivable virtue under her uncle’s instruction and rule. However, it came about that a certain postulant, who often came to Saint Abramios on the pretext of seeking his advice, once caught sight of Maria. At this point, her inward perfections had made themselves manifest in a completion of outward beauty, and this postulant was seized with a powerful lust, and he forced his way into her cell and defiled her. Maria, utterly distraught at the thought that she had made a wreck of her ascetic life, defiled her purity and condemned herself before God and before her uncle, fled from her uncle’s cell and took up residence in another town. Having no other source of income, she was forced to sell her body in order to live.
Saint Abramios saw a vision, while this occurred, of a serpent devouring a turtledove. A second vision came to him, of him treading upon the serpent and rescuing the dove – whole and unharmed – from the serpent’s belly. When he awoke he began to ponder what it meant. Had a great apostasy occurred, or had a schism rent apart the Church, perhaps? He called out for his niece, but she did not answer him. When he went out to see what had become of her, he found Maria’s garment torn and herself – gone. Weeping and beating his breast, he understood that the visions had been about her. He besought the Lord to protect her and to guide her back to the path of life.
Two years passed before he heard any news of his niece. When he heard what manner of life she was leading, thanks to a friend, he was able to procure a soldier’s garments and a horse. He prayed to God and allowed Him to guide his horse to the town where Maria was working. He came to the inn where she was employed and asked the innkeeper if he had a girl of her description. The innkeeper, seeing Saint Abramios’s grey beard and grizzled appearance, laughed at him, but answered that Maria was indeed there. Saint Abramios asked if he could see her, and the innkeeper led him inside.
Abramios had disguised himself well, and Maria did not recognise him, but when he saw her dressed in the shameful garments of her trade, he could hardly keep himself from weeping over her. Maria came to him and began to kiss and caress him, and smelling the ascetic’s sweet scent she remembered the fragrance of incense from when she had once lived as an ascetic – and she truly did begin to weep. This aroused the innkeeper’s suspicions – and to keep him from doing his niece harm, Abramios quaffed wine and ate meat like a soldier of long practice. The ascetic who had never once eaten to satiety broke his fast for the sake of the soul of his niece.
When they retired to Maria’s chamber, Abramios bade her close to him, but then threw back his hood so that she could see who he was. But – instead of upbraiding her with the reproaches she feared, the ascetic spoke gentle words to her, telling her that, far from being angry with her, he would himself take on the burden of her repentance and answer to God for her sins – so deeply after the manner of a kinsman did he love her. Only after half a night of such gentle words and nothing else from the ancient ascetic did she find the courage to unburden herself of everything that had befallen her, and the shame she had felt, and how she had feared to approach him. But Abramios listened, and heard, and spoke to her not one word of anger or of reproach. And he assured her that he still loved her, and wanted only for her to return with him to resume her struggles in their cell.
Maria fled the snare that had been laid for her, and the two of them made their way back to their cell, and Maria applied herself so steadfastly and with such heartfelt passion to her labours and prayers, that God saw fit not only to heal her, but increased His grace to her many times over. So powerful did her prayers become that she was able to work wondrous healings for those who came to her while she yet lived. Saint Abramios lived for ten years in his cell after that, and praised God that He had seen fit to deliver Saint Maria from the designs of the Evil One. With Saint Maria making such miraculous progress herself in the spiritual life, with the gift of tears in her eyes and the perfections of her virtue again attained, Saint Abramios was able to repose in peace, at the age of seventy in the year 360. Saint Maria lived on alone as an anchoress several years after he did before she too reposed in the Lord in the year 365, and departed at once to the company of saints.
The tale of Saint Abramios and Saint Maria holds many spiritual insights and practical ones. It is an object lesson, for one thing, in how Christians ought to approach the matter of sexual abuse – because Saint Maria was the victim of unwanted sexual contact. Note that Saint Abramios – the man who looked after Maria like a father and who was responsible for her – listened to his niece, believed what she said, was not angry with her, and assured her that he loved her regardless of what she had done. And note how the hagiography of St Dimitri of Rostov itself assures us, the readers, that Maria was not broken by her ordeal. Even after she was raped and after she had been essentially forced by need into prostitution, once she came home and resumed her life, she was able to recover. And she was granted the gifts of healing, which she particularly needed – and repentance and forgiveness, which we all need. We may even go so far as to say that it was on account of this grace that she could come to heal others through her prayers. Holy venerables Abramios and Maria, wonderworking ascetics of the Mesopotamian desert and models to all of the spiritual life, pray unto Christ our God for our salvation!
Apolytikion for Saints Abramios and Maria of Edessa, Tone 1:
You abandoned all earthly comforts, O Father Abramios,
Living righteously in hope of things to come and receiving a sacred anointing.
Initiated into divine mysteries, you enlighten those who cry:
Glory to him who has strengthened you!
Glory to him who has granted you a crown!
Glory to him who through you works healing for all!
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