Our father among the saints James ‘the Faster’ of al-Jiyyeh

Saint James the Faster

The fourth of March in the Orthodox Church is the feast-day of the holy and God-bearing ascetic Saint James ‘the Faster’. Saint James was a sixth-century monastic who fell from grace, and killed a woman who came to him for healing. He then spent the next decade repenting of his sin in an open grave.

Saint James [Gk. Ιάκωβος] lived most of his life in the Phœnician port town of Porphyreon, now al-Jiyyeh الجية in Lebanon. He lived in a cave for fifteen years, bringing his soul closer to perfection in the image of Christ, and as a fruit of his ascetic labours he received the gift of wonderworking from the Lord. He was able to cure by the means of his prayers even the gravely ill and those on the brink of death. Through his efforts, many local people came to believe in Christ. His own fame spread so wide and he gained such acclaim that he removed himself to a more distant location, so that he would not succumb to temptation.

At one time, some local wags seeking to discredit James sent to him a woman of loose morals, who went to him weeping and pretending great distress, though in fact she was tempting him. Seeing himself about to fall, Saint James took his hand and thrust it into a nearby flame, holding it there until the flesh burned. Seeing this, the woman who came to him was filled with a genuine awe, and knelt down to him in true tears of repentance, and amended her life for the better.

But on a later occasion James would show no such restraint. The parents of a girl came to him, hoping that he would cure their daughter of a mental illness. After he healed her, however, he either seduced her or took her by force, and then killed her and threw her body in a river to conceal his sin. Having been thus snared by the force of his lusts and by the wiles of the Evil One, he lost his gift of wonderworking and was distraught and tormented by what he had done. He went into the wilderness and spent years out of the sight of men.

In the height of his distress he went to a cœnobitic community which had been established in the Syrian wilderness, and he begged to speak to the abbot. The igumen of the community heard his confession, and understood the profundity of the monk’s fall. Fearing that James would succumb to despair and self-destruction, the abbot recommended to him that he stay with them. However, James went out from them. The Lord brought him to another hermit living in the Syrian desert, who also heard his confession and asked him to stay with him. However, James would not stay there either; he spent the next ten years living in an open grave, mourning over his sin.

There was a drought in the region where James was, living in his grave open to the sky. Crops withered, and people and livestock both starved. When they found where he was, the people of that area went to him to ask his prayers to God to alleviate their suffering. When at last it began to rain as a result of his prayers, James took it as a sign that his sin had been forgiven. Even so, he lived the rest of his life in contrition despite his abilities as a wonderworker returning to him, and when he reposed he was buried in the same grave in which he had spent over ten years of his life.

It does not seem accidental this year that the feast-day of Saint James ‘the Faster’ comes so hard on the heels of Forgiveness Sunday. It is hard for me to like or even to respect Saint James, particularly in light of the clerical abuse crisis that is currently roiling the Latin church, and which has not left the Orthodox Church untouched. He was in a position of spiritual authority over a young woman in a subordinate position, he abused her, and then he killed her. In a day and age when so much actual spiritual abuse is hushed up, covered up and hand-waved away by complicit and complacent spiritual authorities, hagiographical accounts like that of Saint James the Faster can seem a little too trite, a little too platitudinous on first blush. There is something in the terminology of the hagiography that – despite James spending ten whole years in an open grave mourning over his sins – still seems to let him off too easy.

And yet, the entire œconomy of forgiveness is scandalous – it speaks to the fact that it is not earned, that it is not just (as Mâr ’Ishâq would say), that it is gratuitous, that it is wilful and that it is not tied to any præcondition. Indeed, if it were not so, not one person, no matter how seemingly pure or holy, would be able to stand justified at the foot of the Cross. There is an enormous mystery at the bottom line of the hagiography of this Lebanese saint, a leap of illogic that throws the reader off balance. In this season, it shows me exactly how far from the spirit of true forgiveness I stand, and thus how far from existing in the spirit of Mâr ’Afrâm’s Lenten prayer of repentance I still am. It is in this spirit, torn between scandal and knowledge of my own deficiencies, that I ask for Saint James’s intercession. Venerable James, beneficiary of God’s infinite mercies, pray unto Christ our Lord that he show the same kindness to us sinners!