Holy New Priestmartyr Joseph of Damascus

Saint Joseph of Damascus
القديس يوسف الدمشقي

Today in the Holy Orthodox Church we commemorate the memory of Saint Joseph of Damascus, one of the Syrian New Martyrs of the Orthodox Faith in the lands which were governed by the Ottoman Empire. He belonged in particular to the Antiochian Orthodox Church, though his veneration is rightly universal in its importance.

Saint Joseph of Damascus, born Yûsif ibn Jurjis Mûsâ ibn Muhannâ al-Haddâd يوسف بن جرجس موسا بن مهنّا الحدّاد, was a descendant of the noble Banû Ġassân بنو غسّان, who often introduced himself as a native of Damascus, born in Beirut, whose faith is Orthodox. His father, Jurjis Mûsâ, moved from Beirut to Damascus sometime in the late 1700s. Though he came from a noble line, he was impoverished and made a working-class living working as a weaver. Jurjis Mûsâ got married and had three children: Mûsâ, ’Ibrâhîm and Yûsif – the last of whom was born in May of 1793.

Young Yûsif – that is to say, Joseph – had a natural curiosity despite his poor upbringing, and was encouraged in his study by his eldest brother Mûsâ, who was literate and poetic, and kept a small library of Arabic volumes at home. Joseph became fully versant in Arabic and attained a smattering of Greek during his school years. However, his father was unable to provide tuition for him to further his education, and planned to have him work alongside him as a weaver. Obediently, Yûsif began to work during the day – but he studied on his own initiative during the night, driven by a strong thirst for knowledge. The eldest brother, however, died at the young age of twenty-five, having spent much of his energy in study. This made his parents worry all the more for Yûsif, whose zeal for learning burned as brightly as Mûsâ’s had.

Yûsif began reading Mûsâ’s collection of books at the age of fourteen, but the subtlety and complexity of the language thwarted him, and he could understand only a little of what he read. His determination, however, was only spurred by this thought: ‘Was not the author of these books a human being like me? Why do I not comprehend them? I should grasp their meaning.’

He entered the tutelage of a respected Muslim scholar in Damascus, Muḥammad al-‘Aṭṭâr. From this man he learned a great many things: classical Arabic, as well as the philosophical arts of logic and rhetoric. He also kept the study of the Holy Scriptures, which his parents kept at home – he pored over the Law and the Prophets, the Psalter and the Gospels, committed much of them to memory, and attained to great wisdom from studying them side-by-side in both Greek and Arabic. However, the cost of his lessons under al-‘Aṭṭâr and of his books soon grew too great for his father to bear, and he left off his studies out of love for his family and a desire not to impose such great financial strain upon them. He went back to weaving during the day, and poring over books at night.

However, he did not allow opportunities for deepening his knowledge pass him by. He studied history and theology under Dr Jurjis Šaḥâdah aṣ-Ṣabbâġ, and then began teaching from his home. One of his students, who was Mizraḥi, tutored Yûsif in Hebrew. His parents grew alarmed at his continued scholarly pursuits, remembering what happened to his brother. At first they sought to dissuade him, but when this didn’t work, they did what any good self-respecting parents of a young Levantine would do: they set him up with a girl. They married Yûsif to a nineteen-year-old Damascene of respectable family, Maryam al-Kûršî. Their marriage apparently got off to a bit of a rocky start when he spent his wedding night, not in the usual way, but instead immersed in study.

He attracted the attention of the Orthodox believers living in aš-Šâri‘ al-Mustaqîm. Some of the parishioners went to Patriarch Seraphim, and they asked him to make Yûsif their priest. It turned out that Seraphim had heard of Yûsif as well and had a high admiration for him, and in quick order in 1817 ordained him a deacon and then a priest. He was then twenty-four years of age. When Seraphim’s successor Patriarch Methodios met Fr Joseph, he too grew to hold the young priest in esteem for his depth of knowledge and devotion, and made him an archpriest. Fr Joseph preached from the Mariamite Cathedral, and became renowned for his profound homiletics and powerful voice, and in Damascus he earned a reputation as a new Chrysostom. He had a remarkable gift of speech: he spoke to ordinary people in a tongue they could easily understand, but when it came to disputing with quarrelsome scholars he could run rhetorical circles around them with the ease of long practice. Many famous Damascene literary figures, whether Orthodox or Catholic or Muslim, quoted his sermons.

Fr Joseph was dynamic and energetic in the life of his parish, and had a particular gift for comforting the sorrowful and aiding the poor and destitute. He never forgot his working-class roots. He lived in personal poverty, depending on the work of his children, and he gave away freely whatever money came into his hands to whomever had need. He approached even apostates from the faith with kindness, never with anger or reproaches – and they would often come back into the Church in a spirit of repentance.

Naturally, he attended to the intellectual needs of the boys and girls of his parish, and when he took charge of the parish school in 1836 he enriched it with his own personal resources of books and writings, and brought his students together with the youth of his parish. He took a particular fatherly interest in young men who sought to study for the priesthood, and successfully levied the resources of the Patriarchate to sponsor their tuition. During this time, too, between 1833 and 1840, he served as one of the professors at Balamand Seminary in Tripoli. In 1852 he opened a department of theology in Damascus and took charge of twelve students there, all of whom later became bishops. His great love was for his city; in order to stay in Damascus he turned down even a lucrative offer from the Patriarchate of Jerusalem to teach Arabic in al-Quds, saying that ‘He who called me will satisfy me’.

Much as Fr Joseph’s appetite for learning in his youth had been voracious, so too his academic output in his adulthood was prodigious, punctilious and indefatigable. In 1840 his nephew estimated that his library contained as many as 2,827 books; and among his numerous writings were various commentaries on the Psalter and the Liturgical texts, as well as exegeses of the Pauline letters. He translated the Sermons of the great Metropolitan Saint Filaret (Drozdov) of Moscow into Arabic. He edited Deacon ‘Abdallâh al-Faḍl’s translations of Saint Basil’s Hexamæron as well as the Orations of Saint Gregory of Nazianzus. He was an invaluable resource for all of the Arabic-language Orthodox presses then in operation, both in the Levant and in Russia. Even so, despite his distinct mark upon the Arabic-language Orthodox literature of his time, he was loath to leave his name on many publications, thinking himself unworthy to keep company with the great Fathers of the Church.

Fr Joseph was insistent on correct ritual and Liturgical forms, and he corrected the practices of the Orthodox in sacramental rituals such as chrismations, weddings and funerals. He undertook the restoration of the Church of Saint Nicholas in 1845, which stood next to the Mariamite Cathedral, though this was burned down in the pogrom of 1860. In 1848, Fr Joseph exerted great energy in caring for the sick and dying during an outbreak of yellow fever in Damascus, which claimed even the life of his and Khouria Maryam’s son. His unflagging efforts and selfless regard for the needs of the suffering earned him the deep admiration of the people of Damascus.

Fr Joseph was also active in dialogues between the Antiochian Orthodox Church and the Melkites, in the schism which was at that time over 100 years old. Some in the Church wanted to use administrative pressure to bring the Melkites back into the Orthodox fold. However, Fr Joseph was adamant that the Orthodox should not cooperate with the Ottoman authorities in using political force against fellow Christians, even against schismatics. He believed in the power of dialogue. Force, he understood, only intensifies schisms; it cannot overcome them. Many Melkites indeed rejoined the Orthodox Church under Fr Joseph’s tenure.

On the other hand, Fr Joseph joined spirited polemics with American and English Protestant missionaries who operated in Syria – who, as often as not, took advantage of divisions and confusions in the Church to promote not only hæretical beliefs but their own nations’ imperialist agendas. Fr Joseph had to deal with one British missionary in particular with whom he discussed Biblical interpretation, who insisted on relating the substance of their discussions in a perverse and uncharitable light. During the season of Great Lent he replied to those people to whom this British missionary had misrepresented the Orthodox position, and sent them away with their questions satisfactorily answered and their minds edified. After this incident, the British missionaries no longer sought to ‘poach’ from the Orthodox flock, but instead asked questions in a more humble spirit of enquiry.

Fr Joseph entered an Orthodox Church which was impoverished, administratively weak, subject to the whims of Greek Constantinopolitan and Qudsi hierarchs, alienated from the common people on account of a foreign (Greek) Liturgical language and culture – and moreover faced with a vigorous and popular schismatic group (the Melkites) as well as an aggressively-organised campaign of missionary Protestantism. In the words of his hagiography, ‘in the midst of those challenges and dangers, Fr Joseph bloomed as a new godly branch’.

He ushered in an Antiochian ‘renaissance’, reinvigorating with his deep knowledge and great love for Christ the ancient Church which had been reduced but to a mere skeleton of its former glory. Saint Joseph of Damascus personally tutored Meletios II (Dûmâni), whose election to the Patriarchate as the first native-born Arabic Patriarch since 1724 would be an event heralded by Sâti‘ al-Ḥuṣrî ‘the first real victory of Arab nationalism’. He also had among his distinguished students: Met Gabriel Šâtîlâ of Beirut and Lebanon; Met Gerasimos Yârâd of Zaḥlah, Ṣayyidnâyâ and Ma‘lûlâ, Archimandrite Athanasios Qaṣîr of Balamand; Fr Spyridon Sarûf, dean of the clerical school in al-Quds; Fr John Dûmai, founder of the Arabic publishing house in Damascus; and laymen such as Demetrios Šaḥâdah, Michael Qâlîlah and Dr Michael Masakah.

Saint Joseph of Damascus said of himself: ‘I planted the seed in the true vineyard of Christ, and I am waiting for the harvest.’ Indeed, he planted many such seeds. Some sprouted during his lifetime; others were reaped long after he met his martyrdom. He tended his Damascene flock with great love, always giving the right glory to God. The ending of his life, in the horrific conflagration and massacre of the summer of 1860, reflected his true spirit in the same way.

Earlier that year, a proxy war had begun between the Maronites, who had been the proxies and compradors of French colonialism going back to the Crusades – and the Durûz, who were in the same manner the proxies and compradors of British power in the Levant. The fighting reached a bloody fever pitch over the summer, by which time it had taken the form of an anti-Christian (and anti-Shî‘ite) pogrom spearheaded by the Druze forces and their Sunnî Muslim allies. In Damascus, the pogrom claimed the lives of as many as 25,000 Catholic and Orthodox Christians. The poorer Orthodox Christians who lived outside the city were largely sheltered from the violence by their Shî‘ite neighbours.

When the killings and arson began on the ninth of July, many Orthodox Christians – including some from Mount Lebanon, or from villages outlying Damascus – fled inside the Mariamite Cathedral for protection. Hearing of this, Fr Joseph took the communion kit that he kept in his home, went up to the rooftops, and began leaping from roof to roof toward the Cathedral, administering the Eucharist and giving counsel, comfort and strength as he could to the Orthodox Christians he met. He told them not to fear those who can kill the body, for they cannot touch the soul, and told them of the trials of the martyrs in earlier times.

On the following day, the tenth of July, the Durûz and Sunnî paramilitaries began attacking the Cathedral itself; robbing and torching homes and beating and hacking their inhabitants to death. Some of the Christians took to the streets; one of these was Fr Joseph. He was recognised by a jurist who had sometimes debated him, and the jurist shouted to the crowds that he had found the leader of the Christians. Fr Joseph, knowing that his end had come, partook of the Divine Gifts and offered himself up to his persecutors. They attacked him with hatchets, bound his legs with twine and dragged him through the streets until he was dead. In this way Saint Joseph truly earned the crown of victory for the sake of Christ Whom he loved, and in his death sought to emulate. Holy Father Joseph, selfless giver of life and light to the Church in Damascus, steadfast confessor of Christ, pray unto Christ our God that our souls may be saved!

Apolytikion to Saint Joseph of Damascus, Tone 5:

O faithful, let us honour the martyr of Christ,
The priest of the Church of Antioch,
Who baptised the land, the churches, and the people of Syria,
In the word of the Lord,
In his blood and in the blood of his companions.
Being baptised, since his youth, by the light of the Gospel,
He laboured, taught and kept the Church of Christ with her sheep.
Therefore, O Joseph the Damascene,
Be our example and our protector
And our fervent intercessor with the Saviour.

Mariamite Cathedral, aš-Šâri‘ al-Mustaqîm, Damascus, Syria