SHORT BIOGRAPHY OF SAINT JOHN OF RUSSIA

From the book "Saint John the Russian: Life and Miracles" by Father John Vernezos.

His homeland is RUSSIA

The most probable date of his birth is the year 1690. This is because in the wars that began in 1711 and ended in 1718 he was a soldier in the Czarist army of Peter the Great of Russia. The Turkish troops were unstoppable, marching from victory to victory, and had spread terror throughout the nations. As a soldier, Saint John fought to defend his homeland, Russia. Nurtured with the seeds of Orthodoxy by his Christian parents, he is overwhelmed by the horrors of war, the thousands of brave men, women and children, and old men who lie dead in the wake of the enemies’ warlike fury.

Prisoner of war

In the battles for the reconquest of Azov with thousands of his compatriots, he was captured and taken to Constantinople.
From there to Prokopio, near Caesarea in Cappadocia, Asia Minor, in the possession of an Aga who maintained a Genitsar camp.

Tortured to deny Jesus

Psychologically condemned to the contempt and hatred of the Turks is the “kyafir”, the “infidel” who deserves cruel torture. And they beat him with thick sticks, kick him, spit on him, burn his hair and the skin of his head with fiery tashi. They threw him into the dung heaps of the stable and forced him to live with the animals.

Responds to torture

He endures all torture with fortitude and admirable bravery. His adamantine Christian character shines through. Like the sun shines his wonderful inner world, which since his childhood has been given to Christ. To the beatings, curses and kicks of the Turks he responds with the words of Paul: “who can separate me from the love of my Christ? What can Christ say to me, “Who can separate me from Christ?”? I have faith in my Lord Jesus Christ the only begotten Son of my God and nothing of all suffering will separate me from His love. As a captive I obey your commands, in the bondage work. In my faith in Christ the Savior I have no master over you. “Discipline thyself rather to God than to men.” I remember the crown of thorns, the depletions, the flatteries, the stripes, and this death on the cross, and I am willing to suffer the greatest and most terrible sufferings and this death myself, but my Jesus I do not deny. Saint John accepts the harsh conditions of martyrdom , the torture, living with the animals in the stable that reminded him, as he said, of the stable of Bethlehem. The exercises, the fasts, vigils, prayers to such an extent that he tamed the atrocities of the Turks and they were surprised to call him “Veli”, a saint. At a gathering of Turkish officials he miraculously sent by an Angel of the Lord food in a bronze plate from Procopius in Asia Minor to Mecca in Arabia, and the Turkish Agas ate it there hot. On his return he showed the plate with the coat of arms to the officials three months later. This miracle performed by the saint by the Lord’s concession stopped the hatred and unrelenting fury of his tormentors. His spiritual and moral radiance established the atrocity of the Turks.

The end

1730 May 27. A support he had in all his struggles and a consolation in the harsh life of torture. He resorted to prayers, genuflections, vigils and secretly received the Blessed Sacrament from the Turks. Holy Communion every Sabbath was his great rest and repose. On his last day, May 27, 1730, he sent word to the priest and he took him Communion in an apple that had been hollowed out. He took communion there in the stable for the last time. His temporary imprisonment, his plight of misery came to an end. The admirable St. John passed into eternal exultation and beatitude as soon as he received the Blessed Sacrament.

The burial

The priests and Christian prelates of Prokopios, with the permission of the Turkish Agha, took the body. With emotion and tears in deep devotion and reverence the until yesterday slave and slave was buried by Christians-Turks-Armenians as master and despot. They lifted that much-loved body on their shoulder, with incense and candles, with reverence and care, they led it to a grave in the Christian cemetery, they laid it in the mother earth.

Divine vision

The old priest who every Saturday listened to his pain and torment and administered the Blessed Sacrament to him, saw Saint John in his sleep in November 1733. The Saint told him that his body had been left by the Grace of God in the tomb intact, whole, incorruptible, as it was placed in the tomb 3 ½ years ago. Take it out and it will be with them as a blessing of God, for ever and ever. In the midst of the priest’s hesitations, by divine concession, a heavenly light illuminates the Saint’s tomb like a pillar of fire. The Christians opened the tomb, and oh, the miracle! The body of the Saint was found intact, uncorrupted and scented with that divine fragrance that continues to this day. With spiritual joy and reverence they lifted , took in their arms this divine gift, the holy relic and carried it to the Temple where the Saint was keeping vigil! From that day, more than 273 years now, the sacred body entered the liturgical life of the Church of Christ.

Holy relic burned by Osman Pasha

To avenge the Christians, the envoy Pasha of Osman burns the Holy Relic during an internal dispute between the Sultan and Ibrahim of Egypt. In the fire, the Turks saw the holy body moving.The next day, after the Turks have left, the Christians pick up the ashes and coals and find the entire sacred body covered. He had suffered nothing, pliable and smelly, all he had left was the tan from the smoke and the fever.

Osman Pasha burns the holy relic

As we have seen, the Saint lived a life of continence, chastity, fasting, prayers, virtues forgotten to us, glorified God among the unbelievers and the unbelievers, and God responded by glorifying him in Heaven and on earth. In front of Larnaca, which is his Holy Body, paralytics walk, the blind see, demons flee, other incurable diseases are cured. Not only Orthodox, but also Armenians, Protestants and Turks are captivated by his miracles. In their despair and misery they resort to the Saint. The tongue of the Saint is silent but they proclaim his miracles. The Holy Relic sleeps but they proclaim his presence with miraculous events. There is a great pilgrimage there that dominates central Cappadocia.

1922 Destruction of

The collusion of the Great Powers, the terrible mistakes of the Greeks, armed the Seljuk Turks of Kemal Atatürk and wiped out the Hellenism of Asia Minor. Passionate Greeks in Royalist and anti-Royalist – Venizelist and anti-Venizelist, burned each other’s house. The Front collapses. The politicians of Athens make speeches on the balconies arguing over who is worthy to rule. Kemal is slaughtering like lambs our boys who are trapped in the river Sangarius! One million five hundred thousand dead and missing from the disaster….

Transfer of the Holy Relic

In the midst of the disaster, the refugees who lost everything, two years after the destruction in the official exchange of the populations of Greece and Turkey, took the Holy Relic, other relics of the Church and their few personal belongings and set off on the road to foreign lands. From Caesarea to Mersin. From the port of Mersinia by the ship “Vasilios Destounis”, chartered at the expense of the Papadopoulou family, whose descendants live in Elefsina, Attica, to Chalkida. He remained there for a year and in 1925 he arrived at the present-day Neos Prokopios.

Creation of a new Shrine

In 1930 the Church was founded, which today hosts the Holy Relic. It was built in 1951. In 1962, with the agreement of the Church and the State, it was transformed from a simple pilgrimage temple into a “Benevolent Foundation”, with the purposes set out in its operating and management regulations. Two large hostels were established. One for free hospitality and the other for a small fee for the purposes of the foundation. The maintenance and operation of 5 large institutions was started. Two Orphanages, one in Chalkida and one in Artaki, a Nursing Home in Chalkida. A boarding school for students , children’s camps for about 1,000 children each summer period, etc. The five-member Board of Directors, the Councils of all the foundations under the chairmanship of His Eminence Bishop Chrysostomos of Chalkida, Istiaia and Northern Sporades and the assistance of all the faithful carry out this great spiritual and charitable work.

Saint John is a wonderful example for the life in God of people, because he reveals with his miracles the divine power and guides us to know psychologically a truly holy life, beneficial for man. We are not only for this life, but rather belong to the life to come, the eternal, the heavenly. Our soul is immortal, eternal. St. John imparts by his miracles to the souls of the faithful heavenly light, divine power in zeal and enthusiasm , divine power and self-denial and self-sacrifice, power of individual and social morality and self-control, power which overcomes the bonds of matter and removes the mountains of obstacles and creates the great victories in life, in the characters of men transformations and rebirths. By his miracles the Saint, by his nocturnal effort, as he reveals, lives and moves and helps man to acquire the inner freedom, the psychic freedom, which by its radiance animates individuals and peoples. Hundreds of thousands of people every year, in awe, in devotion, in silence, pass before his Holy Relic, this great relic of Orthodoxy. To all it gives the life-giving aura of the grace received from the donor Almighty God.