Third Sunday after Epiphany, Year B, 2012
Reverend Gregg Wood
About this time last year, I visited the island nation of Cyprus in the Eastern Mediterranean. As a part of this visit I saw many churches and monasteries, most of them Greek Orthodox. Probably the most fascinating monastery was the one founded by St. Neophytos, near the city of Paphos in Western Cyprus.
Neophytos was born in 1134 in Cyprus. When he reached the age of 18, his family arranged a marriage to a local woman, but Neophytos had other plans, so he ran away from his family home to become a student and a novice monk at various monastic houses in Cyprus and elsewhere. After seven years of this travel-study program, Neophytos returned home hoping to be forgiven. However, such forgiveness was not forthcoming; he had humiliated both his own family and his fiancée and her family, and the feelings were still pretty raw. So he decided to become a hermit monk. He went to a mountainous site north of Paphos, to a place where there is a sheer rock face similar to the rock cliffs one sees on the Shawangunk Ridge above New Paltz.
Here, part way up the Cliffside, he discerned a small cave which he decided to use as his hermitage. Gradually he expanded it, and after some years it housed a chapel complete with furnishings and frescoes in the Orthodox tradition, as well as his residence, or hermitage. Neophytos became famous for his wisdom and piety, and gradually a monastic community formed around him, although it was not his desire to take on disciples – his bishop insisted on it.
Although he had no formal education, he wrote extensively, not only on theological and devotional subjects, but also on the political and historical events in the world about him. King Richard the Lionhearted of England conquered Cyprus in 1191 A.D. as part of the third Crusade, and the writings of Neophytos are one of our chief sources of information about the events of that time.
As his fame and influence grew, however, Neophytos had to sacrifice some of the solitude which he originally sought.
He decided that after forty years in his beloved cave of the Holy Cross he would have to leave and go higher up on the precipice. Placing a ladder on the ledge outside his cave he stood on top of the ladder and excavated a small opening which with time he enlarged so that it would become his new place of habitation. Here, he dwelt in complete isolation for the remainder of his life, coming out only for Sunday services. Two monks hoisted his daily food and drink in a basket to him, and this was his only contact with the outer world.

St. Neophytos and his monastery were brought to mind by verses from today's Psalm 62. Verses six through eight could almost have been written by this Saint about his own vocation:
For God alone my soul in silence waits; *
truly, my hope is in him.
truly, my hope is in him.
7
He alone is my rock and my salvation, *
my stronghold, so that I shall not be shaken.
my stronghold, so that I shall not be shaken.
8
In God is my safety and my honor; *
God is my strong rock and my refuge.
God is my strong rock and my refuge.
Neophytos wanted simply to wait in silence for God. He found shelter in a cave in a rock so that he might seek God, who was his rock, his refuge, and his salvation.
What does all of this have to do with us today? At this time of year, during the Epiphany season, we hear a lot about the call of God. Today's gospel, for example, is about the calling of the first disciples.
What are we and they called to do? We are called to love others. There are many ways in which we can do this, many gifts, and many ministries, but the object of all of them is to spread the love of God. There are many things we can do to help and serve others in and through the church. The assumption is that, by the living a life of active service to others, we can best serve them and the God of love we believe in.
But there is another way of loving and serving God. It is less familiar to us because we live in an action-oriented, results-oriented society. This way of life is called the contemplative way, to contrast it with the active way.
Now most of us would agree that we need times of contemplation, times of retreat, times of quiet worship in our lives. We would say that these times of worshipful withdrawal from life give us balance – they strengthen us for the life of active service, which is the main point of our lives. However, for some people, the contemplative life is not just a means to an end; it is itself the whole point and purpose of life. It is what they are called to do and to be.
What the psalmist was seeking, and what St. Neophytos was seeking, was the freedom to live this contemplative life – not as a means to something else, but for its own sake. Both wanted to
wait alone in silence for God, to find refuge in a rocky cave where they could fix their hope on God alone.
A modern commentator, looking at the life of St. Neophytos, would probably say something like this. "St. Neophytos carved an extensive network of caves on the side of the cliff; he caused a Chapel to be built and outfitted in one of these caves; he founded an order of monks and was their leader for many years; he wrote extensively and his works are still important to us today; and he provided spiritual guidance to the people of Cyprus during a period of turbulent politics."
And St. Neophytos would probably have looked puzzled at the commentator and then said, "Yes, there were those distractions in my life, and maybe they did some good; yet how much better I would have liked it if I could have been left alone in my cave to simply wait upon God, to behold the fair beauty of the Lord all the days of my life."
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