ST. JOHN DAMASCENE

St. John Damascene was born in Damascus early in the second half of the 7th century. He entered, first, as as monk in the Laura of St. Sabas, near Jerusalem. He has been called the St. Thomas Aquinas of the East. His three celebrated homilies on the Dormition of the Blessed Virgin Mary were given in Jerusalem at the Basilica of the Sepulchre of the Blessed Virgin Mary, in the presence of the Bishops and clergy of Jerusalem and Palestine (c. 740). His homilies were an explicit recapitulation of Tradition in which he declared that the Corporeal Assumption of the Blessed Virgin rests on the concrete Tradition of the Church: "To describe as best I can, to paint and delineate in words. . .what we have received from Antiquity, clearly and comprehensively from, as they say, father to son."

(12-09-02)