Just as in the first centuries of Christianity martyrdom served to strengthen the church, so monasticism became a support for the Church in subsequent times.
Having gone through various forms in its development, Christianity owes to the Venerable Theodosius the Great (424-529) the creation and exemplary organization of the first communal monasteries.
Cappadocia, which became the cradle of Eastern Orthodox theology through the gracious work of the greatest church teachers and holy Fathers, also gave Christianity this great first teacher of the monastic feat.
Venerable Theodosius the Great was born in the village of Magarion in Cappadocia. His pious parents welcomed his appearance into the world as a gift of Providence and therefore called him Theodosius - "God-given" (Bogdan). Raised in perfect morality and enlightened by constant reading of the Word of God, young Theodosius burned with holy zeal to serve Christ. He fervently prayed to God to show him the true path.
In early youth, he desired to worship at the holy places and set out for Jerusalem. Passing through Antioch, Theodosius visited St. Simeon the Pillar, who blessed him for monastic asceticism and predicted to him that he would be "a great shepherd of verbal sheep", which was fully confirmed by the life of the future famous confessor. Arriving in Jerusalem in 450, the 26-year-old Theodosius wanted to get acquainted with the life of the hermits who were working around him and settled with the experienced elder Longinus near the Holy City.
Then he moved to the newly built Church of the Theotokos, founded by the pious Glyceria, but the fame that his harsh exploits had earned him weighed on him and he secluded himself in the Judean Desert, dwelling in a cave in which - according to tradition - the three wise men from the East spent the night, who had come to worship the "born King of the Jews" (Matt. 2:1-12).
This cave witnessed a superhuman feat. Here St. Theodosius devoted himself to unceasing prayer and unyielding contemplation of God. His abstinence was also extremely severe. For 30 years he did not taste bread, but ate only dates, grass and roots, and even from them he took only enough to not die of hunger. This unearthly feat elevated the ascetic to such spiritual perfection that God honored him with the gift of miracles and foresight.
The deep solitude did not hide the glory of the great saint of God. Many needed the spiritual guidance of such a perfect model and gradually began to settle around him. Relying on the will of God, the holy elder founded in 560 his famous monastery, which still bears his name today and is located 7 kilometers southeast of Jerusalem.
The hermits soon reached more than six hundred people, and tradition says that during his 105-year life they reached sixteen thousand. The monastery "Der-Dosi" that exists today there are monastic cells, courtyards for the laity, hospitals and inns.
St. Theodosius the Great was the first to introduce the dormitory form of monastic asceticism and is therefore called "the head of the dormitory". The biographers also call him this way because in 493 the Patriarch of Jerusalem appointed him general archimandrite of all dormitory monasteries in Palestine, while St. Sava the Sanctified (439-532) was entrusted with the supervision of the hermits.
Under St. Theodosius there were monks of different nationalities (Greeks, Georgians, Armenians) and they had separate temples in which they performed a seven-fold prayer rule every day, according to the statute of the Psalmist himself (Ps. 118:164). For St. However, for Communion, everyone gathered in the main Church of the Theotokos, where services were held in Greek.
Venerable Theodosius governed his large brotherhood, guided by the monastic rules of his compatriot St. Basil the Great. In his wise leadership, the great spiritual father graciously combined meekness with strict justice.
All of them zealously practiced social charity and cared for the poor, strangers and the sick, who resorted to the help of the numerous monastery charitable institutions. The great Theodosius himself washed the wounds of the suffering in his hospitals and helped to serve the various beggars and pilgrims.
While working as a monk in his famous monastery and caring for the salvation of hundreds of his spiritual children, St. Theodosius the Great did not neglect the universal concerns of the Holy Church for the purity of the Orthodox faith. The Monophysite Emperor Anastasius (591-618) tried to exploit the high authority of St. Theodosius. He sent the Orthodox abbot a gift of 30 liters of gold as a sign of his zeal for his monastery.
The great elder did not insult the offer of the erring emperor by refusing, but when it came to controversial questions of faith, he set out for Jerusalem and from the pulpit pronounced excommunication from the Church of all who did not place the Fourth Ecumenical Council of Chalcedon of 451 and its creeds on a par with the decisions of the first three Ecumenical Councils. Not content with this, the hermit left his strict seclusion and traveled around the settlements of Palestine in order to establish Orthodoxy everywhere and eradicate heresies. For this he was sent into exile, but after the untimely death of Emperor Anastasius, he returned to his monastery.
Venerable Theodosius the Great foresaw his death several years before he left this world and announced this to three bishops he loved. Not long before his death, he ordered the bell to be rung for prayer one day and tearfully announced to the brothers: "Pray, fathers and brothers, pray! God's wrath has visited the East!" At the same time, Antioch was destroyed by an earthquake...
St. Theodosius was buried in the Bethlehem desert, where he began his asceticism. The glory of new miracles adorned his passing into blessed eternity. Joseph the Studite and Theophanes Drawn from the Lavra of St. Sava wrote many hymns, with which the Orthodox Church glorifies the great founder of the communal monasteries to this day. On January 11, the name day is celebrated: Bogdan, Bogdana, Bogomil, Theodosius, Theodosi, Theodosia, Dosyo, writes plovdiv24.bg.