Augustin Sokolovski
On June 25, the Orthodox Church celebrates the memory of St. Peter of Athos (650-734). On the day of St. Peter's memory, we learn the following:
1. Initially, monasticism was divided into hermit and communal. Anthony the Great was the first monk, and Paul of Thebes was the first hermit. Both lived in Egypt in the 4th century. Like them, Athanasius of Athos, at the turn of the first and second millennia, founded the Great Lavra on Athos, and Peter of Athos, three centuries before him, became the first Athonite lonely ascetic. He lived in solitude for more than fifty years, and only before his death did God reveal his life to the world.
2. Five centuries later, the great teacher of Orthodoxy, St. Gregory Palamas (1296–1359), found that St. Peter's memory was forgotten at Athos itself. Gregory defended the authenticity of the Athonite monks' prayerful experience against the heretics and rationalists of his time. It was in Saint Peter that he saw the prototype of that silence, “hesychia”, by which the Athonites of his time lived. The sermon on the life of Peter became Gregory's first theological work. He revived the veneration of Saint Peter and made him from a local saint into a universal saint. In response, Saint Peter of Athos, by his very image, helped Gregory Palamas defend the Orthodox teaching on asceticism.
3. The life of Saint Peter says that before his conversion he was a Byzantine soldier and was captured by the Arabs. This turned out to be a punishment from above for the fact that Peter had once promised God to become a monk, but did not do so. Having repented of his deed, he was miraculously released from captivity. Then he became a monk on Athos. God always accepts repentance. Once we realize that we have sinned, it’s never too late to literally run to the church to confess, bring repentance again and again, even when we sin repeatedly.