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St. Simeon Stylites — The Catholic Saint Who Lived 37 Years on a 50-Foot Pillar · Everyday Saints: A Catholic Podcast

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  What would you do if the only way to escape everyone was to make yourself impossible to
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  ignore? Now, hold that thought. A man has been standing on top of a stone column for over
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  a decade. Not sitting, not lying down to sleep most nights. Standing, praying, exposed to
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  the weather on a platform smaller than most kitchen tables. He climbed up there to get
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  away from people. Now, people travel hundreds of miles just to look at him.
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  Hi, my name is John O'Connor and this is Everyday Saints. This is episode 16. If you are new
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  here, welcome to the porch. Stick around if this hits you. Subscribe so you don't miss
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  next week, a new saint every Thursday. It's back to an unknown saint this week, though
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  once you hear what he actually did with his life, you might understand why people never
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  forgot him, even if they forgot his name. This is the story of Saint Simeon Stylites. Hold
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  on to that one question about disappearing. We'll come back to it before we're done today.
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  Simeon was born around 390 AD in a region called Cilicia in what's now southern Turkey. His
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  family raised sheep and as a boy, he worked the family flock the way generations before
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  him had. Long days outdoors, watching animals, learning the land. The kind of quiet, repetitive
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  work that leaves a lot of time for a young mind to think. When he was around 13, on an ordinary
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  day like any other, he went into the village church and heard a sermon on the Beatitudes,
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  the part of the gospel where Jesus lists out who's actually blessed, the poor in spirit,
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  those who mourn, those who hunger for what's right. And according to the earliest accounts
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  of his life, something about that sermon hit him hard enough that he left the flock that
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  same day and went looking for a way to give his entire life to God. Not next week, not
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  after he thought it over, that same day. He found a nearby monastery and asked to join.
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  Monastic life at that time was already demanding by almost any modern standard. Long fasts,
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  hours of prayer, physical labor, very little sleep. The monks there noticed something in
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  him early. He wasn't just willing to keep up. He kept looking for more to give up. Simeon
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  did all of it. and then consistently did more than what was asked. If the community passed
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  it for two days a week, he'd push for three. If the others slept in shifts, he'd stay up
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  praying instead. Now, the abbot and the other monks noticed, and it wasn't entirely read
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  as a good sign. There's a real difference in monastic thinking. between someone deepening
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  their devotion and someone using hardship to punish themselves for reasons that have nothing
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  to do with God. It's not always easy to tell those two things apart from the outside, and
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  it wasn't easy with Simeon either. This became a pattern that followed him his entire life.
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  Whatever level of hardship the other monks were living at, Simeon pushed past it. At one point,
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  Simeon reportedly wound up wrote, tightly around his own body underneath his clothes for such
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  a long stretch of time that it cut into his skin and the wound became infected. The other
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  monks didn't discover it until the smell gave it away. When they found him, they had to cut
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  the rope out of his flesh and by most accounts, it took a real effort to remove it without
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  doing even more damage. Now, that kind of self-punishment wasn't seen as holy by his fellow monks. It
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  was seen as dangerous and disordered, even by monks who were already living lives most of
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  us would call extreme. The monastery eventually asked him to leave, worried that his practices
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  were less about drawing closer to God and more about something unhealthy he could not control
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  in himself. Simeon didn't tone it down after that. He went out on his own and kept pushing
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  further. He spent one entire length 40 days before Easter without eating or drinking a
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  single thing, a stretch of self-denial so extreme that even people used to fasting found it hard
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  to believe and some who had heard about it simply refused to accept that it had happened. He
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  lived for periods chained to a rock on a mountainside exposed to the elements with barely enough
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  food to stay alive. He tried nearly every form of physical hardship available to a man in
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  that era who wanted to strip his own life down to almost nothing but prayer. And it kept drawing
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  crowds. Now that was the part he didn't expect. The harder he pushed himself away from ordinary
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  human comfort, the more people showed up to watch him do it, ask him for prayers, and try
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  to touch him for a blessing. Word traveled fast in that part of the world, even without
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  anything like roads or communication we'd recognize today. A man doing something nobody else was
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  willing to do tends to get talked about, whether he wants the attention or not. By the early
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  420s, the crowds around Simeon had become overwhelming. People traveled from all over the region hoping
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  to see him, touch him, get a scrap of clothing that he'd blessed, or just be near him. Some
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  came out of real faith. Others came the way people show up for any famous figure. hoping
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  for a miracle, a cure, a story to bring home. For a man who'd left a shepherd's flock specifically
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  to get closer to God in solitude, this was the opposite of what he wanted. He'd built his
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  entire life around stripping away distraction, and instead, he'd become the biggest distraction
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  in the region. So he tried something nobody around him had really done before. He built
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  a stone pillar, and he climbed on top of it. and he stayed there. The first pillar was modest.
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  Historians estimate somewhere around nine feet tall, barely higher than a person standing
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  on another person's shoulders. Over the following decades, he kept building taller ones and moving
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  up to each new one, eventually settling on a pillar that stood somewhere around 50 feet
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  in the air, with a small platform at the top, maybe six feet across. That's roughly the height
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  of a five-story building standing on a space not much bigger than a closet. He lived up
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  there by most accounts for close to 37 years. Here's the twist he didn't see coming. And
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  it's the whole reason people still talk about this man 1700 years later. Getting higher didn't
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  make the crowd smaller. It made them bigger. Instead of solving his problem, The pillar
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  turned him into one of the most famous religious figures in the entire Eastern Roman Empire.
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  Pilgrims came from Gaul, modern-day France, from Spain, from Persia. Emperors wrote him
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  letters asking for his advice and his prayers. He preached down to the crowds below twice
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  a day, settled disputes, and is credited with converting entire groups of pagans and nomadic
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  Arab tribes to Christianity, all from a platform he could barely lie down on. He tried to disappear,
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  and it made him more visible than almost anyone alive. Living conditions up there were about
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  as hard as you would guess. He was exposed to the sun, wind, and rain, as well as the cold,
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  with essentially no shelter beyond what he could rig up himself. In summer, the stone platform
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  would have baked under the Syrian sun all day, with nowhere to retreat from it. In winter,
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  There was nothing between him and the wind but the clothes on his back. Disciples built a
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  small ladder against the pillar so people could climb part way up to bring him food and water,
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  which was hauled the rest of the way by rope and basket. He slept very little and when he
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  did, it said he often stood upright, leaning against a low railing at the platform's edge
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  rather than lying down, since the space was too small and too exposed to make lying down
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  comfortable or in bad weather, even safe. He wore an animal skin garment and an iron chain
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  by some accounts around his neck or waist for a portion of his time up there. One more layer
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  of the same instinct that got him kicked out of that first monastery, just channeled into
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  something that this time drew people toward him instead of driving them away. Below him,
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  the scene never really quieted down. Merchants set up stalls to sell food and supplies to
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  the pilgrims who were arriving. Sick people were carried in on stretchers, hoping to be
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  close enough for him to pray over them. At certain hours, he would lean over the edge of that
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  tiny platform and preach down to the crowd, and by every account, thousands of people at
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  a time would go completely silent to listen to a man they could barely see, fifty feet
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  above their heads. A quick word on how solid this story is, historically speaking. Simeon
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  is one of the better documented saints from this early period of the church. Multiple contemporary
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  writers, some of whom claimed to have seen him with their own eyes, wrote accounts of his
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  life while people who knew him were still alive to correct the record. That doesn't mean every
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  detail is airtight. Ancient biographers loved a good number. and pillar heights vary somewhat
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  depending on which source you read. But the core of it, a man who spent decades living
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  on top of a stone column in the Syrian desert, is about as well-attested as ancient history
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  gets. Now, Simeon stayed on that final pillar until his death in 459 AD, at close to 70 years
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  old. His disciples noticed he hadn't moved or spoken in several days, and they eventually
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  climbed up to check on him. they found him bent forward in a posture of prayer, already gone.
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  Word of his death reportedly emptied entire towns, with people traveling for days just
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  to see his body before burial. He was carried down from the pillar he'd lived on for nearly
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  four decades, and buried with the kind of honor usually reserved for emperors, not shepherds.
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  Simeon didn't just do something unusual once. He accidentally started a whole category of
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  Christian devotion. In the centuries after his death, other monks began building their own
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  pillars and living out their lives on top of them the same way, calling themselves stylites
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  from the Greek word for pillar. Some of these later stylites lived on their columns for decades
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  too, and the practice continued in parts of the Christian world for hundreds of years after
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  Simeon himself was gone. It's a strange kind of legacy for a man who never set out to start
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  a movement. He climbed up there to get away from people. not to become a model other men
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  could deliberately copy. But that's exactly what happened. The thing he did to escape attention
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  became, for later generations, the very definition of extreme devotion, the standard other monks
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  measured themselves against, the same way Simeon once measured himself against the monks in
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  that first monastery he was asked to leave. Hold that thought. Remember I asked you to,
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  right at the start? What would you do if the only way to escape everyone was to make yourself
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  impossible to ignore? Now, I don't think Simian ever set out to answer that question, but his
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  whole life ended up being the answer anyway. He built that pillar to get away from people.
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  It's the opposite of what actually happened. The higher he climbed, trying to put distance
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  between himself and the crowd, the more of the world found its way to him. I think most of
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  us have some version of a pillar, not a stone one, but something we build to create distance
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  from people, from noise, from a life that's asking more of us than we think we can give.
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  And most of the time, we build it hoping it'll make us smaller, quieter, and harder to reach.
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  Simeon's story suggests that's not usually how it works. The things we do in genuine devotion
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  even the ones meant to be private, even the ones meant to shrink us down and out of view,
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  have a way of becoming visible anyway. Not because we are trying to be seen, because real conviction
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  is hard to ignore, whether you're standing on a stage in front of an emperor or standing
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  alone on top of a pillar in the middle of a desert. Here's the part I think we usually
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  get wrong when we tell this story though. It's easy to hear, Simeon tried to disappear and
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  ended up famous instead, and walk away thinking the lesson is that hiding never works, so don't
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  bother trying. I don't think that said it at all. Simeon wasn't running away from people
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  because he hated them in my opinion. He was running toward God, and the crowd just happened
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  to be standing in the way of that pursuit. The Pillow was never really about escaping human
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  beings. It was about removing every possible distraction between himself and the one thing
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  he actually wanted. The fact that it didn't work the way he expected doesn't mean the reason
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  behind it was wrong. That distinction matters because it's the difference between running
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  from something and running towards something. Running from people usually leaves you bitter
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  when they find you anyway. Running toward God, even imperfectly, even by the way of a 50 foot
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  pillar in the Syrian desert, tends to leave you useful when they do. Simeon didn't get
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  angry when the crowd showed up at the base of his column. He preached to them. He prayed
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  for them. He let the very thing he was trying to escape become the exact shape his ministry
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  took for the next 37 years. There's something else in this story worth sitting with too.
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  Simeon never came down. Not once in 37 years did he decide the attention was too much and
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  climbed back to the ground to live a quieter life. He could have. Nobody was forcing him
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  to stay up there once the crowds arrived. He stayed anyway and he kept preaching to them,
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  kept praying for them, kept using the very attention he never wanted as a way to actually reach
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  people. The pillar didn't get him what he originally wanted. but he used it for something better
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  instead. I think that's the real test underneath all of this. And it's the one I keep coming
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  back to for myself. It's not, can you avoid the crowd? Most of us can't, not for long,
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  not really. It's when the crowd shows up anyway, uninvited, in the middle of the thing you
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  were doing quietly for God alone. Do you resent them for finding you? Or do you let what you
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  were already doing become useful to them too? So here's the question this week. Is there
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  something you are doing quietly out of real conviction that you assume nobody notices?
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  And if people did start noticing, would you resent the attention or would you do what Simeon
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  did and let it become part of the work instead of a distraction from it? Think on that. Lord,
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  thank you for Simeon. Thank you for a man who tried to disappear into you and instead became
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  impossible to miss. For anyone listening who feels like their quiet faithfulness goes unnoticed,
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  let them trust that nothing done for you is ever wasted, even from the top of a pillar
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  nobody was supposed to be watching. And for anyone who's ever resented being found in the
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  middle of something private, give them Simeon's patience. to let it be used anyway. Amen.
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  Simeon Stylites is considered the founder of an entire form of Christian devotion. Later
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  monks known as Stylites imitated him, living out their own lives on pillars for decades
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  after his death. He's recognized as the patron saint of shepherds, fitting for a man who started
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  his life tending sheep and ended it, leading far more people than he ever expected to. His
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  feast day is January 5th in the Western Church and September 1st in the Eastern Church. Well,
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  that is episode 16. If this one surprised you, send it to somebody who needs to hear it. Next
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  week, we are back to a known saint, someone you will recognize the second I say the name,
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  with a story that's going to change what you think you know about him. I'm John O'Connor.
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  Thanks for sitting on the porch with me, and I will see you next week.