Such great faith could not remain unanswered: St Simeon finally met the holy man he was looking for. He was an elderly monk of the Studite monastery. His name was also Simeon.14 With this acquaintance, a new period in the life of young Simeon begins. Outwardly, he continued to work in the world as before, but he often visited his spiritual father and zealously fulfilled his instructions. In the beginning, however, Simeon the Studite limited himself to giving his disciple "a small commandment only as a reminder" to keep it. And when he asked him for books for spiritual reading, he gave him a book "On the Spiritual Law" by Marcus the Monk, an ascetic writer of the fifth century.15 Among the sayings of this book that struck the young Simeon, there was one that made a particularly deep impression on him: "Seeking healing, take care of your conscience. And do everything she says, and you will find benefit."16 "From that time on," says St. Simeon, speaking of himself in the third person, "he never fell asleep when his conscience rebuked him and said: 'Why didn't you do this too?' 17 "Stung by love and desire (of the Lord), he sought with hope the First Beauty,"18 and with youthful zeal he put into practice the saying of Mark the Monk, increasing his nightly prayers more and more, as his conscience suggested to him, "because by day he stood at the head of the house of one of the patricians, and every day he came to the palace, taking care of the things necessary for life, so that no one knew what was happening to him,"19 while his nights were devoted to fervent prayer. Tears flowed from his eyes, he multiplied the genuflections, as if the Lord Himself were present, and prayerfully invoked the Mother of God.20

During one of these night prayers, St. Simeon had his first mystical vision of the light that flooded him, filled him with joy, he ceased to feel both himself and everything around him.21 But the first period of religious inspiration and mystical enlightenment, attributed by St. Simeon to the prayers of his spiritual father, did not last long. The young man returned to the secular and distracted life that he had led before. "And forgetting," he says, "all that has been said above, I have come to a complete obscuration, so that I have never even remembered anything small or great, even to the simple thought of what I have previously said. I fell into even greater troubles than had happened to me before, and I was in such a state as if I had never understood or heard the holy words of Christ. But also on that saint who then took pity on me and gave me a small commandment and sent me... I looked at the book as if it were one of the ordinary people. I just didn't think about everything I saw thanks to him!" 22 In another place, St. Simeon expresses himself with even greater force about these years of spiritual weakness: "I threw myself again, miserable, into the pit and deep mire of shameful thoughts and actions. And having descended there, I fell into the power of those who were hiding in darkness, so that not only myself, but the whole world that had come together, could not bring me out of there and deliver me from their hands."23

These confessions of repentance should not be taken literally: in spite of all the weakness he experienced, Fr. Simeon was able to preserve his chastity, as he himself specifies: "When someone called me to the deeds of madness and sin, truly, of this deceptive world, my whole heart gathered inside and as it were hidden, ashamed of itself, invisibly restrained in every way by Thy Divine hand. And I loved all the other things of this world, which are pleasing to the eye, and delight the larynx, and adorn the body, which is smouldering. But impure actions and shameless desires, Thou hast erased them from my heart, O my God, and made hatred for them in my soul, even if by my will I was disposed towards them, and created that I should rather have an inactive desire and actions without desire, the greatest miracle in any case."24 It seems, however, that even during this period, which lasted about six-seven years, Fr. Simeon did not completely break off his relationship with his spiritual father. "I do not know how to say this," he writes, "I do not know what love and faith for the holy elder remained in my unfortunate heart. And because of it, I think, the humane God, after the passage of so many years, had mercy on me through his prayers. And again, by means of it, He delivered me from a great error, snatching me from the depths of evil. For I, unworthy, did not completely depart from him, but confessed to him what happened to me and often went to his cell when I happened to be in the city, although, being unscrupulous, I did not keep his commandments."25

Ave. Simeon, however, ascribes to the direct intervention of God his second and final deliverance from the power of evil forces. He describes it with great emotion in one of his best writings: "When they kept me there and pitifully dragged me around, and suffocated, and mocked... You, merciful and humane Lord, did not despise me, did not show rancor, did not turn away from my ungrateful frame of mind, and did not leave me to be voluntarily raped by robbers for a long time. But even if I rejoiced, being senselessly carried away by them, Thou, O Lord, could not bear to see me led and drawn around. But Thou didst propitiate Thyself, but Thou didst take pity on me, and Thou didst send to me, a sinner and miserable, not an angel or a man, but Thou Thyself, moved by Thy inner goodness, bent down to that deepest pit and stretched out Thy most pure hand to me, immersed in the depths of the mud and sitting somewhere below. And though I did not see Thee (for how could I see, or how could I see at all, being covered with mud and drowning in it?), Thou didst take hold of the hair of my head and pull me out of there, dragging me forcibly. I felt the pain and felt the upward movement and that I was ascending, but I did not know who I was being drawn upwards at all, and who could be the one who held and raised me up. But when you dragged me up and set me on the ground, you handed me over to your servant and disciple, all defiled and with eyes, ears, and mouths full of filth, and even then not seeing you who you were, but only learning that some kind and humane one, such as you are, had led me out of that deepest pit and mud."26 Or, as St. Simeon says in another place: "Yes, Lord, You remembered me when I was in the world, and when I did not know, You Yourself chose me and separated me from the world, and set me before Your glory".27

This miraculous deliverance from the pit apparently corresponds to the decision of St. Simeon to finally leave the world and become a monk. As is known from the Vita, he entered the Studite monastery as a novice at the age of about twenty-seven. Ave. Simeon recalls this change in his life in the following terms: "You, my God... He had mercy on me... from my father and brothers, relatives and friends, from the land of my birth, from my father's house, as from dark Egypt, as from the depths of hell... Thou hast separated me, O Gracious One, and having received me, hast led me, holding me with Thy dreadful hand, to him whom Thou didst deign to make my father on earth, and cast me at his feet and embrace. And he brought me to Thy Father, O my Christ, and to Thee through the Spirit, O Trinity my God, weeping like the prodigal son and falling down in the Word."28 In the Studite monastery, St. Simeon found his old spiritual father, Simeon the Pious, and immediately became his faithful disciple, showing great zeal in obedience and in the ascetic life in general. However, in this coenobitic monastery, where great importance was attached to order, uniformity and the sole authority of the abbot, such a special attachment to the spiritual father soon aroused displeasure among the monks. The abbot summoned Fr. Simeon several times and demanded that he conform more to the rules of communal life and renounce the guidance of his spiritual father. Ave. Simeon, however, did not want to do this and was expelled from the monastery. It is not difficult to understand what caused this refusal: St. Simeon was convinced that God Himself had given him a spiritual father, to whom he owed everything. He again entered as a novice in the neighboring small monastery of St. Mamas, called Xirokerki, but he continued, however, to be under the spiritual guidance of Simeon the Pious, who remained in the Studite monastery. In his new monastery, St. Simeon was soon tonsured a monk and ordained a priest, and then, after a three-year stay in the monastery, at the age of about thirty-one, he was chosen by the monks of St. Mamas as abbot with the approval of Patriarch Nicholas Chrysoberges.29 This happened around the year 980. By this time, he was already beginning to become a "celebrity" in Constantinople, known for his holiness and wisdom, many revered and loved him, but others criticized and attacked him.

Such, briefly, are the external facts, as they are seen from the Life written by Nicetas Stifatus. The writings of St. Simeon himself reveal to us the inner side of these events. We learn from them that in contrast to the ease of the first steps in the spiritual life, which quickly led the young Simeon to the first vision of the Divine light, he was now forced to patiently walk a long, difficult and painful path of spiritual healing. Thus, only at the cost of great ascetic efforts was it given to him to see a ray of Divine light, but more dimly than the first time.30 In another place, St. Simeon, describing his inner path in vivid images, emphasizes the decisive role of his spiritual father, Simeon the Reverent, in this process of liberation: "And so, at Thy command, I followed, without turning back, the man whom Thou hast pointed out to me, O All-Holy Master, and he led me with great difficulty to springs and springs, blind and drawn behind by the hand of faith which Thou hast given me, and is compelled to follow him. And where he, like a seer, skilfully lifted his feet and passed without difficulty through all the stones, pits, and snares, I stumbled upon them all and fell into them, and from this I endured much suffering, labor, and sorrow. He also washed and bathed in every spring whenever he wanted, and I, not seeing, passed by most of them. If he hadn't held my hand and set me near the spring, and directed my hands of mind, I would never have been able to find the water source where it was. Often he himself pointed out to me the springs and left me to wash, but together with the clean water I grabbed with my palms the clay and mud that lay near the spring, and polluted my face with them. Often, too, when I felt the source of water to find it, I would dump earth into it and mix the mud. And, not seeing at all, I thought that I was washing cleanly, when in fact I stained my face in mud, as if in water."31

Internal difficulties are doubled by the opposition of people (Studite monks, as can be assumed) and by their lack of understanding of his spiritual path. "Why do you labor in vain," they said to him, "acting foolishly, following this mocker and deceiver, vainly and uselessly waiting to see? Yes, in our time it is impossible.. Why don't you instead go to merciful people who ask you to rest and nourish you and take good care of you? After all, it is impossible to get rid of this spiritual leprosy32.... Where did this mocker, a modern miracle worker, who promises you things that are impossible for all people of this generation?.. And you yourself, without us, do you not think about this in yourself and do you not hold the same opinion?" 33 Nothing, however, could turn St. Simeon away from the path he had chosen. Further, in the chapter on the vision of light, we point out a beautiful page from the Second Thanksgiving, where St. Simeon, with great lyricism, developing his image of the source, describes the visions, blinding and dark, light and mysterious, which he had at that time, of the Face of the Lord.34 It is very important to note the insistence with which Fr. Simeon never ceases to emphasize that, despite his many mystical illuminations, he had not yet come to know God and did not clearly and consciously understand Who was the One who appeared to him. And so, in spite of all his visions, he was deeply dissatisfied. Here we touch upon one profound feature in the spirituality of St. Simeon. It is often said, greatly simplifying things, that the mysticism of the Greek Fathers is the mysticism of light, and that the vision of light is the highest mystical phenomenon in Byzantine spirituality. In relation to St. Simeon, in any case, such an opinion can be accepted only with a certain restriction. For him, it is not the vision of light in itself, important as it is, that forms the central moment and summit of the mystical life, but the personal encounter with Christ appearing in the light and communion with Him. It is only from the moment Christ begins to speak to us in our hearts through His Holy Spirit that we gain a personal knowledge of Him. A mere vision of light does not produce it, but it can cause intense longing and mystical dissatisfaction.35 Only after many visions of light and alternating phenomena and distances does the decisive moment come when Christ begins to speak. "For the first time," says St. Simeon, "Thou didst vouchsafe me, a dissolute one, to hear Thy voice. And Thou hast so softly addressed me, amazed and amazed, and trembling, and in Thyself as if pondering and saying: "What can this glory and greatness of this brightness mean? In what way and from whence have I been vouchsafed such blessings?" "I am," You said, "God who became man for you. And since you have sought Me with all your heart, you will henceforth be My brother, My co-heir and My friend."36 And St. Simeon tells how this mystical union with Christ later became for him an enduring state.37