St. John the Long-Suffering

  • FEAST DAY: September 28

  • Tormented by sexual desires from the time of his youth, John struggled to be delivered. In a cave where the relics of St. Anthony rested, after a day and night of fervent prayer, he heard a voice telling him:

    “John! It is necessary for you to become a recluse, in order to weaken the vexation by silence and seclusion, and the Lord shall help you by the prayers of His monastic saints.”

    Settling into the cave, he struggled mightily for thirty years. Finally, John buried himself in pit during Lent, suffered temptation to leave his seclusion, and endured visions of a serpent breathing fire and trying to swallow him. On the night of the Resurrection, John experienced the serpent engulfing his head in its jaw and cried out to the Lord:

    “O Lord my God and my Savior! Why have You forsaken me? Have mercy upon me, only Lover of Mankind; deliver me from my foul iniquity, so that I am not trapped in the snares of the Evil one. Deliver me from the mouth of my enemy: send down a flash of lightning and drive it away.”

    And in a bolt of lightning, the serpent vanished. The Lord responded:
    “John! Here is help for you. Be attentive from now on, that nothing worse happen to you, and that you do not suffer in the age to come.”

    Prostrate, John begged to know why the Lord left him to suffer for so long. Again, the Lord responded:

    “I tried you according to the power of your endurance. I brought upon you temptation, so that you might be purified like gold. It is to the strong and powerful servants that a master assigns the heavy work, and the easy tasks to the infirm and to the weak.”

    Perseverance and humility helped St. John to overcome his weakness in the face of temptation. ACT prays that men suffering from an addiction to pornography and immoral sexual habits will become purified like gold through perseverance and keeping their eyes on Christ.