Often when we hear some of the lives of the early Christians or even particularly of some of the early Desert Fathers, we are perplexed at what we are told. Their experience is so far removed from our own, not only just in time but in their surroundings and the whole notion of Christianity at that young age, so vivid upon all of their souls in a way that perhaps in our jaded age we have become a little bit more hesitant in receiving some of these things.

One of these early saints, whose name was John—and he was actually named John in the Well—gives us an example of this. Of course, as so many of the Fathers tell us, these saints in the desert encountered God and the devil in ways that are unimaginable to us today. We who are so addicted to technology and sensory things and sensual things find it hard to imagine the [extraordinary] vividness of the encounters that these early saints had. In fact, many of them fled to the desert for this very reason, for even in the cities that they were in at the time there was enough hustle and bustle and commotion that they found it very, very distracting in terms of their relationship with God. So although we do have to take with a grain of salt certain of the things that have come down from those early, early years and that may have been recorded and even changed over time, we can’t deny the fact that their experiences with the Lord were perhaps much more realistic than what we might think today.

This John was orphaned by his father at an early age&madsh;he also had a sister—but his mother remained, and she was known for her piety and even her great wealth at the time. They were devout and believing Christians, and John sometimes would take off and go to the church even though there was a great danger of persecution at that period of time.

One day he was met by another Christian who suggested to him that they go out into the desert in order to pray. John returned home, and he told his mother that he had met someone who wanted to do this, but he felt that it was necessarily important for him to get her blessing before he departed. She gave it, and he left. They went out into the inner desert, and John, inspired by the Holy Spirit, found a well that was there. Now the well was full of scorpions and snakes and all sorts of other hazards and was a full 30 feet deep, yet he cast himself down into it and was unharmed. In fact, by the grace of God, he engaged in an extraordinarily ascetical effort whereby he stood there, his arms raised out in the form of a cross, for 40 days, neither eating nor sleeping, and not daring to lower his arms. At the end of this 40 days, the snakes and the scorpions and all of the other sorts of vermin that were there disappeared, and he remained there for a long, long time.

His Life tells us that, through a fellow struggler in the desert, that an angel of the Lord even brought him bread so that he could subsist. Yet John’s temptations did not end by the casting out of the snakes and the scorpions. Indeed, the devil came and appeared to him in the guise of many people, including his mother, his sister, and many of his relatives, at the top of the well, wanting him to come up and speak with them. Yet he denied the devil that pleasure and remained where he was.

Eventually, by the grace of God, another man, named Chrysius and was inspired by the Holy Spirit to tell John that his ascetic endeavors should not remain unknown to the world. By a miracle, though the floor again was 30 feet deep, it raised to the top and brought John up out of the well where he embraced Chrysius and related to him all the things that he had gone through. Eventually after John reposed, Chrysius took him and buried him suitably.

Now we hear these sorts of things and we are probably skeptical, but even in the gospels themselves, many extraordinarily wonderful things happened, and the Lord said that his disciples would do even greater things than this. So why should we deny other seemingly miraculous incidents from the lives of these early Christians as being somehow fanciful or falsified? It is rather incumbent upon us to understand that the Lord’s words really were true and that people such as St. John in the Well experienced the Lord perhaps in a much greater degree than we do today. Let’s ask St. John for his prayers, that we, too, may be open to the absolutely incredible and wondrous things that God does for us each and every moment, and take all of these to heart.