Hello, everyone. On February 19, the holy Orthodox Church celebrates the memory of our venerable Father Conan the Presbyter. Now, Conan hailed from Cilicia, which was a province in southeastern Asia, a Roman province, and it was under the patriarchate of Antioch.

Conan from an early age desired the monastic life and finally joined the monastery, and after a number of years was ordained a presbyter. Archbishop Peter at the time, whom he was under, said that he wanted him to go to the River Jordan and be responsible for baptizing those people that came to the river for that purpose. Conan of course did this out of obedience, no doubt enjoying the very honor of being at the River Jordan to baptize people into the Orthodox faith, until one day there came a very beautiful woman.

Now, Conan was quite advanced in the degrees of asceticism and self-denial, and when this woman came he was really quite scandalized. He didn’t know what to do, because he just did not want to baptize her. We might think this is a little strange today, for certainly a number of beautiful women come to the Orthodox Church and get baptized, but we have to remember: in those days, baptism was naked, no clothes whatsoever. And Conan found this very, very difficult, and he wanted to escape the place and get out.

But miraculously, St. John the Forerunner, the holy Baptist, appeared to him and said, “Conan, be patient, for I will lighten your load as time goes on.” Well, Conan went ahead with the baptism and continued on with his duties, until, yet again, a young Persian maiden came along who was even more beautiful than the woman that had given him so much trouble before. This time, Conan was beside himself. He did not know what to do, so he simply left the area and refused to baptize her. The woman apparently simply stayed there for a while, not knowing what to do.

Well, report of this got back to Archbishop Peter, who was really a little surprised that this man was just having so much trouble with these baptisms. This was, after all, a common thing back then. But Conan simply could not go on. He was very upset about this, and he refused to go back. So he left the cenobium, whereupon he was met again by St. John the Baptist who said, essentially: You’ve got to just relax here. Don’t worry about this. Go ahead with it. I will put an end to your troubles.

Conan, however, was a little bit irritate with this, and got into an argument with the holy Forerunner. This also may seem strange to us today, but keep in mind these are two saints talking to one another. But yet the Baptist finally prevailed upon him, made the sign of the cross on him, and said, “Look, just go back to your monastery. Don’t worry about this. Your burden will be eased.” And Conan felt that it was being very difficult for him to engage in such carnal warfare at what should be a very holy time, a baptism.

So Conan returned to the monastery, and the next day, miraculously, he came back to that same Persian woman who was still waiting to be baptized, and baptized her without any difficulty whatsoever. It was said that he did not even realize that she was a woman. So the holy Baptist had come through for him, and had lightened his burden and enabled him to see beyond the surface features of a human being and instead examine the soul of someone coming for holy baptism.

Conan reposed in the year 555, and it was said of him that he attained such extreme dispassion that he was almost superhuman. There is a lesson here for us, too. We often see only what is on the surface and not what is underneath, what [are] the interior abilities of a soul coming to God, the beautiful image of God in all of us. Conan, although he was advanced in asceticism, evidently could not get beyond this outer layer until the prayers of the holy Baptist helped him. We, too, should strive to see always what is inside someone and not just what we view on the outside.