Mary Hansbury: Shem ‘on the Graceful and the Solitary Life

Shem‘on
the Graceful, called the Graceful possibly because of his insistence on the
role of divine grace in salvation history. He was a medical doctor before
becoming a monk who lived in eastern Syria, and died ca 680. He saw humans as
the ‘bond of creation’ in a mediatory position between God and the universe,
influenced by Theodore of Mopsuestia. In my translation of Shem‘on’s Consecration
of the Cell, I quote from
others of ‘the golden age of Syriac
Christian literature’ who also lived periods of solitary life. Shem’on speaks of entering into the cell and
persevering inside oneself. The Solitary alerts others to a dimension of life
which can only be perceived in solitude but which is the ‘new creation’ in the
inner world of all Christians.