John Rufus - Plerophories XIV - XV

Translated from the French by Subdeacon Peter Farrington

XIV. Abba Paul, who was a sophist, recounted to us that he had lived with Abba Andrew, an old prophet, who was hard-working and sincere, and who, before the Council of Chalcedon, was one of the great saints of Egypt.

This Abba Andrew, in a vision, saw an immense crowd of bishops who stirred a very fiery furnace into which they threw a beautiful child resplendent like gold, and they closed in on all sides so that one could not see any smoke from the furnace and even the air could not enter into it; and, at the end of three days, he saw the child leaving healthy and safe from the furnace, and he recognized that it was the Lord.

As he had the habit of speaking to him, he said: “Who are these who have done this to you and who have thrown you into the furnace?” He said to him: “The bishops crucified me again and they decided to strip me of my glory.” And He was right: because the Nestorians are sick with the disease of the Jews, when they say that He who was crucified was a man purely and simply, and not God incarnate.

When the old man looked again, he saw in the distance an old man who held himself upright, and who did not approve the other bishops or associate with them, neither when they stirred the furnace, nor when they shut up the child and mocked him. The old man called to the child: “Who is this old man?” And He answered him: “It is Dioscorus, Patriarch of Alexandria who alone did not take part in their intentions”. The old man, taking confidence, enhardit until saying to the Lord: “Lord, why is it that all the bishops of Alexandria fight until death for the truth?”

And He said: “Since Simon Cyrene carried my cross – and Cyrene is in a part of Egypt – since then I foresaw and predicted that Egypt, to which belongs the town of Cyrene located in Libya, would carry my cross until the end, would remain faithful to me and would mark their zeal for me until death”.

XV. In confirmation and in testimony of that which preceded, it is necessary for me to add to this account that which was taught to me by one who accompanied the worthy Timothy into exile, attended his holy death and heard his last words.

He told me, when worthy Timothy was about to die, he gathered the chief of the clergy and said to them: “Even if I am foolish, as the blessed Apostle said, I believe that it is necessary, so that you are informed and have a perfect knowledge of our times, that I tell you what occurred to me, when I was a little child. I went one morning to the school.

An excellent, worthy old man, and a friend of God, met me. He took my head in his hands and embraced me with a joyful and resplendent face, while saying to me: “Greetings, Timothy, bishop of perfection”, and when he had repeated these words three times he disappeared, and I never saw him again.