Saint Gerasimos the Compassionate Abbot and His Vegan Lion. By Dr Chapman Chen
- Chapman Chen
- Mar 4
- 2 min read
Today (4 March) the Church commemorates Gerasimus of the Jordan (c. 400/410–475). Born in Lycia in southern Asia Minor into a wealthy family, Gerasimos renounced family ties, riches, and worldly concerns, and embraced the monastic life in the desert of the Thebaid in Egypt. Later, around the year 450, he came to the banks of the Jordan River in Palestine, where he founded a vegan lavra and became its abbot.
The discipline of the community was very strict. The advanced anchorites living in their cells were permitted to eat only bread, water, and dates during the weekdays. On Saturdays and Sundays they gathered with the younger monks in the cenobium to share cooked food and drink a little wine.
By eating little and sleeping little, Saint Gerasimos subdued his passions and became an example of virtue to all and a vessel of the grace of the Holy Spirit. During Great Lent he would withdraw with a disciple into the inner desert, living there in solitude and receiving nothing except Holy Communion on Sundays.
Tradition also tells that Gerasimos once encountered a lion roaring in pain because a thorn had pierced its paw. Approaching the animal, he made the sign of the cross and drew the thorn from its foot. From that time the lion became gentle and followed him to the lavra, remaining there until its death. For five years the animal lived beside the elder in obedience and fasting, subsisting only on bread and soaked vegetables, and Gerasimos gave it the name Jordanes.
On one occasion Gerasimos wrongly accused the lion of devouring the monastery’s only donkey, though the animal had in fact been stolen by passing Arabs. Later Jordanes found the donkey and brought it back, and the saint immediately acknowledged his error. When Gerasimos reposed in 475, the lion, grieving for the loss of its master, soon died as well and was buried beside the saint.
The account of the lion first appears in The Spiritual Meadow (Greek: Leimon Pneumatikon) by John Moschos (c. 550–619), though that version does not include the thorn miracle. The episode of the thorn seems to have been added later in the entry for Saint Gerasimos in the Synaxarion of Constantinople (10th century).
The story has often been remembered as a sign of the peace that can arise between humans and animals when compassion replaces violence and when all creatures are treated as fellow beings within God’s creation. #VeganChrist #VeganGod #VeganTheology #VeganChurch
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