Introduction-text-translation-comments

The life of the Saints is the life of Christ; it is the God-Man Lord himself, who in the persons of the Saints lives among us and extends throughout the ages. And just as "by faith" we approach "the mystery of Christ" through the pages of the Holy Gospels, so we also approach the lives of the Saints through their Lives, i.e. the wonderful narratives of the martyrdom they endured or of the ascetic struggles and of spiritual struggles they carried out in order to live the divine-human life of Christ and to unite with him.
The Life and State of Saint Simeon the New Theologian, written by Nikitas' devoted student Stathatos, is a hagiological text of immeasurable spiritual beauty and capital theological importance. Reading it allows us to follow not only the historical course he followed and the era in which the top mystical theologian of our Church lived, but mainly the ascetic struggles he conducted, the evolution of his end in Christ and the highest spiritual states in which he arrived, shining with the uncreated light of the Holy Spirit, whose communicant he had become.