The Life
Dionysius was one of nine judges on the Areopagus, the highest court of Athens. As a young man he had been studying in Egypt at the very hour the Lord Jesus Christ was crucified in Jerusalem. He saw the sun darken at midday in a way that could not be explained, and he cried out: “Either the Creator of the world is suffering, or the world is ending.” Years later in Athens, when the Apostle Paul preached on the Areopagus, Dionysius recognized in Paul’s words the meaning of what he had seen. He believed at once. Saint Paul made him the first Bishop of Athens. He was beheaded for Christ around the year 96.
Dionysius had been sent as a young man to Egypt to study astronomy and philosophy at Heliopolis. One afternoon in his studies, the sun was darkened at midday with a strange and prolonged eclipse. Dionysius watched the heavens carefully and saw that the moon was in the wrong position to cause a natural eclipse. Frightened and full of wonder, he cried out the famous saying that has been preserved in Tradition: “Either God the Creator of the world is suffering, or the world is ending.” He did not yet know that on that very afternoon, in Jerusalem, the Lord Jesus Christ had been crucified, and the heavens had darkened to mourn for the Creator who was being put to death.
When Saint Paul came to Athens around the year 51 AD, he was brought to the Areopagus to give an account of his strange new teaching. The Areopagus was the supreme court of Athens, made up of nine of the city’s most respected men. Dionysius was sitting there as one of the judges. Paul stood and preached: he praised the Athenians for their reverence, pointed to their altar to “the Unknown God,” and told them that this God whom they did not know had now been made known in Jesus Christ. Most of the Athenians scoffed when Paul spoke of the Resurrection. But Dionysius, hearing the words about the Crucifixion of Christ, remembered the darkening of the sun he had seen in Egypt. He believed at once. Acts 17:34 names him: “Howbeit certain men clave unto him, and believed: among the which was Dionysius the Areopagite.”
Dionysius gave up his seat on the Areopagus, his prestigious career, his comfortable life. He gave himself wholly to Christ. Saint Paul personally consecrated him as the first Bishop of Athens. From that day onward, Dionysius shepherded the small Christian community of his city, taught the Gospel, baptized those who believed, and lived in the manner of an apostle. He was not made a bishop because he was famous; he was made a bishop because he had given up everything for Christ.
Dionysius traveled to Jerusalem to meet the Most Holy Theotokos, the Mother of the Lord, while she was still living. He wrote afterward that the grace upon her was so radiant that, had he not known the one true God, he would have been tempted to worship her, so utterly was she filled with the divine light. When the Mother of God fell asleep, Dionysius was among the apostles and disciples whom the Lord brought from every corner of the earth to be present at her Dormition. He stood at her bed and saw the glory of the Lord receive her into heaven.
Four great works of Christian theology have come down to us under Saint Dionysius’s name: On the Heavenly Hierarchy, which describes the nine ranks of the angels; On the Ecclesiastical Hierarchy, which describes the worship and orders of the Church; On the Divine Names, which speaks of the names by which we know God; and On the Mystical Theology, which speaks of the silence beyond all names. Ten letters round out the collection. These writings have shaped Orthodox prayer and worship for many centuries. Modern scholars have asked hard questions about whether these books really were written in the first century. The Church’s answer has been to keep using them, because they are deeply Orthodox in their teaching, and to keep honoring Saint Dionysius the Areopagite as a Father and martyr.
When Saint Paul was martyred in Rome under the Emperor Nero, Dionysius longed to die for Christ in the same way. He went on with his ministry as Bishop of Athens for many years more. According to the Eastern tradition preserved in the synaxarion, he was finally beheaded for Christ at Athens itself, around the year 96, in the persecution of the Emperor Domitian. He was very old, perhaps over ninety. According to a Western tradition, he traveled to Gaul as a missionary in his old age and was beheaded outside Paris on the hill called Montmartre. Both traditions agree that he died by the sword for the Lord whom he had met long ago in the darkening of the sun.
These are the words by which Saint Paul, on the Areopagus, opened the Athenians’ hearts to the Gospel. Dionysius heard these words from his seat on that very court. The Unknown God whom he had been searching for, the God whose suffering he had glimpsed in the darkness over Egypt, was being declared to him by name. From that hour the Unknown became the Beloved.
The Church’s teaching about the nine ranks of the angels comes to us in the form we know it from a treatise that bears Saint Dionysius’s name: On the Heavenly Hierarchy. The names are familiar from Scripture and from the Liturgy: Seraphim and Cherubim and Thrones; Dominions, Virtues, and Powers; Principalities, Archangels, and Angels. Saint Dionysius arranged these nine ranks in three triads of three, each rank receiving the divine light from the rank above and passing it to the rank below. We sing of these ranks every Sunday in the Liturgy. They are the great angelic family that surrounds the Lord and praises him without ceasing.
Saint Dionysius is the great patron of every soul who comes to Christ through hard thinking. He had the best education of his age. He was a judge of the most prestigious court in Greece. He had asked a question, watching the sun darken in Egypt, that none of his learning could answer. When the answer came in the preaching of Saint Paul on the Areopagus, he did not resist; he believed at once. He gave up his career, his standing, his comfortable life, and gave himself wholly to Christ. The Lord made him a bishop, a martyr, and the namesake of one of the greatest bodies of mystical theology in the Church. Saint Dionysius shows us that the highest learning is not the enemy of faith but its servant.