St. Sisoes

  • The saint of the day today is Ven­er­a­ble Sioes the Great, who once raised a man’s son from the dead with­out really mean­ing to(!)

    Read­ing the tropar­ion this morn­ing, I got curi­ous about St. Sisoes. So when I got home I looked him up on the OCA Website

    Saint Sisoes the Great (+ 429) was a soli­tary monk, pur­su­ing asceti­cism in the Egypt­ian desert in a cave sanc­ti­fied by the prayer­ful labors of his pre­de­ces­sor, St Anthony the Great (Jan­u­ary 17). For his sixty years of labor in the desert, St Sisoes attained to sub­lime spir­i­tual purity and he was granted the gift of won­der­work­ing, so that by his prayers he once restored a dead child back to life.

    OCA doesn’t elab­o­rate about that mir­a­cle, but via Christo­pher Haas’ A Word from the Desert, we have “the rest of the story”. To para­phrase, a father was trav­el­ing to see St. Sisoes with his son, who was ill and actu­ally per­ished on the way there. The father’s faith was such that he con­tin­ued his jour­ney. He brought his dead son in to receive a bless­ing from the saint. The father went out­side and the saint, turn­ing a see­ing the son and not know­ing he was dead, said for him to go off with his father.

    Which is exactly what the son did. The deceased son came back to life and went out­side to find his father.

    When he saw it, his father was filled with amaze­ment and went back inside. He bowed before the old man and told him the whole story. When he heard it, [St. Sisoes] was filled with regret, for he had not intended that to hap­pen. So the dis­ci­ple asked the father of the child not to speak of it to any­one before [his] death.

    And I’ll let OCA have the last word:

    When St Sisoes lay upon his deathbed, the dis­ci­ples sur­round­ing the Elder saw that his face shone like the sun. They asked the dying man what he saw. Abba Sisoes replied that he saw St Anthony, the prophets, and the apos­tles. His face increased in bright­ness, and he spoke with some­one. The monks asked, “With whom are you speak­ing, Father?” He said that angels had come for his soul, and he was entreat­ing them to give him a lit­tle more time for repen­tance. The monks said, “You have no need for repen­tance, Father.”

    St Sisoes said with great humil­ity, “I do not think that I have even begun to repent.” 

    Now there’s some­thing to think about.


    Related posts:

    1. Two wolves
    2. 9/11, Kat­rina and St. Euphrosynos
    3. C. S. Lewis on the love of God
    4. Hiero­mar­tyr Gre­gory of Armenia
    5. Not giv­ing the poor our junk

    July 6th, 2008 | Grace | No Comments |

Leave a Reply

* Name, Email, and Comment are Required