Desert Fathers Dispatch

African Saints (from the Prologue of Ohrid)

June 8th:  Arte (Arthe) (5th century) of Nitra, Egypt

June 9th:  Cyril, Archbishop of Alexandria (444)  This great archbishop struggled and succeded against the oppresive Jews in Alexandria and silenced the Novationist heritics that did not accept the repentance of those who had fallen away from the Church.  His most well known accomplishment was leading the Third Ecumenical Council’s rejection of the Nestorian heresy of there being a seperate physical and spiritual Jesus Christ.  Cyril declared that Jesus had two seperate natures (human and divine) united in the One Person. 

June 12th:  Onuphrius the Great  (400)  A precursor to the great Desert Fathers of Egypt.  Onuphrius was a hermit who’s hair was his clothing.  Paphnutius told his story that the hermit was fed and received the Eucharist by an angel.  Onuphrius gave his soul to God with a heavenly light coming from his body and singing from the heavenly host. 

Timothy the Hermit (4th century) A hermit in the Thebaid region of Egypt.  It’s uncertain if this is the same Timothy mentioned in the Sayings of the Desert Fathers

John, Angrew, Heraclemon, and Theophilus (4th century)  Egyptian Hermits

June 14th:  Julitta (Julia) (4th century) Nun in Tabennsi, Egypt

A Word from the Fathers & Mothers

“My children, we all want to be saved, but because of our habit of negligence, we swerve away from salvation.”       Abbes Syncletica, from the Sayings of the Desert Fathers

“Do not say that you can aquire a virtue without sorrows, because such a virtue is not a virtue, being uncontested in peace.  For this reason David prays, saying:  ‘In sorrow you let me linger, hear my prayer.'”   Abba Isaac to Abbess Theodora, from the Matericon   (this may be in reference to Psalm 89 [LXX]/90)