St. Maroun

St. Maroun: Founder of the Maronites of Lebanon

St. Maroun was born in the middle of the fourth century. He was a priest who became a hermit on a mountain - believed to be Kefar-Nabo on Ol-Yambos mountain - in the region of Cyrrhus, near Antioch. His followers converted Lebanon and have remained eastern rite catholics.

St. Maroun was a monastic and ascetic, who developed in his mountain isolation a profound sense of the interconnectedness of of the physical and spiritual world, which led to a remarkable ministry of healing. Like the Celtic saints, he lived as far as possible in the open air, exposed to sun, rain, hail and snow. By these means he transcended nature and experienced a profound mystical union with God.

From this - as for the Celtic and Russian monks - came a profound compassion and love which poured out in missionary journeys. In Syria, he converted the worshippers of a key temple, of the influential god Nabo, to Christ. He made it into a Christian church from which Christianity spread throughout Syria and Lebanon.

Through his deeply mystical ascetic life, he gained not only the grace of healing physical ailments, including Parkinson’s disease. but the deeper gift of nurturing and healing ‘lost souls.’ He healed ‘ this man's greed and that man's anger, to this man supplying teaching in self-control and to that providing lessons in justice, correcting this man's intemperance and shaking up another man's sloth.’

His life story was written by Theodoret of Cyrrhus in the ‘Historia Religiosa,’ around 440 CE, thirty years after his death.

St.Antony Of Egypt

A third century educated Egyptian, known as the Father of Monks, St. Antony went to live among the ascetics on the edge of his village, learning from their example. In the early church those seeking the life of prayer lived a simple life in their family home: by the time young Antony came along, in 270 CE, the local ascetics tended to live in more solitary places in their local parish.

He studied the life for some years with various Egyptian ascetics, then lived in strict silence and solitude for twenty years, at the end of which he emerged as a remarkable spiritual director and healer. He attracted a large number of disciples to monastic life, whom he instructed and organised into semi-eremitic monasteries, the monks usually living in separate cells or huts, and coming together only occasionally for church services. This kind of monastic life, of lavra and skete became frequent in Northern Egypt, spreading from Lycopolis (Asyut) to the Mediterranean.

Coptic monks of
St. Antony’s monastery

St. Sabas of Palestine

St. Sabas Of Palestine

St. Sabas was a native of Mutalaska, Cappodocia, and was just turned 60 by the year 500 CE. Having made monastic formation at a lavra, he moved to a cave in Wadi en Nar, establishing the Great Lavra, now Mars Sabas monastery, near Bethlehem, and one of the oldest inhabited monasteries. He was later ordained a priest and made director of all the anchorites in Palestine.

A lavra does not have a hard and fast line between the semi-eremitic life of the novices and main monastery, and the hermit cells. A certain amount of movement between complete and partial solitude is taken for granted, as monks (or nuns) develop either towards greater solitude or need greater fraternal support. The hesychast monastic life assumes that there will be some change as the vocation develops.

St. Sabas is credited as a developer of the all night Vigil. As many of the monks lived at some distance from the monastery church, a long Vigil was served in place of several smaller services.

St. Benedict Of Nursia, Italy

St. Benedict has always been a bit of a conundrum among monastics - was he a through and through cenobite, or did he favour solitary life? Shocked by loose living, during his student days in Rome, and perhaps even more startled by a miraculous answer to prayer, he went to live as a hermit. He was given the habit and instructed in monastic life by one of the monks at a nearby monastery. After a while he became known as a spiritual director and wonder-worker. After a rather disastrous first attempt at running a monastery he gradually developed a large lavra, of twelve monks per house, in twelve houses.

Due to the opposition of the local parish priest he moved away to Monte Cassino. Here he developed a cenobium, with an emphasis on solid community training. He took with him from the lavra a deanery system, in which experienced monks had charge of several juniors. Like eastern fathers, he recommends that aspiring hermits should have a long probationary period in community. St. Benedict’s Rule swept Europe and has resulted in many strong cenobitic houses, with a tradition of emphasis on liturgy and life in common, through a rule marked by balance and common sense. Sadly, the combined effects of mediaeval patronage and the Reformation virtually wiped out Benedictine hermits, only the Camaldoli surviving.

St. Benedict: Piscinula XIIc.