Saint Sabbas the Archimandrite

Sabbas was born in Caesarea in Cappadocia in 439, into a well-off family. Against the wishes of his father, who wanted him to be a soldier, he chose monastic life and left for Palestine. There he became a disciple of Euthymius the Great and shared with him the very harsh life of a hermit in the desert around the Dead Sea. After his teacher died, he moved near Bethlehem and founded, in the Kidron Valley, what would become the Great Lavra. A lavra isn’t a monastery as we think of one: it’s a cluster of cells carved into the rock, where each monk lives alone during the week, and everyone comes together for the liturgy on Saturday and Sunday. It’s halfway between a hermitage and a community, and it’s the typical form of Palestinian monasticism. That lavra is still called Mar Saba, and it clings to a rock face above the valley, between Jerusalem and the Dead Sea. It has been inhabited without interruption for fifteen hundred years, and the monks still live there as they did then: it is probably the oldest monastery in the world still active in its original form. From there came the Typikon, the liturgical rule that still governs the prayer of all the Churches of the Byzantine rite today. Sabbas founded other monasteries, was ordained a priest and was named archimandrite of all the monks of Palestine. He died at Mar Saba on December 5, 532, at ninety-three. If your name is Sabbas, today is your name day.