Venerable
Venerable Lot of Egypt
нач. V века
Venerable Abba Lot of Egypt — an ascetic and interlocutor of Abba Joseph of Panephysis, a contemporary of Venerable Arsenius the Great and Abba Agathon, whose teaching on wholehearted striving toward God ("if you will, you can become all flame") is preserved in the Sayings of the Desert Fathers (Apophthegmata Patrum).
Venerable Abba Lot was an Egyptian hermit of the turn of the 4th-5th centuries, one of the "Desert Fathers" whose sayings entered the "Sayings of the Desert Fathers" (Apophthegmata Patrum, the "Paterikon"), compiled, according to tradition, by St. Athanasius of Alexandria, Palladius, and Bl. Jerome.
IMPORTANT CLARIFICATION: this is not the Old Testament Lot, nephew of the patriarch Abraham (Gen. 19), but a separate, independent ascetic of the Egyptian desert of the 4th-5th centuries — a namesake, but a different person, not the subject of a biblical narrative.
Abba Lot's best-known saying is preserved in his conversation with Abba Joseph of Panephysis: "Father, as far as I can, I keep my little rule, my little fast, my prayer, meditation, and contemplative silence, and as far as I can I purify my thoughts. What more should I do?" The elder Joseph stood up and stretched out his hands to heaven, and his fingers became like ten lamps of fire, and he said: "If you will, you can become all flame" — a saying that became one of the most famous teachings on the wholehearted striving of a person toward God.
Another saying is preserved as well: Abba Lot came to Abba Arsenius the Great with a doubt about the questionable words of a certain elder, and Abba Arsenius counseled him toward patience and leniency rather than rejecting the brother.
He reposed in the early 5th century. Church tradition calls him "a citizen of the desert, an angel in the flesh."
His feast is kept on October 9/22 (the same day as Righteous Abraham and his nephew Lot — a different person, the Old Testament patriarch; a calendar coincidence, not an identity), as well as on the movable Synaxis of All the Venerable Fathers who shone forth in asceticism (the Saturday of Cheesefare Week).
IMPORTANT CORRECTION: the incorrect dating "4th century" has been refined (correctly, the turn of the 4th-5th centuries, more precisely the early 5th century); the previous note about "March 13" as a fixed date was erroneous — the Synaxis of All the Venerable Fathers is celebrated on the movable Saturday of Cheesefare Week, not a fixed day.