Venerable Or of Thebaid

IMPORTANT CORRECTION: the category has been corrected from "righteous" to "venerable" — Or was an ascetic monk and leader of a monastic community. HONEST NOTE ON GEOGRAPHY: no dedicated scholarly article on pravenc.ru was found for this saint — Russian tradition relies almost exclusively on Prologue/synaxarion entries (azbyka.ru, days.pravoslavie.ru); there is also a figure "Or of Nitria" from the Lausiac History of Palladius of Helenopolis, associated with the Nitrian desert rather than the Thebaid — it is possible (following a known pattern of geographic conflation in Desert Father hagiography) that this is the same ascetic; confidence in this identification is medium, while confidence in the biographical content itself is high.

Venerable Or withdrew to the Egyptian desert in his youth and spent many years in strict solitary asceticism, eating only wild roots and drinking water only when he could find it. In old age he was granted a vision of an angel announcing that God was entrusting him with the salvation of many who would come seeking his guidance; from then on he received all who came to him for spiritual counsel, and around him arose "several monasteries" gathering as many as a thousand monastics — making him one of the organizers of early Egyptian communal monasticism. He possessed the gift of clairvoyance (perceiving his disciples' hidden thoughts, so that "no one dared lie before him"), yet maintained deep humility and concealed his own ascetic feats. Never taught to read as a child, he was miraculously granted the ability to read Holy Scripture. He is especially remembered for never having told a lie or wished anyone harm in his entire life.

His feast is kept on August 7/20.