Venerable Sisois The

Saint Sisoes the Great (late 4th century – 429) was an Egyptian ascetic, one of the great Desert Fathers of the 4th–5th centuries, and a disciple and spiritual successor of St. Anthony the Great. As a young man he withdrew to the Skete of the Egyptian desert to be trained by Abba Or, and after St. Anthony's repose he settled in his master's cave on the mountain near Antinoë, where he lived in strict asceticism for about sixty years. He received the gifts of clairvoyance and wonderworking, and tradition holds that through prayer he once restored a dead boy to life. His sayings are preserved in the Apophthegmata Patrum and in the Slavonic Paterikon, where he appears as a teacher of humility and hope in God's mercy — even on his deathbed he professed he had not yet truly begun to repent. He is famously depicted in Orthodox iconography standing in contemplation before the open tomb (or bones) of Alexander the Great, a meditation on the vanity of earthly glory before death. He reposed surrounded by his disciples in 429. His feast is July 6 (Old Style) / July 19 (New Style).