Venerable Alexius, Man of God

Saint Alexius was born in Rome in the late 4th century to a noble and pious family. On his own wedding night he secretly left his bride, parents, and inheritance to travel to Edessa in Syria, where for seventeen years he lived as a beggar at the porch of the Church of the Mother of God, surviving on alms and devoting himself to fasting and prayer. When a miraculous icon of the Theotokos revealed to the church sexton that this beggar was "a Man of God," Alexius, fleeing the resulting fame, secretly sailed back to Rome. There, unrecognized, he took shelter in his own father's house and lived for another seventeen years in a space under the staircase, enduring scorn and abuse from the household servants. Before his death in 411 he wrote an account of his life on a scroll, found clutched in his hands after he had reposed. His relics now rest in the Basilica of Saints Boniface and Alexius on the Aventine Hill in Rome.