5 December: Saint Sabbas, Archimandrite and Abbot

Guide of the early monks

 Saint Sabbas was born in 439 near Caesarea in Cappadocia. Raised in a family deeply rooted in the Christian faith, he was entrusted from a young age to the teachings of the monastery of Flavianae, where he received a solid formation and nurtured the desire to embrace religious life.

Around the age of eighteen, he undertook a pilgrimage to the Holy Land, stopping along the way at various monastic communities: organized cenobia, groups of hermits scattered in caves or small huts — different ways of living the same vocation.

During this journey he met the monk Euthymius, known as “the Great,” who became his guide. For years, he shared with him the austere life of the hermits in the region of Jordan. After the death of his master, he decided to withdraw to the outskirts of Jerusalem, in the Kidron Valley. There, gradually, a growing number of disciples gathered around his spiritual example, eventually forming a laura, a typical monastic structure of the Christian East: a cluster of cells and small hermitic dwellings that, over time, would come to include about one hundred and fifty monks, becoming a point of reference for many similar communities. 

In 492 he received priestly ordination, and Patriarch Elias of Jerusalem appointed him archimandrite, responsible for all the anchorites of Palestine. He lived many more years, maintaining his role and spiritual authority, until his death at a very advanced age in the year 532.