Venerable Isidore of Pelusium (+c. 436–440)

The Venerable Isidore of Pelusium was born in Alexandria in the fourth century. His parents, pious Christians, were relatives of Theophilus, Archbishop of Alexandria, and of his successor, Saint Cyril. While still young the saint withdrew from the vanity of the world and began his ascetic labours in Egypt, on the mountain of Pelusium. His wide education, joined with spiritual wisdom and strict asceticism, won the venerable father the great love and respect of the monks. Soon he was ordained presbyter and installed as superior too. The Venerable Isidore, imitating Saint John Chrysostom, whom he had been counted worthy to see and hear during a journey to Constantinople, devoted himself mostly to the work of preaching. He called preaching “practical philosophy”, which is “the foundation of the building and the building itself”, while logic is “its adornment”, and contemplation “the crown”. The holy father tirelessly instructed everyone who asked for spiritual help, whether a simple man, a nobleman, a bishop, the Patriarch of Alexandria or the emperor himself. To him belong ten thousand letters, of which two thousand have come down to our day. Most of them contain deep theological interpretations of Holy Scripture and the moral teaching that flows from it. Isidore of Pelusium was a faithful and loving disciple of John Chrysostom. When the Empress Eudoxia and Archbishop Theophilus began to persecute the holy hierarch, the venerable father boldly rose to defend him, and after the saint’s repose he urged Theophilus’s successor, Saint Cyril of Alexandria, to enter the name of John Chrysostom as a confessor in the church diptychs. On the Venerable Isidore’s initiative the Third Ecumenical Council was convened in Ephesus in 431, which condemned the false teaching of Nestorius.

The holy father reached a deep old age, and in 436, having shone even in this world with an angelic life, he joined the ranks of the angels.