Venerable Hypatius of Rufinianae (+446)

The Venerable Hypatius of Rufinianae (+446) was born in Phrygia (Asia Minor) into the family of an advocate and received a good education. Once his father punished the eighteen-year-old youth. The angry Hypatius left home and went to Thrace (the Balkans). At first he herded pigs, and then he settled with a presbyter who taught him to chant the psalms. Soon the chosen one of God was tonsured a monk in a certain monastery. Frightened by the temptation of fornication, he spent fifty days in the strictest fasting, and then, with the blessing of the superior of the monastery, he received blessed wine and bread at Vespers and was cleansed of the sin. Seeking a new place for his labours, the Venerable Hypatius settled with two monks near Chalcedon, in the abandoned monastery of Rufinianae. Soon the monastery was restored, and many monks gathered there. At forty the Venerable Hypatius was chosen abbot of the monastery, and he governed the brotherhood for forty years. For his strict life and love of his neighbour the Venerable Hypatius was granted by the Lord the gifts of wonderworking and healing. Through his prayer the bread in the monastery multiplied, the possessed regained their reason, and the sick were healed. The Venerable Hypatius reposed around 446, at the age of eighty. Before his death he foretold coming calamities: a devastating hailstorm, an earthquake, and Attila’s invasion of Thrace.