Venerable Dius (+c. 430)
The Venerable Dius was born into a family of pious Christians living in Antioch of Syria. From his youth he was distinguished by abstinence and spent his nights in unceasing prayer… For such labours Dius was granted dispassion and the gift of wonderworking.
The Lord appeared to the blessed one in a vision and commanded him to go to Constantinople. Dius settled outside the city, in a desolate place. Once he stuck a dry staff into the ground and asked the Lord, if his staying in these parts was pleasing to Him, to make the staff come alive. God heard the blessed one’s prayer: the staff put down roots, came to life, and gradually turned into a huge oak, which stood for a long time after Dius’s repose, bearing witness to the Lord’s almightiness and to the saint’s being chosen by God.
The local inhabitants began to come to him for counsel and for the healing of illnesses of soul and body. He healed the sick by prayer, and distributed the offerings to the poor, to pilgrims and to the infirm.
Word of Saint Dius reached the Emperor Theodosius the Younger (408–450), and he came with Atticus, Patriarch of Constantinople (406–425), to ask the saint’s prayers and blessing. The emperor wished a monastery to be set up at the place of the blessed father’s labours, and gave the means to build it. The patriarch ordained Dius priest and appointed him abbot. Soon a large brotherhood gathered around the saint. The monastery needed a well. The monks dug it for a long time without success. At last, through the holy abbot’s prayer, a holy spring gushed from the earth and filled the well to the brim. Once the Venerable Dius raised to life by the power of prayer a man who had drowned in water… And the Lord worked many other miracles by the hand of His chosen one.
In deep old age the blessed one fell gravely ill. When his strength had completely left him, he took leave of the brotherhood, received Communion of the holy Blood and Body of Christ, and, lying on his deathbed, waited only for his soul’s departure. His Holiness Patriarch Atticus and Alexander, the hierarch of Antioch, who was staying in Constantinople, came to the monastery to take part in the burial, but suddenly the dying man rose up briskly and declared that the Lord had granted him fifteen more years of life.
Saint Dius did indeed live fifteen more years. Shortly before his death a radiant youth in priestly vestments stood before him in the sanctuary and told him that his end was approaching. The Venerable Dius was buried in his own monastery (+c. 430).
