Venerable Cyriacus the Anchorite (+556)
The Venerable Cyriacus the Anchorite was born in Corinth, into the family of John, a presbyter of the cathedral church, and his wife Eudoxia. The saint’s uncle, Peter, bishop of Corinth, appointed him a reader in the church. Constant reading of Holy Scripture kindled in the blessed one’s soul the love of the Lord and a longing for a pure life pleasing to God. The saint was still only eighteen when he went secretly to the harbour, boarded a ship and set off for Jerusalem.
After venerating the holy places Cyriacus visited a house near Sion and spent several months under obedience to the abbot, Abba Eustorgius. Here he “conceived the desire for greater stillness”; he asked the abbot’s blessing and moved to the secluded lavra of Euthymius the Great (commemorated 20 January). The Venerable Euthymius saw the great grace resting on the young man, tonsured him a monk and sent him to the monastery of Theoctistus, to the Venerable Gerasimus (commemorated 4 March). Saint Gerasimus charged him with serving the brethren. The young monk carried out his obedience diligently. Gerasimus came to love the saint so much that in Great Lent he used to take him with him to the desert of Rouba, “and there he made him a partaker of his labours and spiritual ascents”. The ascetics remained there in complete solitude until Palm Sunday.
After the death of Father Gerasimus the saint, now twenty-seven, returned to the lavra of the Venerable Euthymius, but did not find him alive either. Then Cyriacus asked for a secluded cell, shut himself up in it and spent ten years in complete silence. At thirty-eight the saint was ordained deacon. When a rift arose between the lavras of the Venerable Euthymius and of Theoctistus, the saint, “grieved by the division of the brethren”, went to the Souka lavra of the Venerable Chariton (commemorated 28 September). Here the saint was ordained priest and also appointed canonarch. He carried out this obedience for eighteen years. The holy father spent thirty years in the lavra of the Venerable Chariton.
When the saint turned seventy, he settled in the desert of Natoupha with his disciple John. Five years later a man from the nearby town of Tekoa learned of the hermit fathers and brought them his son, who was possessed by a demon. Cyriacus healed the young man. After this many people came to the blessed one asking for help, while he sought complete solitude, and so he went away to the desert of Rouba. Here too many sick and possessed people were brought to him. The saint healed them all by the sign of the cross and by prayer. At eighty the venerable father “went away into such a desert as none of the solitaries had ever dwelt in, nor ever passed through”. This place, where the beds of two dry rivers met, was called Susakim. The ascetic’s “ungrudging bestowal of divine graces, which stirred up a more fervent faith and drew the souls of the devout to longing”, made even this trackless place “easy for men to reach”. Seven years later monks of the Souka monastery came to the venerable father and asked him to help them in a time of famine and of raging, grievous diseases sent by God’s permission. The brethren persuaded Cyriacus to return to the house, and the saint settled in the cave where the Venerable Chariton had once laboured.
The blessed Cyriacus laboured greatly to expose the heresy of Origen. By prayer and word he set many who had gone astray on the true path and strengthened them in the Orthodox faith.
The Mother of God herself called the venerable father to defend the purity of the Orthodox faith: the All-holy Virgin appeared to the blessed one in a dream together with John the Baptist and John the Theologian, and refused to enter his cell because there lay in it a book with sayings of the heretic Nestorius. At ninety-nine the Venerable Cyriacus again made his way to Susakim and settled there with his disciple John.
In the desert the saint was served by “a lion great in size and terrible to behold”, which guarded him from robbers but did no harm to brethren who came to visit. The beast ate food from Cyriacus’s hand. Once, in the heat of summer, the clefts in the rock where the monks used to collect water in winter dried up, and there was no other spring anywhere. The Venerable Cyriacus prayed, and such heavy rain came down that the hollows were filled to the brim. Two years before his death the saint returned to the monastery and settled again in the cave of the Venerable Chariton. To the end he did not lose his vigour; he prayed and worked continually. Before departing this world the blessed one called the brotherhood together, blessed them all, and at the age of a hundred and nine committed his soul to the Lord in peace.
