Venerable Nilus the Faster (V)

The Venerable Nilus the Faster, a disciple of Saint John Chrysostom, lived in Constantinople in the fourth and fifth centuries. He received a fine education, after which, while still young, he was appointed to the important post of prefect of the capital. By this time Nilus was already married and had two children. The couple, whose lives and outlook were greatly influenced by the blessed John Chrysostom, felt the brilliant life of the royal court weigh on their souls. They resolved to separate and take up the monastic life. Nilus’s wife went with their daughter to a convent in Egypt, while Nilus himself, with his son Theodulus, settled on Mount Sinai in a cave he had hewn out with his own hands.

The venerable father lived forty years in this cave. The saint endured many trials during this time, but the hardest of all was the loss of his own son, who was carried off by robbers to be sold. People of every rank, from the emperor to the farm labourer, began to come to the saint, who had reached a high degree of perfection through fasting, prayer and labour, and they never failed to receive consolation and spiritual counsel from him. In his solitude the Venerable Nilus wrote a great deal. His letters have come down to us, among them letters of rebuke addressed to the Emperor Arcadius (395–408), who had banished John Chrysostom. The ascetic writings of this worthy disciple of John Chrysostom are widely known.

The Venerable Nilus found his lost son with the bishop of Emesa, who had ransomed him from the robbers. That same hierarch ordained father and son to the priesthood. After their ordination the hermits returned to Mount Sinai and laboured together until the Venerable Nilus’s end (+430 or 450).