Saint Saint Savvas the Sanctified

Sabas (439–532), in Church parlance Saint Sabas or Sabbas the Sanctified (Greek: Σάββας ὁ Ἡγιασμένος), was a Cappadocian Greek monk, priest, grazer and saint, who was born in Cappadocia and lived mainly in Palaestina Prima. He was the founder of several convents, most notably the one known as Mar Saba, in Palestine. The saint's name is derived from Imperial Aramaic: סַבָּא Sabbāʾ "old man". St Sabbas was born the son of John, a military commander, and Sophia, at Moutalaske near Caesarea of Cappadocia. The name of the village has no known meaning in Greek, but the Aramaic "Mata la zkha" translates as "Village of Victory". Journeying to Alexandria on military matters, his parents left their five-year-old son in the care of an uncle. When the boy reached eight years of age, he entered the nearby monastery of Bishop Flavian of Antioch. The gifted child quickly learned to read and became an expert on the Holy Scriptures. Sabbas resisted his parents' pressure to return to the world and enter into marriage. When he was 17 years old he received monastic tonsure and subsequently spent ten years at the monastery of Bishop Flavian. After that, Sabbas went to Jerusalem, and from there to the monastery of Saint Euthymius the Great. But Euthymius sent Sabbas to Abba Theoctistus, the head of a nearby monastery with a strict cenobitic rule. Sabbas lived in obedience at this monastery until the age of thirty. After the death of the Elder Theoctistus, his successor blessed Sabbas to seclude himself in a cave. On Saturdays, however, he left his hermitage and came to the monastery, where he participated in divine services and ate with the brethren. After a certain time Sabbas received permission not to leave his hermitage at all, and he lived in isolation in the cave for five years. Euthymius attentively directed the life of the young monk, and seeing his spiritual maturity, he began to take him to the wilderness with him.