Abbas

Saint Abbas the Venerable was at first a Hagarene, that is, an Arab, and came to believe in Christ through the word of a monk, then became a monk himself. The Church commemorates him on 22 November (new style, the Greek calendar).

With the monk who had made him a Christian, he went to the great ascetic Eusebius (commemorated on 15 February), who struggled on a mountain near the village of Asicha, and stayed beside him. After Eusebius died, Abbas succeeded him at the head of the monastery that had formed there and was for his disciples a model of strict asceticism. He lived with great austerity and much self-⁠restraint and reposed in peace. A verse says that it honours Abbas, the likeness of fathers, rightly, as a father of children.