Alexander

Saint Alexander, founder of the Monastery of the "Unsleeping Ones" (the Akoimetoi), was born in Asia, educated at Constantinople and died in extreme old age, around the year 430, after fifty years of incessant monastic effort.

He spent some time in military service, but sensing a call to another service he left the world and received monastic tonsure in one of the monasteries of the Syrian wilderness near Antioch, under the abbot Elias. For four years he lived in strict obedience and monastic effort, then received a blessing to dwell in the desert. He went into the wilderness, taking from the monastery nothing but the Gospel, and struggled seven years in the desert. Then the Lord called him to preach to pagans. He converted to Christ the local city ruler Rabul, who was afterwards consecrated a bishop and for thirty years occupied the see of Edessa. With Rabul all the inhabitants accepted Baptism, and before receiving the sacrament they burned their idols in the city square. After confirming the newly converted in the faith, Alexander went again into the desert, where he came by chance upon a cave of robbers. Unafraid, he preached the Gospel to them and urged them to repent. All the robbers repented, accepted holy Baptism and turned their cave into a monastery where they lived in prayer and penitence. Alexander appointed an abbot for them, gave them a monastic rule, and himself moved farther into the desert.

For several years he lived in complete solitude, but lovers of quiet began to flock to him there too. A monastery arose with four hundred monks. Desiring to establish uninterrupted praise of the Lord in it, he prayed for three years that the Creator would reveal His will. Having received the revelation, he established that all the monks be divided into twenty-⁠four watches of prayer, changing every hour day and night, singing the Psalms of David in two choirs, interrupted only for the divine services. The monastery received the name "the Unsleeping Ones" because the monks sang praise to God day and night.

For twelve years he led the monastery on the Euphrates. Then, leaving his disciple, the experienced Elder Trophimus, as abbot, he set out with some chosen brethren through the cities bordering on Persia, preaching the Gospel to pagans. After this missionary journey he lived with his monks for a time at Antioch, where he built a church for the townspeople and a home for the sick and homeless with money given by charitable Antiochians. Because of the intrigues of the envious he was compelled to move to Constantinople. There he founded a new monastery with the same rule of unceasing vigil. Alexander and his monks suffered at Constantinople at the hands of Nestorian heretics, enduring beatings and imprisonment. After the storm of unrest subsided he spent the last days of his life in the monastery he founded.

He is commemorated on 3 July and on 23 February.