Benjamin of Nitria

Holy Venerable Benjamin of Nitria was an Egyptian monk and ascetic on the mountain of Nitria. He reposed in the year 392, at the age of nearly eighty.

He lived on the mountain of Nitria and had the gift of healing: he cured the sick by laying his hands on them or giving them oil. Eight months before his death he fell ill with dropsy (perhaps even elephantiasis). For the suffering of his body Bishop Palladius called him a second Job. His body swelled so much that he could no longer lie in bed and sat constantly on a bench, from which he healed others of various illnesses. The only thing he asked for himself was prayer, that his inner man might not fall ill. When he died, the threshold and the doorframe of his cell had to be taken apart in order to carry out the swollen body. Palladius reports that Benjamin lived about eighty years.

The calendar commemorates him on 13 March (a movable date, new style), in the Synaxis of All the Venerable Fathers who shone in ascetic labor.