George the Sinaite

Holy Venerable George the Sinaite was an abbot and great ascetic on Mount Sinai, in the time of the Emperor Justinian I (527-565) and Patriarch Peter I of Jerusalem (524-552). His life is known from the "Spiritual Meadow" of John Moschus, where a story of the abbot Damian about him is given. He was a faster and very virtuous.

Once, on Great Saturday, the elder George wished to commune in the church of the Resurrection in Jerusalem. The synaxarion relates that miraculously he found himself at once, from Sinai, at the Divine Liturgy in the church of the Resurrection and communed of the Immaculate Mysteries from the hands of Patriarch Peter. After communion the patriarch asked his steward, Menas, when the Sinaite abba had arrived, for he had not seen him before, but the steward did not know either. The patriarch ordered that he be invited to table, but George, after praying, found himself at once back in his cell on Sinai. The patriarch was offended that George had not sat at his table and sent a letter to the Fathers of Sinai. But learning that the saint had never left his cell, he understood that he was a holy man and glorified God. In one version of the story, George answered in writing that in six months they would meet before the Lord, and this happened: after half a year, he and the patriarch died in peace. The Russian Orthodox Encyclopedia dates the elder's end to 544-545, while Patriarch Peter died in 552 according to other sources.