John of Raifa

Holy Venerable John of Raifa, hegumen of the Raifa monastery (seventh century), is commemorated on Cheese Saturday and on the Wednesday of Bright Week, in the Synaxis of the Sinai Saints, and the Azbyka page gives 5 May as the fixed day. From the collection Apophthegmata Patrum it is known that John came from Cilicia, in Asia Minor, and in the "Spiritual Meadow" of John Moschus it is stated that he lived at Raifa seventy-⁠six years. In his sayings, included in both collections, he urged the monks to withdraw from carnal desires and to follow the strictness and stillness of the monks before them, so that the place of the ascetics, cleansed by them of demons, should not become a place of merchants.

The "Spiritual Meadow" also says that John found at Raifa elders who fed only on grass and dates, and tells a story that was told him by a monk of Kellia, when John was living at the Enaton (Ninth) monastery near Alexandria. Once, to Kellia there came a monk asking leave to settle in the place where the Origenist Evagrius had lived before. He was answered that the enemy of mankind, who deceived Evagrius, lets no one stay there, but the monk insisted. Two weeks after moving into that cell it was said that he hanged himself. In the manuscript Sinait. gr. 451 this story is told by John himself. John of Raifa is considered a contemporary of Venerable John Climacus († 649) and the one to whom the "Ladder" was addressed.