John the Hermit

Venerable John the Hermit lived in the fourth century, a disciple of Saint Pharmuthius, and struggled ten years in a deep, dry well, fed every day with bread brought, according to tradition, by an angel. The sources do not agree on his birthplace: the English source says Armenia, the Russian one Caesarea of Palestine. He is commemorated on 29 March in the Orthodox Church and in the Eastern Catholic Churches of the Byzantine rite, and the Orthodox Church also commemorates him on 16 October, in the synaxis of the saints who shone in the land of Egypt.

Life

According to the Life, he was born in the fourth century, according to some sources at Caesarea of Palestine, of Julia or Juliana, a devout mother, a rich widow, who taught her children, John and his sister, both secular sciences and Christian virtues. At that time the Roman Empire was persecuting Christians, and the mother had to hide with the two children. Even as a child John went, without his mother's knowledge, to pray in the nearby church; there a righteous man advised him to go to the desert. At thirteen he went to the desert (according to some that of Egypt) and received his first counsels on the ascetic life from the Egyptian hermit Saint Pharmuthius.

In the desert an angel showed him the way to a deep well full of snakes and scorpions. John, praying, leaped in and remained unharmed. For forty days he prayed in the well, without food, water or sleep, after which the beasts left the well. Overcoming various temptations, he lived in the well ten years. His food was brought by an angel through Saint Pharmuthius. After he told his life to the monk Chrysius, who found him, he died, and Chrysius wrote his Life.