Sabbas of Vatopaidi

Saint Sabbas of Vatopaidi was born about 1283 in Thessalonica to virtuous parents who later became monastics; in the world he was called Stephen. After schooling in his native city, at eighteen he left secretly for Mount Athos and put himself under a strict elder at a cell of Vatopaidi in Karyes. He was tonsured with the name Sabbas. From humility he refused the priesthood and even hid on the day of his ordination.

After the Catalan raids of 1308 he left for Lemnos, Lesbos and Chios and settled at Ephesus. Then he went to Cyprus and there chose the path of foolishness for Christ: he went naked and homeless, silent and hungry, eating wild greens once a week. Many thought him mad, and some beat him; he forgave and saw in all this the temptations of the devil. When the Cypriots began to honour him as a saint in his lifetime, he left from humility. He went to Sinai, where he stayed two years, then to the desert beyond the Jordan and the Lavra of Saint Sabbas the Sanctified, where he fasted for forty days and saw Christ three times in ineffable light. He also lived at the Monastery of Saint John the Forerunner beyond the Jordan, then turned towards his homeland, passing through Jerusalem and Damascus to Antioch; on the way he raised a dead child, and took another road to avoid the glory of men.

He travelled through Crete, Euboea, the Peloponnese, Athens, Macedonia and Thrace and came to Constantinople, to the Monastery of Diomedes, where Patriarch Isaiah and Emperor Andronikos II sought him out. He returned to Vatopaidi and broke his silence to serve in church, in the refectory and as a nurse. He knew Saint Philotheos Kokkinos, to whom he revealed his many spiritual experiences. During the civil war (1341-1347) he went with the fathers of Vatopaidi on an embassy to Constantinople; the mission failed, as he had foretold, and he stayed six years at the Chora Monastery. He sharply criticized the emperor for the bloodshed at Thessalonica and helped Orthodoxy in the hesychast controversies. When the emperor and the leaders of the Church wished to make him patriarch, he avoided it with humility. He reposed at Constantinople about 1349, knowing his hour beforehand. Saint Philotheos Kokkinos wrote his life.

He is remembered on 11 October and on 15 June.