Zosimas of Palestine

The Venerable Zosimas of Palestine was a Palestinian monk and hieromonk of the fifth or sixth century, known above all for his meeting with the Venerable Mary of Egypt. His feast is on 4 April.

According to tradition he was born in the second half of the fifth century, in the time of Theodosius II (according to another source he lived in the time of Justin the Elder), and entered young a monastery in Palestine, near Caesarea, winning the fame of a great elder and ascetic; Demetrius of Rostov says he passed through all the steps of ascetic labour. It is said that before becoming a monk he had visited about a thousand renowned hermits to learn from them. At fifty-⁠three, a hieromonk, troubled by the thought that perhaps no man in the desert had surpassed him, an angel appeared to him, according to the story, and said: Zosimas, you have laboured zealously, as much as man can, but there is no man who can say of himself that he has reached perfection; there are labours unknown to you and harder than those you have passed; to learn how many ways lead to salvation, leave your country, like Abraham, and go to a monastery by the Jordan. He obeyed and moved to a very strict monastery at the edge of the desert, near the Jordan, probably that of Saint John the Baptist. Here he lived to the end.

According to the Life of Mary of Egypt, written by Patriarch Sophronius of Jerusalem from the oral tradition of the monks of Palestine, the custom of that monastery was that all the brethren go out into the desert for the forty days of Great Lent, in fasting and prayer, and return on Palm Sunday. Wandering in the desert, Zosimas met Mary, who told him her life and asked him to come to the bank of the Jordan, on Holy Thursday of the next year, to bring her Holy Communion. He did so, and she crossed the river on the water and communicated; she asked him to meet her again in the desert. The following year Zosimas found her dead, with a note in the sand that she had died the night of her communion and had been miraculously brought there; her body was incorrupt. He buried her in a grave dug for him by a passing lion. Returning to the monastery, he told the monks the life of Mary. He is said to have lived nearly a hundred years. Sophronius founded his story on what he heard. Zosimas is painted as an old man with a long beard, often together with Mary of Egypt; his image is in frescoes of the churches of Cappadocia and Novgorod. The story is read at Matins of the Great Canon of Andrew of Crete, on the fifth Thursday of Great Lent.