Venerable Arsenius the Great

Life

This renowned saint was born of a patrician family in Rome and was well educated, both in secular learning and philosophy and in spiritual wisdom. Leaving behind all worldly vanity, he gave himself to the service of the Church and became a deacon of the great church in Rome. Unmarried, withdrawn, taciturn, and prayerful, Arsenius thought to spend his entire life in this way. But the Providence of God directed the course of his life otherwise. Emperor Theodosius took him as tutor and teacher of his sons Arcadius and Honorius, and made him a senator, surrounding him with great wealth, honors, and luxury. But all of this oppressed the heart of Arsenius more than it satisfied him. It once happened that Arcadius committed some offense, and Arsenius punished him for it. The offended Arcadius plotted severe revenge against his teacher, and when Arsenius learned of it, he changed into beggar's clothing, went to the seashore, boarded a ship, and sailed to Egypt. When he arrived at the renowned Scetis, he became a disciple of the famous John Colobos and gave himself to ascetical struggle. He considered himself dead; and when someone informed him that a wealthy relative had died and bequeathed all his property to him, he replied: "I died before him — how then can I be his heir?" Withdrawn into a desert cell as into a tomb, he wove baskets from palm leaves all day long and prayed to God through the night. He avoided people and every conversation with them. Only on feast days did he leave his cell and come to the church for Holy Communion. Lest he grow lazy, he often posed to himself the question: "Arsenius, why have you come to the desert?" He spent fifty-five years as a desert dweller, and throughout all that time he was a model for monks and the glory of monasticism in general. He lived in all one hundred years, and reposed peacefully after long labor and voluntarily imposed martyrdom upon himself in the year 448. He departed to the kingdom of Christ the Lord, Whom he loved with all his heart and all his soul.