Venerable Mark the Ascetic

Life

Mark was an ascetic and wonderworker. Tonsured by his teacher Saint John Chrysostom at the age of forty, Mark spent yet another sixty years in the Nitrian desert in fasting, prayer, and the writing of profitable books. He knew the entire Holy Scripture by heart. He was greatly compassionate and wept over the misery of every creature of God. Once, weeping, he prayed to God for the blind puppy of a hyena, and the puppy received its sight. Out of gratitude the mother hyena brought him a sheepskin. But the saint forbade the hyena to slaughter the sheep of poor people in the future. He received Holy Communion from angelic hands. His homilies on the spiritual law, on repentance, on sobriety, etc. belong to first-rate ecclesiastical literature; the great Patriarch Photius himself praised them.