Venerable Pior, Hermit of Nitria

Life

Warmed by love for God, Pior early renounced the world and withdrew into the Egyptian desert, where he struggled heroically. Of him it is said that he never sat down at table to eat, but always ate standing and working. When asked why he did so, Saint Pior replied: "I do not wish to treat eating as work but as something incidental." When he was summoned to a council to judge a certain brother who had committed some sin, he came carrying on his back a large sack of sand and on his chest a small bag of sand. When asked what this meant, the saint replied: "The sack of sand on my back — those are my sins, which I do not see; and the bag of sand — those are the sins of my brother, which I am to judge." All the brethren were then ashamed and cried out: "This is the way of salvation!" He lived a hundred years and reposed in the Lord in the fourth century.