Память преподобного Аполлония

Our holy father Apollonius, being fifteen years old, renounced the world and, abandoning himself to monastic life, settled in the inner desert 2298, where he lived in one mountain for forty years. Having acquired the habit of a virtuous life from childhood, he accomplished great feats and for this he was awarded such grace that one day he heard the voice of God saying to him: - Apollonius, go now to inhabited places, for you must give birth to chosen people for Me. After this, he immediately went to the nearby desert and, having found a small cave there at the bottom of the mountain, settled in it. Here he occupied himself with kneeling and praying to God for whole days. He ate the food that God sent him and which he received from the Angel who came to him in the desert. This desert was located near populated areas, and, visiting these places at the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, the monk gathered around him a large society of monks, numbering about five hundred people, and instructed them in various exploits of monastic life. So, with them he ate food only on Sundays, and on all other days he did not eat anything: neither bread, nor juice, nor anything else that was cooked on a fire, but ate only wild grains. The Monk Apollonius introduced such a rule in his monastery that the monks who labored with him did not eat food until they had first received the Holy Mysteries of Christ. Usually this was done every day at nine o’clock in the morning, and then the monks sat down to a meal, during which they listened to teachings every day. They all spent the rest of the day in useful pursuits and thereby drove out the evil suggestions of the devil from their thoughts. Having instructed many monks in such a life and having lived to a ripe old age, Saint Apollonius moved to God for eternal life. The internal desert refers to the Thebaid Desert, located in Africa, in Lower Egypt, on the eastern bank of the Nile River. Sochivo – boiled grains of wheat, rice and other grains. You might be interested in: