Leaving everything to pray, yet still drawing people who needed wisdom.
Read the essentials →Leaving everything to pray, yet still drawing people who needed wisdom.
March 16
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Hermit
The story goes that the hermit Aninas, also called Ananias, lived in a cave in the deserts by the Euphrates with two lions; he had pulled a thorn from the paw of one. They walked with him each day to fetch water from the river, four or five miles away.
The bishop of Caesarea sent him a donkey to carry the jars, but Aninas gave it to poor people. He died on 16 March, aged a hundred and ten. Much of this is legend.
Thin entry · the 1897 book gives only 158 words. We have not filled the gap with invented detail.
This hermit, called variously Aninas and Ananias, lived in the flat deserts of the Euphrates, in a cave, with two lions, out of the foot of one of which he had drawn a thorn which hurt it. The lions followed him whenever he went to the Euphrates, distant four or five miles, to draw water. This he was obliged to do daily, and the bishop of Cæsarea, hearing of this, sent him the present of an ass to carry the water jars for him; but Aninas would not keep the ass, but gave it to some poor folk who were destitute.
Make time for silence. Solitude and withdrawal to pray shape this life.
Give to people in need. The account records care for the poor.
Learn from the kind of life it was. Leaving everything to pray, yet still drawing people who needed wisdom.
This hermit, called variously Aninas and Ananias, lived in the flat deserts of the Euphrates, in a cave, with two lions, out of the foot of one of which he had drawn a thorn which hurt it. The lions followed him whenever he went to the Euphrates, distant four or five miles, to draw water. This he was obliged to do daily, and the bishop of Cæsarea, hearing of this, sent him the present of an ass to carry the water jars for him; but Aninas would not keep the ass, but gave it to some poor folk who were destitute.
Now there was a hermit who lived on a pillar in the same country, and Aninas heard that he was sore troubled in mind; then, the story goes, he wrote a letter comforting him, and sent it to him by one of his lions. Aninas died on March 16th, at the age of one hundred and ten.
Feast: March 16
One short email a day for nine days. The day's prayer, a line from St. Aninas's story, and a nudge to keep going.
From Sabine Baring-Gould, The Lives of the Saints, new edition in 16 vols. (London: John C. Nimmo, 1897), digitized text from Project Gutenberg. Public domain.
From Sabine Baring-Gould, The Lives of the Saints, new edition in 16 vols. (London: John C. Nimmo, 1897), digitized text from Project Gutenberg. Public domain in the United States. Reproduced unedited, except for short bracketed notes in grey that we added to explain names and terms (“S.” is the old abbreviation for Saint). Some history and judgments reflect 19th-century scholarship.
