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Building a community where people could actually live the Gospel.

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January 25 · Abbot

St. Mares in Syria

St. Mares in Syria

Building a community where people could actually live the Gospel.

Traditional feast

January 25
1914 / pre-1969 calendar, per Baring-Gould (1914)

Current feast

Not verified yet

Represents

Abbot

Their story

Adapted in modern English from Baring-Gould (1914) · original text below · little is known

Mares spent thirty-seven years praying in a small damp cell. Theodoret (5th-century bishop and church historian), visited him near the end. Mares was ninety, wore rough goat's-hair clothes, and lived on bread and salt.

He had long wanted to see the Holy Sacrifice offered but could not go to it. Theodoret had the sacred vessels brought from the village and offered the Holy Sacrifice (the Mass) in his cell, using the hands of the deacons as an altar. Mares said he felt he could see heaven and had never known such joy.

Early life

The book says little or nothing about early life. This is how the account begins.

Thin entry · the 1914 book gives only 155 words. We have not filled the gap with invented detail.

S. Mares spent thirty-seven years in a small damp cell, constant in prayer. Theodoret says that towards his end, "I went to his door, and he bade me open. He was aged ninety, and wore common goat's hair garments.

What they represent

How they teach us to live

Drawn from themes in the original account

Pray a little every day. Prayer runs all through this account.

Learn from the kind of life it was. Building a community where people could actually live the Gospel.

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The full original · 155 words

Read Baring-Gould’s full account

Baring-Gould’s sources: From the Philotheus of Theodoret, cap. 20.

S. Mares spent thirty-seven years in a small damp cell, constant in prayer. Theodoret says that towards his end, "I went to his door, and he bade me open. He was aged ninety, and wore common goat's hair garments. All his food was bread and salt. As, for long, he had desired to see the Holy Sacrifice offered, but was not able, he asked that the oblation of the Divine Gift might be made there. I willingly obeyed, and having ordered the sacred vessels to be brought from the village, and using for an altar the hands of the deacons, I offered the mystic, divine, and salutary Sacrifice. But he was filled with all spiritual delight, and thought that he saw heaven, and declared he had never had such joy. I was greatly pleased with him, and I should be doing him and myself a wrong, if after his death I did not praise him."

Feast days

Feast: January 25

Nine days · Free

Pray the novena
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One short email a day for nine days. The day's prayer, a line from St. Mares in Syria's story, and a nudge to keep going.

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← All 1726 saints in the library
Sources & notes

Feast-day sources

Story sources

Sources

Credits

From Sabine Baring-Gould, The Lives of the Saints, new and revised edition (Edinburgh: John Grant, 1914; first edition 1872). Public domain.

From Sabine Baring-Gould, The Lives of the Saints, new and revised edition (Edinburgh: John Grant, 1914; first edition 1872). 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.