St. Sara

Building a community where women could live the Gospel together.

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July 13 · Virgin, Abbess

St. Sara

St. Sara

Building a community where women could live the Gospel together.

Traditional feast

July 13
1914 / pre-1969 calendar, per Baring-Gould (1897)

Current feast

May 24
Secondary source · Wikipedia

Represents

Virgin
Abbess

Early life

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

Thin entry · the 1897 book gives only 0 words. We have not filled the gap with invented detail.

What they represent

How they teach us to live

Drawn from themes in the original account

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

Keep their day. Remember them on July 13 with a short prayer, and ask for their help.

Read more

The full original · 0 words

Read Baring-Gould’s full account

Baring-Gould’s sources: Some Greek Meneeas; but not all. Authority Mention in the Lives of the Fathers of the Desert.] Little is known of this virgin abbess in Scete, in Lybia, except that for thirteen years she was tormented with thoughts of impurity, which distressed inexpressibly her soul craving for pure and holy things. Yet all that while she never asked God to remove the loathVOL. VII. 20 some temptation from her; but meekly prayed, “ Lord, strengthen me 1” At last, the story goes, after these thirteen years of battle, there came one night of horrible imaginations. She knelt up in her bed, crying for grace, and resolutely forcing down every evil thought as it rose. Then, suddenly, she saw at the further end of the bed, an ugly sensuous form, wriggling away, — it was the Spirit of Impurity — it turned and hissed at her, “ Thou has conquered me, Sara !” “Not I,” answered Sara promptly, “but Christ that worketh in me.”

Feast days

Feast: May 24
Traditional: July 13

Nine days · Free

Pray the novena
with us.

One short email a day for nine days. The day's prayer, a line from St. Sara's story, and a nudge to keep going.

Also on July 13
St. Silas

St. Silas

July 13 · Apostle
M

Sts. Maura and Bridget

July 13 · Virgins, Martyrs
E

St. Eugenius of Carthage

July 13 · Bishop
← All 1726 saints in the library
Sources & notes

Feast-day sources

Sources

Credits

Image: Saintes-Maries-de-la-Mer Sainte Sara.jpg · Acoma · CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons

From Sabine Baring-Gould, The Lives of the Saints, new edition in 16 vols. (London: John C. Nimmo, 1897–98); text from the Internet Archive scan (OCR, lightly cleaned; errors possible). Public domain.

Image: Acoma, Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 3.0)

From Sabine Baring-Gould, The Lives of the Saints, new edition in 16 vols. (London: John C. Nimmo, 1897–98); text from the Internet Archive scan (OCR, lightly cleaned; errors possible). 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.