St. Sisoes the Great

Sisoes was a great desert father of fourth-century Egypt, who lived for seventy-two years in the inner wilderness on the mountain of Antony — the very cave that had been the residence of the founder of monasticism a generation before — after Antony's repose. He came as a young man to Sketis under the guidance of the elders there, was sent eventually to the mountain to take up the work of Antony, and remained until his own repose in extreme old age.

His sayings, preserved in the Apophthegmata Patrum, are among the most quoted in all the desert literature, marked by a particular simplicity, humility, and refusal to claim achievement. When the brethren came to him expecting wisdom, he would often answer their questions only with prayer; when they pressed him about his prayer life, he said he was still beginning. On his deathbed, his face was seen to shine with an unearthly radiance, and when the brothers asked whom he saw, he replied that he was conversing with the prophets and apostles who had come for him. As they pressed him further, his last words were, "I have not yet begun to repent."

Sisoes reposed around 429. His feast is kept on July 6.