St. Theodosius the Great, Father of Cenobites

Theodosius was born around 423 in Cappadocia, the son of pious Christian parents who consecrated him to God from childhood. He came to Jerusalem in his youth, was instructed in the spiritual life by Simeon the Stylite as he passed through Syria, and settled at the cell of an old hermit in the wilderness near Bethlehem. As his reputation drew disciples, he organized them into a community.

His monastery — known as the Great Lavra of Theodosius the Cenobiarch — became, with the Lavra of Sabbas across the wadi, one of the two principal monastic foundations of sixth-century Palestine. Theodosius developed the cenobitic discipline — a strictly communal monastic life with common prayer, common meals, common labor — to a refinement that the synaxarion records as a model for all subsequent communal monasticism. At his death the community had grown to several hundred monks, including separate houses for Greek, Armenian, and Bessian (Thracian) speakers, each praying in its own tongue and gathering for Communion together.

In his eighties, Theodosius led the Palestinian monastic federation in its successful opposition to the monophysite policies of the Emperor Anastasius. He died on January 11, 529, at the age of one hundred and five. His feast falls on the same day.