- I am a saint of the late fourth and early fifth century.
- I am Syrian
- As a boy I lived the shepherds’ life.
- At sixteen I entered a mionastery, but was dismissed on account of the fact that my austerities were not in conformity with community life.
- My next venture was to live alone as a hermit in a very small hut. I fasted there every Lent without any food or water.
- When people came to me I received them but preferred my solitude, so, after three years in my hermitage, I left and hid myself in the desert living on a rocky promontory only twenty yards in diameter.
- My refuge was discovered and, once again, pilgrims came to me for prayers, healing, and direction.
- Unable to give myself to prayer as a solitary I fixed my abode in the sky. Thereafter, my feet never touched the earth.
- At last I had my solitude, or some solitude, but the faithful could still see me and they would shout to me from below begging for my prayers. I could never refuse them.
- Sometimes, with my permission, I allowed certain ecclesiastics to set up a ladder and climb up to reach written petitions to me. They gave me paper and a quill and I wrote replies to many questions. And I wrote spiritual addresses for the crowds assembled below. I saw clearly that this was God’s will.
- My fame spread throughout Christendom East and West.
- Once, when the Catholic Eastern Emperor Theodosius II (408-450) heard that I was gravely ill, he sent three bishops to me asking me to descend and see a doctor. I declined and soon recovered.
- I later wrote to Leo, the Eastern Roman Emperor (457-474), telling him to support the decrees of the ecumenical Council of Chalcedon (451), which passed a Creed defining the two natures in Christ against the monophysite heresy..
- The Church historian Theodoret visited me and wrote an eye-witness account of my life in the heights.
- I was the same age as Our Lady when I died, seventy-two.
- I am buried in Antioch.
