I am from a family of saints.
My grandmother and parents were all saints.
We were from what is now central Turkey, a thriving Christian area in the later fourth century, before the Moslem conquest.
My grandmother, who has the same name as I, knew a now famous saint who actually moved a mountain because he wanted to build a monastery on that same site. (Remember the word of Christ “if you have faith as a grain of mustard seed, you shall say to this mountain, Remove from hence hither, and it shall remove” Matthew 17:19). His name (which I withhold as a too overt clue) means “watchful wonder worker.” Suffice it to say that when this wonder worker came to the area of Pontus there were only seventeen Christians. After a few years of his labors there as bishop there were only seventeen pagans.
Four of my brothers were saints. One of them wrote a collection of my spiritual teachings, a florilegium if you will, of my oral lessons based on my scriptural meditations.
After our father died my younger brother took me and our family servants to Pontus where we owned an estate. There I was charged with heading a monastic school for women. This brother was a great theologian and bishop and is the most well-known of our family. He was good friends with a doctor of the Church who at times visited our monastic community. This doctor of the Church was also from a family of saints who lived near us. A third brother, younger than me, was also a bishop in Armenia. He had a good influence on his two older brothers encouraging them to write against the Arians, Maedonians, and Meletian schismatics. He himself had no gift for writing. My second brother had no gift for running a diocese, having been coerced into episcopal consecration by his older brother who soon after regretted it.
I had another brother who is also canonized. He was a lawyer and died very young after having set his goal on an ascetical life. His name was Naucratius.
When I died my renowned brother was at my side. We had wonderful discourses about heaven, the soul and the resurrection and restoration of all things which he composed into a treatise in my name called Dialogue on the Soul and Resurrection.
Yes, I too am a saint
