Benjamin: Name Day and Patron Saint

St Benjamin, kept on 29 December (11 January on the Old Calendar), was a monk of the mountain of Nitria in the Egyptian desert. His story comes down to us from Bishop Palladius. Benjamin spent eighty years in fasting and ascetic labor, and God gave him the gift of healing, so that the sick he touched found relief from their pain. In the last eight months of his life water gathered in his body until he was so swollen that Palladius called him a second Job. He could no longer lie down, and sat day and night in a broad chair, yet he went on healing others while he himself suffered. He asked his visitors only to pray that his inner man would not fill with water as his body had, so that his soul would stay sound. When he died his body was so large that the doorframe of his cell had to be taken down to carry him out. The Greek synaxarion counts him among the good who ended their life in a good old age, and St Nikodemos of the Holy Mountain records that he died of dropsy. One saying of his, kept in the Evergetinos, was given to his disciples: “Walk on the royal path and count off the miles, and do not be discouraged.” The faithful remember him as an example of patience in long illness, of love that keeps serving others in its own weakness, and of steady, unhurried progress on the road to God.

What the faithful pray for

• patience in long illness
• the sick and those who care for them
• health of soul when the body suffers
• perseverance on the royal path, without discouragement
• monks and all who keep the ascetic struggle