Venerable Theophanes the Confessor & Faster

Theophanes the Confessor and Faster was a third-century ascetic of Mount Diabenos, in the region associated with Syria, commemorated on September 9. According to the synaxarion, he was born to pagan parents and came to faith in Christ in his youth, receiving baptism before secretly leaving his family to take up the monastic life under an elder of the mountain. He is venerated both as a confessor, for the sufferings he endured under Roman persecution, and as a great faster, in token of the long ascetic solitude that defines his life.

The synaxarion relates that the young Theophanes sought out an elder on the mountain who had lived there in asceticism for seventy-five years. The elder taught him to read the Scriptures and instructed him in the discipline of monastic life. After five years the elder died, and Theophanes is said to have remained in his cave in solitude for a further fifty-eight years before descending to preach Christ among the pagans, converting many. His feast falls within the Afterfeast of the Nativity of the Theotokos.