A young monk who for nine years bore without complaint the harshness and blows of a cruel elder, and after his death answered from the tomb that he yet lived — a wonder of holy obedience recounted in The Ladder.
Our Venerable Father Acacius of Sinai
Acacius of Sinai was a sixth-century monastic remembered as a model of patient obedience. According to the synaxarion accounts, he was a novice at a monastery in Asia who placed himself under a harsh and unrestrained elder.
For nine years Acacius endured excessive labor, deprivation of food, and frequent beatings at the hands of his elder, bearing the mistreatment meekly and giving thanks to God throughout. His story is preserved chiefly because Saint John Climacus recorded it in The Ladder of Divine Ascent as an example of the fruits of obedience.
The Orthodox accounts place Acacius in the sixth century as a young monk, or novice, at a monastery in Asia. He submitted himself to an elder described as harsh and dissolute, who forced him to toil excessively, withheld food from him, and beat him without mercy.
Acacius is said to have endured this treatment for nine years without complaint, accepting the affliction with meekness and thanking God for everything, until he died.
Traditional Accounts: According to the synaxarion, five days after Acacius was buried another elder doubted whether the obedient monk had truly died. Visiting the grave, this elder asked, in effect, whether Acacius was dead, and received the reply from the tomb: "No, Father, how is it possible for an obedient man to die?" The account relates that Acacius's own elder, witnessing this, fell weeping before the grave to ask forgiveness of his disciple, repented, and afterward lived near the grave lamenting that he had committed murder.
This episode is the reason Acacius is remembered: Saint John Climacus recounts it in The Ladder of Divine Ascent (Step 4, on obedience) as an example of endurance and obedience and of the rewards of these virtues.
Not Acacius the Centurion. Also commemorated Nov 29.