St. John of Egypt was known for walling himself up in a cave and staking his survival upon God and the goodness of others.

John was born in Egypt around the year 305, and spent his early adult years as a carpenter. When he was 25, he left everything he knew to seek God in the desert with prayer.

He spent a decade with a hermit, taking direction from him and learning self-surrender. The hermit, for example, had him water a dry stick every day for a year. John learned obedience and humility, and when the hermit died, John traveled and visited other monasteries for five years.

Finally, John settled at the top of a steep hill near Lycopolis, Egypt, and carved three small cells out of rock. He slept in one, used another for work and living space, and prayed in the third. Then he walled these cells up with himself inside and lived this way until he died in his 90s.

He left a small window through which he could speak to people and receive food and water they might bring him. He only ate after sunset, and his diet was mostly dried fruit and vegetables—nothing cooked over a fire.

He spent five days a week in conversation with God alone, and two days a week, he conversed with people seeking spiritual direction and advice. Crowds would gather on those two days to hear him preach.

Other ascetics and hermits saw him as an example and a father, and many people sought him out for wisdom, including the emperor. John was given the gift of seeing the future and knowing details from the lives of people he had never met. He could discern what was secretly hidden in people’s hearts.

Foreseeing his own death, he asked that no one visit him for three days, and he sealed off his window. He died peacefully, and his body was found in a position of prayer. He was known and admired by the great saints of his time, including St. Augustine and St. Jerome. The cell he lived in was discovered in the early 1900s.

The image above is from the book, Trophaeum Vitae Solitariae, by Thomas de Leu (1560-1612). Preserved at Pitts Theology Library at Emory University. Used with permission. 

St. John of Egypt, you were the hermit whose life of prayer and self-surrender inspired other great saints—pray for us!