Hermit (291–371)
St. Hilarion was born in Gaza to non-Christian parents. At fifteen, soon after his conversion to Christianity, he was inspired by tales of St. Anthony to head for the Egyptian desert. There, for some months, he lived with the famous monk, becoming gradually disedified by the number of visitors in search of signs and wonders. Returning to Gaza, he settled in a marshy wilderness where he erected a small hut, “more a tomb than a house.” His austerities were extreme. As St. Jerome relates, “So many were his temptations and so various the snares of demons night and day, that if I wished to relate them, a volume would not suffice.”
Despite his isolation, Hilarion’s reputation began to attract his own visitors—both those in quest of miracles and aspiring monks, who organized themselves in monasteries under his supervision. Eventually, in distress, he exclaimed, “I have returned to the world!”
Learning of the death of St. Anthony, Hilarion returned to the Egyptian desert to meditate in his master’s cave. Afterward he embarked on a new life as a wandering ascetic, seeking peace and obscurity in Dalmatia, Greece, and Sicily. Wherever he went, however, his reputation seemed to precede him, frustrating his desire for solitude.
Eventually, in an inaccessible corner of Cyprus he spent his final days and died at the age of eighty.
“Go forth, my soul, why do you hesitate? You have served Christ nearly seventy years, and do you fear death?” —Last words of St. Hilarion
