4th century (reposed c. 392)
An Egyptian monk remembered among the elders of Nitria.
Our Venerable Father Benjamin of Nitria
Benjamin of Nitria was an Egyptian ascetic of the fourth century, numbered among the elders of the monastic settlement on Mount Nitria, one of the principal centers of early desert monasticism in Lower Egypt. According to the tradition preserved in the synaxarion, he pursued a life of fasting and ascetic labor over the course of some eighty years, attaining a reputation for spiritual maturity among his fellow monks.
He is remembered for the gift of healing: it was related that the pain departed from every wound on which he laid his hand. In the last months of his life he himself was afflicted with a grave illness, a dropsy that caused his body to swell severely, and the tradition likens his patient endurance to that of the righteous Job. He continued to give thanks to God and to minister to others throughout the affliction, which the sources place over the final eight months before his repose.
Sayings attributed to Benjamin are preserved in the Apophthegmata Patrum, the alphabetical collection of the Sayings of the Desert Fathers. He is commemorated by the Church on December 13.
Mount Nitria, in the desert south of Alexandria, was among the earliest and most populous of the Egyptian monastic settlements. Benjamin is counted among its elders, and the tradition records that he persevered in fasting and ascetic toil for about eighty years. He was held to possess the gift of healing, such that, as the synaxarion relates, the pain departed from every wound upon which he laid his hand.
In the closing period of his life Benjamin suffered from dropsy, an accumulation of fluid that caused his body to swell so greatly that the tradition compares his endurance of the affliction to that of Job. The sources relate that the doorway of his cell had to be removed in order to carry out his body for burial. According to the tradition, even in this state he continued to heal others and to give thanks, and he is recorded as saying to those who came to him, 'My sons, pray that the inner man may not collect water.'
The teaching most often attributed to him in the Apophthegmata Patrum is a deathbed counsel to his disciples: that they be joyful at all times, pray without ceasing, and give thanks for all things. A further saying ascribed to him exhorts the monk to 'walk on the royal path and count off the miles, and do not be discouraged' — an image of steady perseverance along the middle way of the ascetic life.
Reposed c. 392.