It’s an Advent Feria, Comm. St Sabbas, 3rd Class, with the color of Violet. In this episode: the meditation: “The Last Judgment”, today’s news from the Church: “Pope Declines to Pray in the Blue Mosque”, a preview of this week’s episode of Questions with Father, “Can a Baby Go to Heaven Without Baptism?”, and today’s thought from the Archbishop.
Have feedback or questions about the DD or our other shows? podcast@sspx.org
Sources Used Today:
- “The Last Judgment” – rom Advent to Epiphany
- “Pope Declines to Pray in the Blue Mosque” (FSSPX.news)
- “Can a Baby Go to Heaven Without Baptism?” (SSPX Podcast)
- The Spiritual Life – Archbishop Lefebvre (Angelus Press)
Saint Sabbas the Sanctified is one of the great monastic figures of the early Church, a man whose life helped shape the very rhythm of prayer in the Christian East. He was born in 439 in Cappadocia to a military family, but from childhood he longed for a life of solitude. When he was about eight, he entered a nearby monastery for schooling, and the peace he found there never left him. By the time he reached adulthood, the world of armies and politics held no interest. Instead, he set out for the Holy Land, drawn by the desert fathers whose lives of silence and prayer had become a beacon across the Christian world.
After periods of formation under seasoned monks, Sabbas left to seek deeper solitude. He eventually settled in a remote ravine along the Kidron Valley, southeast of Jerusalem. Other seekers soon found him, and though he desired silence, he recognized that God was calling him to guide them. There he founded the Great Lavra, a community arranged in clusters of caves and small cells. It became one of the most influential monasteries in the East and remains active to this day, known simply as Mar Saba. At first Sabbas resisted any formal leadership, but his holiness drew people to him. When the patriarch of Jerusalem appointed him archimandrite over all the monasteries in Palestine, he accepted only out of obedience.
Sabbas was a man of remarkable discretion. He balanced solitude with community life, austerity with moderation, and contemplation with pastoral concern. He traveled repeatedly to Constantinople to defend Orthodox teaching during the Christological controversies of his age, speaking with emperors while remaining the same humble desert monk. His influence reached far beyond his own lifetime. The liturgical traditions and monastic customs of the Great Lavra helped shape what would become the Byzantine liturgy, especially the structure of daily psalmody and the celebration of feasts.
He died in 532 at the age of ninety-three, leaving behind a network of monasteries and a pattern of prayer that continues to nourish Eastern Christianity. His tomb at Mar Saba became a place of pilgrimage, and for centuries monks carried his rule and discipline throughout the Levant, the Balkans, and beyond.
Customs around his feast on December 5 developed mostly in monastic settings. In Byzantine communities, the day was traditionally marked with processions to his relics and readings from his life by Cyril of Scythopolis. In some regions, Sabbas became a patron for those seeking stability of heart and protection during storms or earthquakes, recalling his role as a spiritual anchor in turbulent theological times.
Saint Sabbas, holy abbot and father of desert prayer, pray for us!
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