St. Stephen of Mar Saba

At the age of ten, Stephen came to the Palestinian monastery of Saint Sabas (Mar Saba), where for the next fourteen years he received his spiritual and intellectual formation from his uncle, the Church Father Saint John of Damascus. Stephen became a monk and was ordained to the priesthood. Once, while celebrating the eastern rite of the Mass, as Stephen elevated the Eucharist and recited the words, "Holy things to the holy," the monastic cell in which he was celebrating the liturgy was filled with a brilliant light that emanated from the celebrant himself. From that occasion onward, he received the mystical favor that whatever intention he prayed for during the Eucharistic liturgy was granted. He obtained permission to live as a hermit, combining this vocation of solitude with an active apostolate of praying for the needs of others. He had a special love for animals, feeding out of his hand doves, starlings, and deer. His compassion for the lowly black worms that crawled through his hermitage prompted him to gather them into a spot where they would be safe from being trampled upon.

Saint Stephen the Sabaite (725 – 796 or 807), also known as Stephen the Hymnographer, was a Christian monk from Julis, a district of Gaza. He was a nephew of St. John of Damascus and spent a half-century in the monastery of Mar Saba. He is venerated as a saint in the Orthodox Church.

Stephen lived the ascetic life at the Lavra of Saint Sabas in Palestine. Stephen was introduced to the monastic life by his uncle, and, at the age of ten, entered the same monastic community as his uncle, St. John Damascene. By his mid-twenties, he felt so drawn to a life of seclusion and contemplation, he asked the abbot of the community for permission to live as a hermit. Due to the great skill in giving spiritual direction he already showed at that young age, the abbot gave him limited permission. The condition was that he make himself available to others on weekends.

Towards the end of his life, Stephen reported that various cities, Gaza among them, were laid waste to and depopulated by the Saracens (another name for the Muslim Caliphate under the rule of the Umayyad and Abbasid dynasties, referenced in Acta martyrum Sabaitarum, AASS Mart. III, p. 167). On this occasion many monks of St. Sabas met their deaths.

He and Andrew the Blind were among the first to compose hymns (idiomela) in the Triodion (the liturgical book used during Great Lent), chanted during the period between the Sunday of the Publican and Pharisee and Palm Sunday. These idiomela are stichera of which two were written for each weekday of Great Lent. One is chanted at the aposticha of Vespers and one at the aposticha of Matins, each being chanted twice. The idiomela are "exceptionally rich in doctrinal content, summing up the whole theology of the Great Fast".

The events of the time are recorded in the writings of Leontius in his book The Life of St. Stephen the Sabaite.

His feast day is celebrated on October 28 on the Liturgical calendar of the Orthodox Church (for those Orthodox Churches which follow the traditional Julian Calendar, October 28 falls on November 10 of the modern Gregorian Calendar).