In the nearby desert there is an elderly brother called John who excels everybody in his life, his customs, and his abstinence. When her first came to the desert he stood underneath a protruding rock face for three years continuously, always praying, never sitting or lying down. He took only what sleep he could standing up. He took food only on Sunday. For on that day a priest came and offered the Holy Sacrifice for him, and the Sacrament was his only food. One day Satan, wishing to undermine him, disguised himself as the priest who usually came to him, and arriving at an earlier hour than usual, pretended to have come to administer the Sacraments. But, ever vigilant, he recognized the devil’s deceits and indignantly said to him: ‘O, father of all grief and fraud, you enemy of all justice, not only do you never cease from seducing Christian souls but you even dare to penetrate into the terrible and sacrosanct mysteries.’ Satan replied: ‘I thought you were a prize I could win, for I deceived another of you people like this so that he lost his mind and fell senseless. When I left him he thought he was insane because of what I had done, and the prayers of a great number of the righteous were hardly able to restore him to his former state of sanity’. Having said this the demon left him.
He persisted in the task which he had begun and persevered in prayer. From standing still so long his feet became ulcerated, with pus oozing out of them. When three years were up an angel of the Lord came to him and said: ‘The Lord Jesus Christ and the Holy Spirit have heard your prayers. They bring healing to the wounds in your body and grant you an abundance of heavenly knowledge and speech.’ He touched his mouth and his feet making him whole from his ulcers, and immune to the pangs of hunger. He ordered him to travel to another place and to visit the brothers in the desert roundabout in order to teach them the words and teachings of the Lord. But on Sundays he always came back to his original spot to receive the Sacrament in the same way as before. On other days he worked with his hands, making harness for the draught animals, weaving palm leaves together as was the custom of that place.
