Onuphrius the Great

Onuphrius was one of the great hermits of fourth-century Egypt, known through the account of the monk Paphnutius, who journeyed deep into the inner desert seeking the perfect servants of God. There he encountered an awesome figure, naked, clothed only in his own long hair and beard, with a girdle of leaves, who had lived in complete solitude for some sixty years. Onuphrius told him how he had left his monastery in the Thebaid to imitate the prophet Elijah and John the Forerunner in the wilderness, sustained by God through extremes of hunger, thirst, and the assaults of temptation, receiving Holy Communion from an angel. After recounting his life, he prayed, blessed Paphnutius, and reposed; the earth received his body, and Paphnutius carried the story back to the brethren. He is venerated as a model of uncompromising desert asceticism.