Lives Of The Saints
October 21
St. Hilarion
St. Hilarion is remembered as severe, brave, and restless for God. He never really received the solitude he wanted, because other people kept finding help through the holiness he had gone into the desert to seek.
Saint Hilarion the Great, Menologion of Basil II
Brief life
Hilarion is one of the great pioneers of desert life outside Egypt, a man driven by fierce love of God into a solitude that never remained entirely his own. Converted young and formed for a time by St. Antony, he went into the Palestinian desert and undertook the long warfare of fasting, poverty, prayer, temptation, and endurance. His bodily weakness only makes the severity of his life more striking. Yet the deepest irony of this life is that holiness kept making him visible.
The more he sought hiddenness, the more disciples, crowds, healings, and fame gathered around him. That tension gives the life its shape. Hilarion wanted God alone, and precisely for that reason he became a father and help to many others.
Historical note
This life keeps the old desert emphasis clear: penance, solitude, prayer, and the burden of fame falling on a man who wanted to be hidden.
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