Dec 5 – Feria / S Sabbas

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? [e-mail] Sources Used Today:

• “The Last Judgment” – rom Advent to Epiphany
  • https://angeluspress.org/products/from-advent-to-epiphany
  
  
• “Pope Declines to Pray in the Blue Mosque” (FSSPX.news)
  • https://fsspx.news/en/news/turkey-pope-declines-pray-blue-mosque-55746
  
  
• “Can a Baby Go to Heaven Without Baptism?” (SSPX Podcast)
  • View on YouTube
  • Listen & Subscribe on SSPXpodcast.com
  
  
• The Spiritual Life – Archbishop Lefebvre (Angelus Press)
  • https://angeluspress.org/products/spiritual-life-archbishop
  
  

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...