SAINT APOLLO

St. Apollo



Feast day: January 25
Died: 395


Egyptian hermit, founder, and miracle worker. Apollo was born in Egypt and spent forty years in the desert region around Thebes. He then founded a community of monks in Hermopol, Egypt, ultimately numbering five hundred, and became their abbot. Apollo was eighty years old when he made this foundation. He was noted for his miracles.



Apollo of Heliopolis, Abbot

. Saint Apollo was an Egyptian hermit for 40 years until his 80th year, when he left the desert to fight Julian the Apostate and became abbot of over 500 monks near Hermopolis (or Heliopolis). Members of his community wore a coarse white habit and received daily communion. Daily Saint Apollo urged his sons to spiritual joy and cheerfulness because they are the fruit of charity and requisite to support the fervor of the soul amid tears of penance. His own unquenchable joy shone on his countenance, yet in his humility he counted himself among the goats, rather than the sheep. As is the case with many other saints, Apollo constantly petitioned God that he might know himself in order to avoid the subtle snares and the illusions of pride. Among the many astonishing miracles recorded about Saint Apollo was his exorcising of the devil, who cried out that he was not able to withstand the saint's humility. He is also said to have kept his monks alive for four months during a famine by miraculously multiplying bread. In 393, Saint Petronius, who later became bishop of Bologna, visited Apollo