St. Onuphrius

St. Onuphrius (died c. 400) was one of the celebrated hermits of the Egyptian desert, known chiefly through the account of Paphnutius, a monk who sought out the solitaries of the Thebaid. According to this narrative, Onuphrius had begun as a monk in a communal monastery near Hermopolis but, drawn to a still more radical solitude, withdrew deep into the wilderness, where he lived alone for some seventy years, clothed only in his own hair and a girdle of leaves.

He told Paphnutius that an angel brought him Communion and that God sustained him miraculously in the desert. Shortly after their meeting he died, and Paphnutius buried him. Widely venerated in both the Eastern and Western Churches, Onuphrius became one of the most beloved of the desert fathers, honored as a model of extreme asceticism and total dependence on God, and a patron of hermits and weavers.