St. Syncletica

St. Syncletica was born around 270 into a wealthy Christian family at Alexandria, Egypt, and died around 350. Beautiful and much sought after in marriage, she instead longed for a life given wholly to God. After the death of her parents, she distributed her considerable fortune to the poor, cut off her hair as a sign of renunciation, and withdrew with her blind sister into solitude to live a life of prayer, fasting, and self-denial.

She is honored among the 'Desert Mothers' (ammas), the women who, like the more famous Desert Fathers, pursued holiness in the deserts of Egypt. Disciples gathered to seek her counsel, and her sayings on humility, on perseverance in temptation, and on the spiritual warfare of the soul are preserved among the wisdom of the desert. In her final years she bore a long and agonizing illness with heroic patience, and she is venerated as a saint and a teacher of the interior life.