Our Holy Father Abraham the Recluse and his niece Maria.

Commemorated October 29 in the Orthodox Christian Menaion

From the Prologue

Under pressure from his parents, Abraham married, but on the very day of his wedding, he left his bride, his parents, his home and all that he had and went off into solitude to live in strict asceticism. He lived thus for fifty years, only leaving his cell twice in the whole of that time. Once it was at the command of the local bishop, to convert a pagan village to the Christian faith, and the other was to save his dissolute niece Maria. He entered peacefully into rest in 360, at the age of seventy.

From The Prologue From Ochrid by Bishop Nikolai Velimirovich
©1985 Lazarica Press, Birmingham UK