Achillas the Anchorite
Our Venerable Father Achillas the Anchorite of Scetis
Venerable · b. 4th century, in Egypt — d. 5th century, in the desert of Scetis
Commemorated 17 January — Commemoration among the desert fathers, with Anthony the Great
Achillas (4th–5th century) was one of the Desert Fathers of Scetis, the great monastic wilderness of Lower Egypt, and a priest of that community whose sayings are preserved among the Apophthegmata Patrum (the Sayings of the Desert Fathers). He is remembered for the discretion and gentleness of his ascetic wisdom — for labouring through the night at a brother's request rather than send him away comfortless, and for the severity with which he watched over his own tongue, once, the tradition says, keeping back an unkind word at the cost of what seemed the very blood in his mouth. He is commemorated on January 17, among the fathers of the desert and beside the great Anthony.
Almost all that is known of Achillas comes from the Apophthegmata Patrum, where he appears as an elder and priest of Scetis in the age that followed Anthony the Great — the late fourth and the fifth century, when Scetis was at the height of its glory under the disciples of Macarius. He is honest, discerning, and severe upon himself, and the two most-quoted stories show the temper of his sanctity.
In the first, three old men, one of them of poor reputation, came to Achillas, and the first asked him to make him a fishing-net, and Achillas would not; and the second asked, and again he would not; but when the third — the man of ill fame — asked, Achillas at once said, "For thee I will make it." The others, astonished, asked why he had refused them and granted the man they thought least worthy; and Achillas answered that he had told the others he had no time, and they had not been grieved, knowing he spoke truly; "but if I had not made one for this brother, he would have said, 'The old man has heard of my sin, and that is why he will not make me a net,' and so our friendship would have broken down. I have cheered his soul, that he may not be overcome by grief." Herein is the whole desert doctrine of condescension to the weak.
In the second, a brother found Achillas one day in his cell spitting blood, and asked what ailed him. He answered that a brother had come and grieved him, and he had striven not to reproach him, and had prayed God to take the harsh word out of his mouth; "and the word became as blood in my mouth. I have spat it out, and I am at peace, and have forgotten the offence." Other sayings show him plaiting rope through the night, and keeping the strict silence and vigil of Scetis. The tradition also gives him the surname the Confessor, remembering him as one who suffered for the faith in the persecutions of his day, though the Apophthegmata preserve only the sayings of his ascetic life.
Feast and commemoration
Achillas is commemorated on January 17 (church date; Old Calendar civil January 30), the feast of Anthony the Great, among whose spiritual heirs the Greek Menaion sets him: the day gathers the father of the desert and two of the desert's later sons, Achillas and Anthony the New of Berroia. His memory belongs to the general body of the Desert Fathers preserved in the synaxaria.
Hymns
Troparion — Tone 8
With the streams of thy tears thou didst till the barren wilderness, and by thy sighing from the depths thou didst make thy labours bear fruit a hundredfold; and thou becamest a luminary, shining upon the world with miracles, O Achillas our venerable father. Intercede with Christ our God, that our souls may be saved.
Original translation from the Greek
Iconography
Achillas is depicted, where he is shown at all, as an aged monk of the Egyptian desert in the schema, with a long beard, at prayer or holding a scroll of his sayings — of the common type of the anchoritic fathers. No icon of the saint has been identified in a form storable for this collection; the entry carries a description only.