John the Dwarf

John was born about the year 339 and came as a young man, with his brother Daniel, to the monastic desert of Scetis in Lower Egypt, the great nursery of early monasticism, where he placed himself under the direction of an experienced elder (named in the tradition as Abba Ammoes, or associated in some notices with the community of Pimen the Great). His nickname, Kolobos, "the Dwarf" or "the Short," marks his small physical stature; the sayings show him as one who had by nature a quick and fervent temper, which the discipline of the desert and long obedience transformed into meekness.

The tree of obedience

The most famous story told of him belongs to his novitiate. His elder, to test and train his obedience, planted a dry stick of wood in the ground and commanded John to water it each day until it should bear fruit. The nearest water was so far off that he had to set out in the evening and return only by morning; yet John did this without questioning for three years, and at the end of that time the dead wood came to life, put out leaves, and bore fruit. The elder gathered the fruit, carried it to the church, and gave it to the brethren, saying, "Take and eat the fruit of obedience." The tale became a byword in the monastic tradition for the power of obedience carried through against all reason.

Sayings and ascetic teaching

John belongs to the first rank of the fathers quoted in the Apophthegmata Patrum, the collected sayings of the desert, and a large number of anecdotes and counsels are transmitted under his name. They present him as a master of humility and inward watchfulness who nonetheless knew his own weakness: one saying tells how he prayed to be freed of all passion and, finding himself without struggle, went to a wiser elder and asked that the warfare be given back to him, "for it is through struggle that the soul makes progress." Another day, absorbed in the vision of God, he forgot the basket he was carrying to the buyer; others show his gentleness in bearing insult, his refusal to judge, and his teaching that the monk should be like a man who sees but is not seen. His figure, with that of his contemporaries Arsenius the Great — whom he himself received and tonsured at Scetis — Poemen and Macarius, defines the classic ideal of Scetiote monasticism.

Repose

When the monastic settlements of Scetis were devastated by a raid of desert barbarians — the sack that scattered the fathers early in the fifth century — John withdrew, like many of the brethren, eastward toward the Red Sea. He came to Clysma, near the site of the modern Suez, at the foot of the mountain of Antony, and there he reposed, about the year 409. His relics were later translated and honoured; his memory was kept both in Egypt and throughout the Byzantine world.