Mares the Singer
Our Venerable Father Mares the Singer, of Syria
Venerable · b. c. 344, at Omeros near Cyrrhus in Syria — d. c. 430
Commemorated 25 January — Repose of the ascetic Mares the Singer
Mares the Singer (c. 344 – c. 430) was a Syrian ascetic of the region of Cyrrhus, one of the solitaries whom Bishop Theodoret of Cyrrhus knew personally and described in his Religious History. Of good family and remarkable beauty in his youth, and gifted with a sweet and melodious voice, he renounced the world and shut himself up in a small hut near the village of Omeros, where he lived immured in ascetic struggle for thirty-seven years. Theodoret, who visited him, records that at his own request the bishop celebrated the Divine Liturgy in the old man's cell, using the deacons' hands as an altar — a Liturgy that Mares, having never in his long enclosure seen the Mysteries celebrated, received as the crown of his life. He reposed, aged about ninety, around the year 430, and is kept on January 25.
Mares was born about the year 344 at Omeros, a village in the territory of Cyrrhus in Syria, of a family of some standing. Theodoret, his fellow-countryman and bishop, remembered him as having been in his youth of an uncommon beauty of face and endowed with a sweet and tuneful voice — from which the tradition gives him the name "the Singer" (ὁ μελῳδός) — gifts that might have led him into the pleasures of the world but that he turned instead to the praise of God. Renouncing all, he built himself a small hut and shut himself within it, and there he remained in prayer, fasting, and psalmody for thirty-seven years, growing old in his enclosure.
The most tender scene of his life Theodoret tells of himself. Coming to visit the aged ascetic, the bishop found that in all his long seclusion Mares had never once seen the Divine Liturgy celebrated, and longed above all things to behold the holy Mysteries. Theodoret therefore had the sacred vessels brought, and, using the hands of the deacons in place of an altar, celebrated the Liturgy within the old man's hut — and Mares, receiving Communion, declared that he had been granted the fulfilment of every desire and had seen heaven upon earth. He was then, Theodoret says, about ninety years old; he reposed soon after, about the year 430. He is numbered among the desert fathers of Syria commemorated on January 25.
Feast and commemoration
Mares is kept on January 25 (church date; Old Calendar civil February 7), together with the ascetic Publius of Zeugma and the other saints of the day led by Gregory the Theologian. The Greek and Slavic synaxaria commemorate him on this day, drawing his memory from Theodoret's Religious History.
Hymns
Troparion — Tone 8
In thee, O Father, was the divine image preserved with exactness; for taking up thy cross, thou didst follow Christ, and by thy deeds thou didst teach us to despise the flesh, for it passeth away, but to care for the soul, a thing immortal. Therefore doth thy spirit, O venerable Mares, rejoice together with the angels.
Original translation from the Greek
Iconography
Mares is depicted as an aged monastic ascetic in the mantle and analavos of the schema, with a long white beard, at prayer before his hut or receiving the Mysteries — the type of the enclosed solitary. No securely identified early portrait icon of him is stored here; the saint wants an icon.