St. Isidora of Tabenna

Isidora was a nun of the great women's monastery at Tabennisi in Egypt, the community founded under the rule of St. Pachomius. Among the four hundred sisters of that convent she chose for herself the lowest of all places, and concealed the gifts God had given her under the appearance of folly and derangement.

She wore a rag bound about her head instead of the monastic veil, worked in the kitchen at every menial labor, ate only the scraps and the crumbs left from the pots, and never sat at table with the others. The sisters mocked her, struck her, and treated her as one out of her mind, and she bore all their contempt without a word of complaint, never angry, never idle, praying always in secret.

Her hidden sanctity was revealed when an angel appeared to the great anchorite Pitirim of Porphyrite, telling him that a woman more pleasing to God than he dwelt at Tabennisi, wearing a crown upon her head. Coming to the convent, the old man asked to see all the sisters; and when Isidora was at last brought forward against her will, he bowed to the ground before her and asked her blessing, declaring that she was the holy one the angel had shown him.

The sisters, astonished, fell at her feet and begged forgiveness for their long mistreatment. But Isidora, unable to bear the honor and praise of men, secretly left the monastery and was never found again; whether she withdrew into the desert or fell asleep in the Lord no one knew. The Church keeps her memory on the first of May and honors her as the first of the fools-for-Christ, who counted the world's esteem as nothing for the sake of humility.