Don Lattin

His long, brown-and-gray beard spilled over his soiled black robes, and he wore a leather cap over his shoulder-length brown hair.

Sitting down with his coffee, Lazarus told the story of how he came to Mar Saba and why he has stayed here for six years. After his epiphany at Holy Virgin Cathedral, he began reading books about the lives of the saints and the teachings of the desert fathers. He got a job in the bookstore at the Russian Orthodox cathedral, where he saw a volume about the Holy Land with a memorable picture of Mar Saba monastery.

“Ever since I saw that picture, I dreamed of coming here,” he said. “The silence of the desert is the perfect place for monastic life. There are no distractions here...no buildings, no cars, not even trees.”

Lazarus says he never gets lonely and rarely tires of the spartan, highly regulated life of prayer, worship, and meditation. “Being alone is not the same thing as loneliness. Here, I am alone with God,” he said. “Back in San Francisco, I had started to believe that the world was its distractions. Things like watching 49er games on television. But when you turn off the TV and tune out all the distractions, God reveals Himself.”

Lazarus can spend hours talking about St. Sabas. The founder of Mar Saba was born in Cappadocia, now known as Turkey, in 439 A.D. He entered a monastery there as a young man, but came to the Holy Land seeking the absolute solitude of a Christian hermit. —Beliefnet.com