Today (5 January) the calendar names three Desert Mothers: Sarah, Theodora, and Syncletica. They understood the toll life’s distractions take on faith and chose to live on the edges of fourth‑ and fifth‑century Christian life, practicing prayer, hospitality, and stubborn attention in quiet places.
Who were the Desert Mothers?
In the third through sixth centuries, as Christianity spread through the Eastern Mediterranean, many men and women withdrew into the deserts of Egypt, Syria, Palestine and beyond to pursue prayer, simplicity and communion with God. While the "Desert Fathers" are better known, women—often called the Desert Mothers or ammas (spiritual mothers)—were prominent: abbesses, recluses, teachers and spiritual guides. Figures such as Amma Syncletica of Alexandria, Amma Sarah, who lived beside a beautiful river, and Amma Theodora the wife then widow of a Roman tribune, modeled living intentionally aware of God’s presence in everything.
Their practices and priorities
The Desert Mothers journeyed into the desert existing on simple food, few possessions, silence, and long hours of prayer and watchful attention to the heart. They prized humility, vigilance (nepsis), repentance, and compassion. These three women withdrew from society and left the distractions of their world behind yet still received visitors, taught disciples, and gave practical spiritual counsel in aphorisms and short stories— 47 of which were later collected in the Apophthegmata Patrum—the "sayings" of the desert.
What they can teach us today
The Desert Mothers are not quaint relics of an ancient past. Their counsel speaks directly to women juggling busy lives—work, family, church, and the constant barrage of noise and responsibility.
Below are three short practices inspired by the desert mothers that you can start practicing today:
Desert Pause (2 minutes)
- Sit for two minutes. Breathe in for a count of 4, and breathe out for a count of 4. As you inhale, name one small thing you did well today. As you exhale, name one person you’ll hold in prayer for the next 24 hours.
Hospitality in a Bag
- Make a tiny packet (granola bar or tea bag + short note: "A small hello"). Leave it for a neighbor or hand it to someone at work. No fanfare — just bread, water, and attention.
Theodora’s Question for Hard Moments
- Before a tense conversation, hold this brief question for one breath: "What would open this person to kindness?" Use it to shift posture from winning to tending.
In adding these simple practices to our daily lives in the twenty-first century, we are reminded of Amma Syncletica who taught: “There are many who live in the desert yet behave as though they were in town, and they are wasting their time. It is possible to be a monastic in one’s mind while living in a crowd, and it is also possible for a monastic to live in a crowd amidst her own thoughts.”
Closing Prayer (Today’s Collect)
Fix our hearts on You, O God, in pure devotion, that aided by the example of your servants Sarah, Theodora, and Syncletica, the vain pursuits of this world may have no hold upon us, and that by the consuming fire of your Spirit, we may be changed into the image and likeness of your Son, Jesus Christ our Lord; to whom with you and the same Spirit be all honor and glory, now and for ever. Amen.