Saint OkeenAbba Evkin · Mar Awgin
العربية

Saint Okeen

In the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit, one God. Amen.

Okeen, also Awgin, Augin, Oshin or Evkin, means prayer, supplication or litany (oushia).

Saint Okeen, or Awgin, was an Egyptian monk born in the region of Clysma (al-Qulzum), today’s Suez. He worked as a diver in the waters of the Red Sea, gathering precious pearls and selling them, and remained in this trade for twenty-five years.

He became a monk in one of the monasteries of Saint Pachomius in the region of Thebes in Upper Egypt. Shortly afterward he went to live in the region of the Mountain of Nitria, which had been founded by Saint Amoun the Solitary.

When he became known for his holiness and miracles and his fame spread far and wide, he feared vainglory and left. He went with some of his disciples to the lands of Syria and Mesopotamia, where he preached the name of Christ and brought many to the Christian faith. There he founded a monastery on Mount Izla near the city of Nisibis, in northern Mesopotamia. Many became his disciples, and their number reached seventy, the number of the disciples whom the Lord Christ sent out to preach (Luke 10).

We have not found the names of all of his disciples, only a few, such as Ologh al-Sab’i (“of the lion”), Thomas, Elisha, Isaiah, Serapion, Zacharias, Mar Habib, Mar Bisiana, and Michael, the writer of his Life.

Many of his disciples founded monasteries in Mesopotamia and Persia, and these were filled with monks. But when the Nestorian heresy spread in Mesopotamia and Persia, the Nestorians seized the Monastery of Mar Okeen on Mount Izla and many of the monasteries of his disciples.

Mar Okeen is regarded as the founder of monasticism in Mesopotamia and Persia.

When he had completed his good course, he fell briefly ill. He blessed his monk disciples, signed himself with the sign of the holy Cross, and delivered his pure soul into the hands of Christ, whom he had loved, worshipped and served in all faithfulness. This was in the month of April (Nisan) in the year 363 AD. His disciples prayed over him in deep sorrow and buried him in the monastery cemetery with great honor.

We present this fragrant life of a great saint whom the Church remembers every day, asking his intercession as “Abba Evkin” in the Commemoration of the Saints in the Tasbeha (Midnight Praises), and in the great Commemoration of the Liturgy of Saint Basil. His Life was recorded in the manuscripts of the El-Sourian Monastery.

Read His Life

Sources

  • The History of Monasticism, by His Holiness Pope Shenouda III
  • The Life of Saint Mar Okeen, by His Grace Anba Matthaeus, Bishop and Abbot of the Monastery of the Virgin Mary (El-Sourian)
  • Manuscript no. 297 (Homilies), Library of the El-Sourian Monastery
  • Martyrs of the East (Shuhada' al-Mashriq), vol. 2, Mosul 1906, pp. 11–33
  • Philippe de Tarrazi, The Golden Age of the Syriacs, 2nd ed., Aleppo 1979, p. 42
  • Metropolitan Severius Yaqub, The Syriac Church of Antioch, vol. 1, Beirut 1953, p. 284