Venerable Sisoes the Great

Sisoes was an Egyptian monk who spent some sixty years in the desert, in the end on the mountain where Antony the Great had lived, and was counted among the most respected elders of the fourth and fifth centuries; he died c. 429. His sayings are kept in the Sayings of the Desert Fathers. Asked how long a fallen brother must do penance, he is said to have refused to name a term of years, and to a brother who kept falling and rising he answered: rise again, until the end finds you either standing or fallen.

According to his Life, he saw Antony, the prophets and the apostles come to him as he lay dying, and asked to be given a little time to repent.