Ascetic Life
Sarah dwelt in a cell adjacent to the Nile near Skete, one of the principal centers of early Egyptian monasticism. By tradition she practiced strict asceticism for approximately sixty years, deliberately refusing to gaze upon the river beside which she lived.
Her discipline is recorded as including abstention from wine and from laughter, and leaving her cell only to attend church. Her vita relates that throughout her life she contended against persistent demonic temptation toward fornication.
Though she lived in isolation, she received visitors, among them monks from Scetis, and her counsel was sought by other ascetics.
Sayings and Spiritual Teaching
Sarah's sayings are preserved in the Sayings of the Desert Fathers (the Apophthegmata Patrum) and in the Matericon. She is one of three desert mothers represented in the Alphabetical collection alongside Syncletica and Theodora, included among the 131 fathers and mothers of that collection. The scholar Averil Cameron has observed that the tradition draws no distinction between the wise sayings of the male anchorites and those of Amma Sarah, marking her as an equal authority in the ascetic tradition.
Among her recorded sayings: 'I put out my foot to ascend the ladder, and I place death before my eyes before going up it.' And on almsgiving: 'It is good to give alms for men's sake. Even if it is only done to please men, through it one can begin to seek to please God.'
The Matericon preserves her words on the remembrance of death and judgment: 'I fear three things: when the soul must depart from the body, when I must be presented to God, and when the last decree will be made about me on the day of Judgment. Thinking upon this I am terrified and tremble.' And her counsel to inner stillness: 'Be as though you were dead: do not care about human dishonor; nor about worldly glory; in stillness, retreat into your cell; continually remember only God and death, and you will be saved.'
The OCA synaxarion, which gives her title as Virgin Abbess Sarah of Sketis in Libya, preserves from The Paradise of the Fathers her saying on interior purity over external approval: 'If I were to ask God that all people might be built up through me, I would be found expressing contrition at the door of each one who repents. But I pray to God especially that my heart may be pure with Him.'
Sayings on Humility before Male Anchorites
The tradition records that Sarah answered sharply when challenged by male monks. By one account, when two anchorites visited and warned her, 'Be careful not to become conceited thinking to yourself: Look how anchorites are coming to see me, a mere woman,' she replied, 'According to nature I am a woman, but not according to my thoughts.'
A further version of her teaching on inner purity runs: 'If I prayed God that all people should approve of my conduct, I should find myself a penitent at the door of each one, but I shall rather pray that my heart may be pure toward all.'
