The life of St David of Thessalonica
Drawing on the example of the Old Testament king who shared his name and of the stylites who prayed atop pillars, David chose an unusual form of asceticism of his own: he climbed into an almond tree beside the monastery church and remained there for three years, exposed to heat and cold, keeping a strict fast and constant prayer. Tradition holds that at the end of those three years an angel appeared to him, telling him his trial had been accepted and that he should now come down and continue his ascetic life quietly in a cell rather than in the open. He was known in his own time and after for a gift of healing and for the plain, sound counsel he gave to the many who sought him out, a reputation that drew crowds to him even in his more hidden later years. He reposed around 540, his memory kept on June 26, with a second commemoration in September marking the later translation of his relics.
