St. Simeon Stylites — The Catholic Saint Who Lived 37 Years on a 50-Foot Pillar

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What would you do if the only way to escape
everyone was to make yourself impossible to

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ignore? Now, hold that thought. A man has been
standing on top of a stone column for over

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a decade. Not sitting, not lying down to sleep
most nights. Standing, praying, exposed to

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the weather on a platform smaller than most
kitchen tables. He climbed up there to get

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away from people. Now, people travel hundreds
of miles just to look at him.

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Hi, my name is John O'Connor and this is Everyday
Saints. This is episode 16. If you are new

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here, welcome to the porch. Stick around if
this hits you. Subscribe so you don't miss

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next week, a new saint every Thursday. It's
back to an unknown saint this week, though

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once you hear what he actually did with his
life, you might understand why people never

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forgot him, even if they forgot his name. This
is the story of Saint Simeon Stylites. Hold

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on to that one question about disappearing.
We'll come back to it before we're done today.

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Simeon was born around 390 AD in a region called
Cilicia in what's now southern Turkey. His

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family raised sheep and as a boy, he worked
the family flock the way generations before

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him had. Long days outdoors, watching animals,
learning the land. The kind of quiet, repetitive

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work that leaves a lot of time for a young mind
to think. When he was around 13, on an ordinary

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day like any other, he went into the village
church and heard a sermon on the Beatitudes,

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the part of the gospel where Jesus lists out
who's actually blessed, the poor in spirit,

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those who mourn, those who hunger for what's
right. And according to the earliest accounts

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of his life, something about that sermon hit
him hard enough that he left the flock that

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same day and went looking for a way to give
his entire life to God. Not next week, not

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after he thought it over, that same day. He
found a nearby monastery and asked to join.

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Monastic life at that time was already demanding
by almost any modern standard. Long fasts,

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hours of prayer, physical labor, very little
sleep. The monks there noticed something in

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him early. He wasn't just willing to keep up.
He kept looking for more to give up. Simeon

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did all of it. and then consistently did more
than what was asked. If the community passed

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it for two days a week, he'd push for three.
If the others slept in shifts, he'd stay up

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praying instead. Now, the abbot and the other
monks noticed, and it wasn't entirely read

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as a good sign. There's a real difference in
monastic thinking. between someone deepening

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their devotion and someone using hardship to
punish themselves for reasons that have nothing

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to do with God. It's not always easy to tell
those two things apart from the outside, and

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it wasn't easy with Simeon either. This became
a pattern that followed him his entire life.

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Whatever level of hardship the other monks were
living at, Simeon pushed past it. At one point,

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Simeon reportedly wound up wrote, tightly around
his own body underneath his clothes for such

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a long stretch of time that it cut into his
skin and the wound became infected. The other

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monks didn't discover it until the smell gave
it away. When they found him, they had to cut

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the rope out of his flesh and by most accounts,
it took a real effort to remove it without

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doing even more damage. Now, that kind of self-punishment
wasn't seen as holy by his fellow monks. It

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was seen as dangerous and disordered, even by
monks who were already living lives most of

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us would call extreme. The monastery eventually
asked him to leave, worried that his practices

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were less about drawing closer to God and more
about something unhealthy he could not control

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in himself. Simeon didn't tone it down after
that. He went out on his own and kept pushing

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further. He spent one entire length 40 days
before Easter without eating or drinking a

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single thing, a stretch of self-denial so extreme
that even people used to fasting found it hard

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to believe and some who had heard about it simply
refused to accept that it had happened. He

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lived for periods chained to a rock on a mountainside
exposed to the elements with barely enough

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food to stay alive. He tried nearly every form
of physical hardship available to a man in

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that era who wanted to strip his own life down
to almost nothing but prayer. And it kept drawing

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crowds. Now that was the part he didn't expect.
The harder he pushed himself away from ordinary

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human comfort, the more people showed up to
watch him do it, ask him for prayers, and try

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to touch him for a blessing. Word traveled
fast in that part of the world, even without

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anything like roads or communication we'd recognize
today. A man doing something nobody else was

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willing to do tends to get talked about, whether
he wants the attention or not. By the early

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420s, the crowds around Simeon had become overwhelming.
People traveled from all over the region hoping

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to see him, touch him, get a scrap of clothing
that he'd blessed, or just be near him. Some

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came out of real faith. Others came the way
people show up for any famous figure. hoping

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for a miracle, a cure, a story to bring home.
For a man who'd left a shepherd's flock specifically

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to get closer to God in solitude, this was the
opposite of what he wanted. He'd built his

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entire life around stripping away distraction,
and instead, he'd become the biggest distraction

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in the region. So he tried something nobody
around him had really done before. He built

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a stone pillar, and he climbed on top of it.
and he stayed there. The first pillar was modest.

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Historians estimate somewhere around nine feet
tall, barely higher than a person standing

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on another person's shoulders. Over the following
decades, he kept building taller ones and moving

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up to each new one, eventually settling on
a pillar that stood somewhere around 50 feet

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in the air, with a small platform at the top,
maybe six feet across. That's roughly the height

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of a five-story building standing on a space
not much bigger than a closet. He lived up

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there by most accounts for close to 37 years.
Here's the twist he didn't see coming. And

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it's the whole reason people still talk about
this man 1700 years later. Getting higher didn't

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make the crowd smaller. It made them bigger.
Instead of solving his problem, The pillar

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turned him into one of the most famous religious
figures in the entire Eastern Roman Empire.

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Pilgrims came from Gaul, modern-day France,
from Spain, from Persia. Emperors wrote him

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letters asking for his advice and his prayers.
He preached down to the crowds below twice

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a day, settled disputes, and is credited with
converting entire groups of pagans and nomadic

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Arab tribes to Christianity, all from a platform
he could barely lie down on. He tried to disappear,

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and it made him more visible than almost anyone
alive. Living conditions up there were about

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as hard as you would guess. He was exposed to
the sun, wind, and rain, as well as the cold,

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with essentially no shelter beyond what he could
rig up himself. In summer, the stone platform

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would have baked under the Syrian sun all day,
with nowhere to retreat from it. In winter,

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There was nothing between him and the wind but
the clothes on his back. Disciples built a

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small ladder against the pillar so people could
climb part way up to bring him food and water,

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which was hauled the rest of the way by rope
and basket. He slept very little and when he

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did, it said he often stood upright, leaning
against a low railing at the platform's edge

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rather than lying down, since the space was
too small and too exposed to make lying down

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comfortable or in bad weather, even safe. He
wore an animal skin garment and an iron chain

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by some accounts around his neck or waist for
a portion of his time up there. One more layer

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of the same instinct that got him kicked out
of that first monastery, just channeled into

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something that this time drew people toward
him instead of driving them away. Below him,

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the scene never really quieted down. Merchants
set up stalls to sell food and supplies to

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the pilgrims who were arriving. Sick people
were carried in on stretchers, hoping to be

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close enough for him to pray over them. At certain
hours, he would lean over the edge of that

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tiny platform and preach down to the crowd,
and by every account, thousands of people at

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a time would go completely silent to listen
to a man they could barely see, fifty feet

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above their heads. A quick word on how solid
this story is, historically speaking. Simeon

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is one of the better documented saints from
this early period of the church. Multiple contemporary

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writers, some of whom claimed to have seen him
with their own eyes, wrote accounts of his

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life while people who knew him were still alive
to correct the record. That doesn't mean every

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detail is airtight. Ancient biographers loved
a good number. and pillar heights vary somewhat

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depending on which source you read. But the
core of it, a man who spent decades living

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on top of a stone column in the Syrian desert,
is about as well-attested as ancient history

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gets. Now, Simeon stayed on that final pillar
until his death in 459 AD, at close to 70 years

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old. His disciples noticed he hadn't moved or
spoken in several days, and they eventually

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climbed up to check on him. they found him bent
forward in a posture of prayer, already gone.

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Word of his death reportedly emptied entire
towns, with people traveling for days just

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to see his body before burial. He was carried
down from the pillar he'd lived on for nearly

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four decades, and buried with the kind of honor
usually reserved for emperors, not shepherds.

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Simeon didn't just do something unusual once.
He accidentally started a whole category of

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Christian devotion. In the centuries after his
death, other monks began building their own

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pillars and living out their lives on top of
them the same way, calling themselves stylites

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from the Greek word for pillar. Some of these
later stylites lived on their columns for decades

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too, and the practice continued in parts of
the Christian world for hundreds of years after

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Simeon himself was gone. It's a strange kind
of legacy for a man who never set out to start

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a movement. He climbed up there to get away
from people. not to become a model other men

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could deliberately copy. But that's exactly
what happened. The thing he did to escape attention

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became, for later generations, the very definition
of extreme devotion, the standard other monks

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measured themselves against, the same way Simeon
once measured himself against the monks in

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that first monastery he was asked to leave.
Hold that thought. Remember I asked you to,

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right at the start? What would you do if the
only way to escape everyone was to make yourself

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impossible to ignore? Now, I don't think Simian
ever set out to answer that question, but his

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whole life ended up being the answer anyway.
He built that pillar to get away from people.

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It's the opposite of what actually happened.
The higher he climbed, trying to put distance

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between himself and the crowd, the more of the
world found its way to him. I think most of

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us have some version of a pillar, not a stone
one, but something we build to create distance

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from people, from noise, from a life that's
asking more of us than we think we can give.

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And most of the time, we build it hoping it'll
make us smaller, quieter, and harder to reach.

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Simeon's story suggests that's not usually
how it works. The things we do in genuine devotion

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even the ones meant to be private, even the
ones meant to shrink us down and out of view,

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have a way of becoming visible anyway. Not because
we are trying to be seen, because real conviction

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is hard to ignore, whether you're standing on
a stage in front of an emperor or standing

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alone on top of a pillar in the middle of a
desert. Here's the part I think we usually

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get wrong when we tell this story though. It's
easy to hear, Simeon tried to disappear and

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ended up famous instead, and walk away thinking
the lesson is that hiding never works, so don't

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bother trying. I don't think that said it at
all. Simeon wasn't running away from people

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because he hated them in my opinion. He was
running toward God, and the crowd just happened

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to be standing in the way of that pursuit. The
Pillow was never really about escaping human

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beings. It was about removing every possible
distraction between himself and the one thing

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he actually wanted. The fact that it didn't
work the way he expected doesn't mean the reason

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behind it was wrong. That distinction matters
because it's the difference between running

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from something and running towards something.
Running from people usually leaves you bitter

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when they find you anyway. Running toward God,
even imperfectly, even by the way of a 50 foot

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pillar in the Syrian desert, tends to leave
you useful when they do. Simeon didn't get

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angry when the crowd showed up at the base of
his column. He preached to them. He prayed

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for them. He let the very thing he was trying
to escape become the exact shape his ministry

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took for the next 37 years. There's something
else in this story worth sitting with too.

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Simeon never came down. Not once in 37 years
did he decide the attention was too much and

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climbed back to the ground to live a quieter
life. He could have. Nobody was forcing him

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to stay up there once the crowds arrived. He
stayed anyway and he kept preaching to them,

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kept praying for them, kept using the very attention
he never wanted as a way to actually reach

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people. The pillar didn't get him what he originally
wanted. but he used it for something better

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instead. I think that's the real test underneath
all of this. And it's the one I keep coming

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back to for myself. It's not, can you avoid
the crowd? Most of us can't, not for long,

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not really. It's when the crowd shows up anyway,
uninvited, in the middle of the thing you

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were doing quietly for God alone. Do you resent
them for finding you? Or do you let what you

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were already doing become useful to them too?
So here's the question this week. Is there

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something you are doing quietly out of real
conviction that you assume nobody notices?

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And if people did start noticing, would you
resent the attention or would you do what Simeon

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did and let it become part of the work instead
of a distraction from it? Think on that. Lord,

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thank you for Simeon. Thank you for a man who
tried to disappear into you and instead became

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impossible to miss. For anyone listening who
feels like their quiet faithfulness goes unnoticed,

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let them trust that nothing done for you is
ever wasted, even from the top of a pillar

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nobody was supposed to be watching. And for
anyone who's ever resented being found in the

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middle of something private, give them Simeon's
patience. to let it be used anyway. Amen.

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Simeon Stylites is considered the founder of
an entire form of Christian devotion. Later

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monks known as Stylites imitated him, living
out their own lives on pillars for decades

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after his death. He's recognized as the patron
saint of shepherds, fitting for a man who started

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his life tending sheep and ended it, leading
far more people than he ever expected to. His

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feast day is January 5th in the Western Church
and September 1st in the Eastern Church. Well,

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that is episode 16. If this one surprised you,
send it to somebody who needs to hear it. Next

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week, we are back to a known saint, someone
you will recognize the second I say the name,

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with a story that's going to change what you
think you know about him. I'm John O'Connor.

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Thanks for sitting on the porch with me, and
I will see you next week.