He was a native of Egypt, and born about the year 522. Having
performed a pilgrimage to Jerusalem, he retired to a desert near
the Red Sea, where he remained twenty-nine years in the constant
practice of a most austere penitential life. Here he was constantly
revolving in mind that we must love humiliations if we would be truly
humble; that at least we should receive those which God sends us with
resignation, and own them exceedingly less than the measure of our
demerits; that it is even sometimes our advantage to seek them; that
human prudence should not always be our guide in this regard; and
that there are circumstances where we ought to follow the impulse
of the Holy Spirit, though not unless we have an assurance of his
inspiration. The servant of God, animated by an ardent desire to be
contemptible among men, quitted the desert, and at Emesus succeeded
to his wish; for by affecting the manners of those who want sense,
he passed for a fool. He was then sixty years old, and lived six or
seven years in that city, when it was destroyed by an earthquake
in 588. His love for humility was not without reward, God having
bestowed on him extraordinary graces, and even honored him with the
gift of miracles. The year of his death is unknown. Although we are
not obliged in every instance to imitate St. Simeon, and that it
would be rash even to attempt it without a special call; yet his
example ought to make us blush, when we consider with what an ill
will we suffer the least thing that hurts our pride. See Evagrius, a
contemporary writer, l. 4, c. 5; the life of the saint by Leontius,
bishop of Napoli in Cyprus; that of St. John the Almoner; and the
Bollandists, t. 1, Jul. p. 129.