Her feast day in the Orthodox Church is celebrated on 5 January. Before she died she told those around her the day and hour which she would die and this came to pass as she predicted. She is believed to have died in her 80's, around 350 AD.

Syncletica is regarded as a 'Desert Mother' and her sayings are recorded with those of the Desert Fathers. Her holy life soon gained the attention of locals and gradually many women came to live as her disciples in Christ. When her parents died Syncletica and her sister gave all their inheritance to the poor and without haste, abandoned the life of the city and chose to reside in a tomb or crypt that belonged to a relative and adopted the life of a hermit. From childhood, Syncletica was drawn to God and had a great desire to dedicate her life to Him. She was from the great city of Alexandria, was of a wealthy background and is reputed to have been very beautiful. Chapter Four concludes this thesis with a sustained reading of John Climacus’ Scala Paradisi in which the various thematics centering on memory and practice of death are synthesized into the existential framework and practical response, respectively.Amma Syncletica was an Egyptian 4th century desert dweller. Chapter Three examines the sixth-century Quaestiones et Responsiones of Barsanuphius and John of Gaza in which further elaboration of the same thematic is discernible.

Chapter Two surveys material from the fifth- and sixth-century Egyptian and Palestinian deserts in which memory and practice of death are deployed in a wider variety of ways and are increasingly connected to ascetics’ fundamental understanding of self and salvation. Chapter One argues that the memory of death plays an important role in Athanasius’ Vita Antonii. In the Introduction I develop ways Climacus draws on and develops traditional material, while arguing that it must be treated and interpreted in its own right and not simply as his ‘sources.’ I then examine the vocabulary of death and the lines of thought opened up in the New Testament. In order to understand Climacus’ unique achievement in regard to engagement with death it is necessary first to situate the Ladder and its author within the literature of the Greek ascetic tradition, within which Climacus consciously wrote. This framework is expressed by thee ascetic practice of ‘memory of death’ and by practices of renunciation described as ‘death’ to oneself and others. I argue that John Climacus deploys language of death, inherited from a range of Greek Christian literature, as the symbolic framework within which he describes the ascetic lifestyle as developing a Christian identity. This thesis examines the role which death plays in the development of a uniquely Christian identity in John Climacus’ seventh-century work, the Ladder of Divine Ascent and the Greek ascetic literature of the previous centuries. Drawing on a contemporary Christian anthropology located in the lay life, obedience leads to the fullness of human flourishing which is characterised by both autonomy and vulnerability in the mystery of God. Essential to this for western Christianity is the recovery of a contemplative praxis and ‘embodied obedience’ such as in the eastern Christian tradition of the spiritual mother or father. In this context, obedience is experienced as a dynamic process of becoming, as a way of being in love, in which we are called to become the person we are created to be. I then outline an approach to obedience where it is understood as a pathway to human flourishing, which in the Christian understanding reaches its apogee in union with a God who is love. In this thesis, I point to some of the reasons for the negative perception of obedience in the Catholic West. In contrast to early Christians, for whom obedience was the fruit of the experience of the Spirit, many laypersons today are alienated and confused by notions of obedience. Instead the pursuit of individual autonomy and self-fulfilment are the dominant western narratives in relation to the self. It is seen as contributing to abuse and has been devalued as a quality leading to becoming fully human. By contrast, in western societies in general, the concept and practice of obedience is regarded with suspicion and confused with subservience. In all major religions including in the early Christian tradition and now more particularly in eastern Christianity, obedience to God is named as a foundational element of the spiritual path and, for Christians, essential to the attainment of the goal of deification. In the Christian tradition ‘obedience’ is understood as attentive inner listening to God's loving call and an outcome of the movement of grace.

Amma syncletica pronunciation