Orphaned at a young age and raised by his uncle who was a monastic, St. Stephen began living the ascetic life near the Monastery of St. Sabas even before he took the veil. As such, when he did become a monk the brethren were so impressed by his obedience and renunciation that they began to treat him with a reverence that threatened his peace. In an attempt to preserve it, he asked to live as a hermit till the celebration of Pascha that year. Receiving a blessing, he withdrew into the wilderness where he engaged in continuous battle through prayer with the demons and his passions until Great and Holy Thursday when he returned to the monastery. Having returned, the monks treated him with an even greater awe, regarding his as an angel sent to them by God. At the same time, the demons suggested that, having advanced so far beyond his fellows, he ought to lessen his ascetic efforts. When he resisted, they attempted to crush him bodily under a large boulder. Hoping to avoid the shifting sands of prelest, he fled back to his hermitage where lived in solitude for 15 years. He continued the battle by standing in prayer for long hours, then making countless prostrations all built on the spiritual foundation of perpetually increasing fasting. By such labors he was given the grace to withstand that fierce assaults of the demons. He would never let himself be idle, always busying himself with the labor necessary for his survival. Eventually, he was discovered by a small group of men whom he allowed to become his disciples. Having been ordained a priest, he was regularly filled and surrounded by the uncreated light as he served. It radiated outwards from him, burning up the demons in the area. Having become a precious vessel of the Holy Spirit purged from all passions, he was given the gift of true prophecy and clear sight which he used to recognize and drive off a demon that had a possessed a young woman. Yet, for all of this, it was his humility and love for his disciples that shown through. When one of them came to confess that he was harboring blasphemous thoughts suggested by a demon, the Saint simply caused the man to place his hand on the back of his next as the High Priest did with the goat for Azazel on the Day of Atonement, and announced that he would answer for that sin on the Day of Judgment. After that, and by Saint Stephen’s prayer, the disciple was completely freed from all such temptation.