Our Reverend Father Thalassius flourished in the first half of the seventh century and was a Presbyter and abbot of a monastery in the Libyan deserts. With love for piety, this blessed Abba combined his love for spiritual enlightenment and was heavily involved in the study of Holy Scripture. He was a contemporary of St. Maximus the Confessor, with whom he was in spiritual communion. There are several letters from St. Maximus to him; and a whole book is dedicated to him, containing an explanation of difficult passages of Holy Scripture. St. Maxim highly revered this Abba, and in one letter even calls him his mentor. His blessed death probably followed no later than 660. His proposed four hundred sayings about love, abstinence and spiritual life are full of edification. They are all predominantly of a moral and ascetic content, but there are also those that contain dogmatic thoughts, which St. Damascus used in his presentation of the faith. If you read in a row only the initial letters of the sayings in the original; then you get a certain thought, which is placed at the beginning of each centenary.