The Boys Who Died Carrying Figs

In the part where we set out to say something about strict fasting and abstinence, acts of kindness and deeds of love seem to have become mixed in. So, returning to our plan, we will include in this little book a remarkable deed done by some who were boys in years, though not in their spirit. [a]

Someone had brought Abbot John some figs from Mareotis in Libya, to everyone’s great surprise, since such a thing had never been seen in those parts. John was the steward in the desert of Scete; he had charge of the church in the days of the blessed presbyter Paphnutius, who had entrusted it to him. At once he sent the figs by the hands of two boys to an old man who lay ill in the farthest part of the desert, about eighteen miles from the church. The boys took the fruit and set out for the old man’s cell. But a thick fog suddenly came down, and they lost the right path altogether, something that easily happens there even to elders. All day and all night they wandered through the trackless desert and could not find the sick man’s cell at all. At last, worn out by the weariness of the journey and by hunger and thirst, they knelt down and gave up their souls to God in the very act of prayer.

Afterwards they were searched for a long time by the marks of their footsteps, which in those sandy regions are pressed in as if in snow, until a thin coat of sand, blown about by even a light breeze, covers them over again. When they were found, it turned out that they had kept the figs untouched, just as they had received them. They chose to give up their lives rather than their faithfulness to their charge, and to lose their life on earth rather than break the command of their elder.