The Disobedient Prophet and the Illness of Abbot Paul

We see a clear instance of this in the case of that prophet and man of God in the third book of Kings. He was at once destroyed by a lion for a single fault of disobedience, and he was caught up in it not on purpose, nor through the fault of his own will, but through another man’s enticement. For the Scripture speaks of him like this: “It is the man of God who disobeyed the mouth of the Lord, and the Lord handed him over to the lion, and it tore him, according to the word of the Lord which he spoke.” In this case the restraint and abstinence of the beast of prey show both the punishment of his present offense and carelessness and the reward of his righteousness, for which the Lord gave his prophet over to the destroyer in this world. For that most savage creature did not dare even to taste the body that had been handed over to it. [a]

A very clear and plain proof of the same thing has been given in our own days in the case of the Abbots Paul and Moses, who lived in a place in this desert called Calamus. Paul had earlier lived in the wilderness near the city of Panephysis. We know that this had only recently been made a wilderness by a flood of salt water. Whenever the north wind blew, the water was driven out of the marshes and spread over the neighboring fields, covering the face of the whole district, so that the ancient villages, which for this very reason had been deserted by all their people, looked like islands. There, then, in the stillness and silence of the desert, Abbot Paul had made such progress in purity of heart that he would not allow, I will not say a woman’s face, but even the clothes of one of that sex to come into his sight. Once, as he was going to the cell of one of the elders together with Abbot Archebius, who lived in the same desert, a woman happened to meet him. He was so disgusted at meeting her that he dropped the business of the friendly visit he had set out on and dashed back to his own monastery faster than a man would flee from the face of a lion or a terrible dragon. He was not moved even by the shouts and pleas of Abbot Archebius, who called him back to go on with the journey they had undertaken, to ask the old man about what they had planned to do.

This was done out of eagerness for chastity and a desire for purity. Yet it was not done according to knowledge, and the keeping of discipline and the ways of proper strictness were strained too far, for he imagined that not merely familiarity with a woman, which is the real harm, but even the very form of that sex was to be loathed. Because of this he was at once overtaken by such a punishment that his whole body was struck with paralysis, and none of his limbs could do their proper work. Not only his hands and feet but even the movements of the tongue, by which we form our words, were affected, and his very ears lost the sense of hearing, so that nothing more of the man was left in him than a figure that could neither move nor feel. He was brought so low that the utmost care of men could not tend his weakness; only the gentle service of women could attend to his needs. For he was taken to a convent of holy virgins. There food and drink, which he could not ask for even by signs, were brought to him by women who attended him, and for everything nature required he was served by the same women for nearly four years, that is, until the end of his life. And though all his members were so weakened that none of his limbs kept its keen power of movement and feeling, such grace of goodness came from him that when sick people were anointed with the oil that had touched what should be called his corpse rather than his body, they were instantly healed of every disease. So, as regards his own illness, it was made clearly and plainly evident even to unbelievers that the weakness of all his limbs was caused by the providence and love of the Lord, and that the grace of these healings was granted by the power of the Holy Spirit as a witness to his purity and a display of his merits.