Paphnutius and the Test of Chastity

To prove what we have said by the testimony both of the ancients and of the divine sayings, we had better bring forward, in his own words and experience, what the blessed Paphnutius felt about admiring miracles and about the grace of purity, or rather what he learned from the revelation of an angel. For many years this man had been famous for his remarkable strictness, so that he imagined he was completely free from the snares of the lust of the flesh, since he felt himself above all the attacks of the demons, with whom he had fought openly and for a long time. Some holy men had come to him, and he was preparing for them a porridge of lentils, which they call athera. As it happened, his hand was burned in the oven by a flame that darted up. When this happened he felt deeply humiliated, and he began silently to think it over and ask himself: “Why is the fire not at peace with me, when my more serious battles with demons have ceased? Or how will that unquenchable fire, which searches out what everyone deserves, pass me by on that dread day of judgment and fail to hold me, if this trivial, passing fire from outside has not spared me?” [a]

As he was troubled by thoughts and vexation of this kind, a sudden sleep came over him, and an angel of the Lord came to him and said: “Paphnutius, why are you upset that this earthly fire is not yet at peace with you, while there still remains in your members some disturbance of the motions of the flesh that has not been completely removed? As long as the roots of this thrive within you, they will not let that material fire be at peace with you. And certainly you could not find it harmless unless you discovered, by proofs like these, that all these inward motions within you were destroyed. Go, take a naked and very beautiful virgin, and if, while you hold her, you find that the peace of your heart stays steady and the heat of the flesh is still and quiet within you, then the touch of this visible flame too will pass over you gently and without harm, as it did over the three young men in Babylon.”

The elder was struck by this revelation and did not try the dangers of the experiment that had been shown him from heaven. Instead he questioned his own conscience and examined the purity of his heart. He judged that the weight of his purity was not yet enough to outweigh the force of this test, and he said: “It is no wonder that, when the battles with unclean spirits come on me, I still feel the flames of the fire raging against me, which I used to think of less importance than the savage attacks of demons. For it is a greater virtue and a grander grace to put out the inward lust of the flesh than to subdue, by the sign of the Lord and the power of the might of the Most High, the wicked demons that rush on us from outside, or to drive them by calling on the divine name out of the bodies they have possessed.”

So far Abbot Nesteros. Having finished his account of the true working of the gifts of grace, he went with us to the cell of the elder Joseph, which was nearly six miles from his own, since we were eager for instruction in his teaching.