The Patience of Abbot Paphnutius

Now let us give the other example, that of Abbot Paphnutius. He always stayed so eagerly in the depths of that renowned and far-famed desert of Scete, where he is now the presbyter, that the other anchorites gave him the name Bubalis, because he always delighted to live in the desert as if by a kind of inborn liking. [a]

Even as a boy he was so good and so full of grace that the renowned and great men of that time admired his seriousness and steady constancy. Although he was younger in age, they put him on a level with the elders because of his virtues and thought fit to admit him to their order. Then the same envy that once stirred up the minds of his brothers against the patriarch Joseph inflamed one of the brothers with a burning and consuming jealousy. This man, wanting to mar his beauty with some blemish or spot, hit on this piece of devilry. He seized an opportunity when Paphnutius had left his cell to go to church on Sunday. He secretly entered the cell and slyly hid his own book among the palm leaves that Paphnutius used to plait. Then, sure of his well-planned trick, he went off to church himself as if with a pure and clean conscience.

When the whole service was over as usual, he brought his complaint, in the presence of all the brothers, to Saint Isidore, who was presbyter of this desert before this same Paphnutius, and declared that his book had been stolen from his cell. His complaint so disturbed the minds of all the brothers, and especially of the presbyter, that they did not know what to suspect or think first. All were overcome with the utmost astonishment at so new and unheard-of a crime. No one remembered it ever having been committed in that desert before that time, and it has never happened since. The man who had brought the matter forward as accuser urged that all should be kept in the church, and that certain chosen men should be sent to search the brothers’ cells one by one. The presbyter entrusted this to three of the elders. They turned over everyone’s sleeping places, and at last found the book hidden in the cell of Paphnutius, among the plaited palm leaves which they call seira, just where the plotter had hidden it.

The searchers at once brought it back to the church and produced it before everyone. Paphnutius was entirely clear in the sincerity of his conscience. Yet, like one who admitted the guilt of theft, he gave himself up wholly to making amends and humbly asked to be set a course of repentance. He did this because he guarded his sense of shame and modesty so carefully, and feared that if he tried to remove the stain of theft by words, he might be branded a liar besides, since no one would believe anything but what had been found. He left the church at once, not cast down in mind but trusting rather to the judgment of God. He shed tears continually at his prayers, fasted three times as often as before, and lay prostrate before men with all humility of mind. He submitted himself in this way, with flesh and spirit wholly crushed, for almost two weeks. Early on the mornings of Saturday and Sunday he came, not to receive Holy Communion, but to lie prostrate on the threshold of the church and humbly ask for pardon.

Then he who is the witness of all secret things and knows them would no longer test Paphnutius himself, nor let others slander him. The author of the crime, the wicked thief of his own property, the cunning slanderer of another’s good name, had done it with no man there as witness. But God made it known by means of the devil, who was himself the instigator of the sin. For the man was seized by a most fierce demon and made known all the craft of his secret plot, and the same man who had devised the accusation and the fraud betrayed it. He was so long and so grievously troubled by that unclean spirit that he could not be set free even by the prayers of the saints living there, who by divine gifts can command the demons. Nor could the special grace of the presbyter Isidore himself drive his cruel tormentor out of him, though by the Lord’s generosity such power had been given to Isidore that no one possessed was ever brought to his door without being healed at once. For Christ was keeping this glory for the young Paphnutius: that the man should be cleansed only by the prayers of the one he had plotted against, and that the jealous enemy should receive pardon for his offense and an end of his present punishment only by proclaiming the name of the one whose good name he had thought he could tarnish.

So in his early youth he already gave these signs of the character he would have, and even in his boyhood sketched the outlines of the perfection that was to grow up in his mature years. If, then, we want to reach his height of virtue, we must lay the same foundation to begin with.