“When I learn the first verse, I’ll come to you again.”
“There was an abba named Pambo, of whom it was said that for three years he prayed to God in this way: ‘Do not glorify me on earth.’ But God glorified him so much that no one could look at his face because of the glory it possessed.”
There are places where the wind erases footprints as fast as a person can leave them. Through the silent sands of Egypt, under the scorching sky, a man once walked and settled on a mountain not far from Anthony the Great and a few other hermits. His name was preserved for us through the centuries in the patericon, although he himself sought not fame, but complete solitude.
Pambo was a simple man. He had a wife and two sons. At one time, it came to Pambo’s heart to go to the desert to struggle, although his family wanted him to stay in the world. When he came to the brethren, he found an elder and said to him: “Teach me a psalm,” because he himself was illiterate. The elder began to teach him a psalm: I said, I will take heed to my ways, lest I sin with my tongue. (Ps. 38:1). As soon as the elder had uttered the beginning of the psalm Pambo stopped him and said: “Father, until I learn the beginning, I will not be able to learn the rest.” After that, he withdrew and spent eight years repeating the words he had learned. From then on, he did not meet with anyone. He said, “Until I first learn to control my tongue, I will not see anyone, for I fear I might fall because of my tongue.” After eight years had passed, he went back to the elder who had given him the psalm. The elder asked him, “Pambo, why haven’t we seen you until now?” Abba Pambo replied: “I haven’t yet learned the first verse, which is why I haven’t come to you for the second one. When I learn the first verse, I will come to you again.” After that, he returned to his cell and spent another ten years there, meeting with no one.
Abba Pambo is one of the well known Egyptian ascetics of the fourth century, a representative of the first generation of desert fathers. He lived in Nitria, a monastic center on the western edge of the Nile Delta, near the border of the Libyan Desert. It was here that the first settlements of hermits arose, who sought a life of solitary prayer.
We sin greatly with our tongues, we cause much distress to our neighbors, and we create many temptations. But the tongue can no man tame; it is an unruly evil, full of deadly poison. (James 3:8). But one can always retreat into the inner wilderness and there plead with God: Set a watch, O Lord, before my mouth, and a door of enclosure about my lips. (Psalm 140:3). Don’t rush to speak or respond; first ask yourself, feel how your words will be perceived. Ancient people spoke more slowly than modern ones because they thought about the words they were about to utter.
Abba Pambo said: “With God’s help, since I renounced the world, I have not repented of the words I have spoken. For I have never spoken without first considering the word, so as to understand whether it is for life or for death. Otherwise, I would not have uttered it.”
The elder recounted: “One brother asked Abba Pambo whether it was good to praise one’s neighbor. He replied to him: It is better to remain silent.”
This is what distinguished Abba Pambo from many others: When people asked him about any word of Scripture or about spiritual matters, he did not answer immediately, but said that he did not know, and so he would not give an answer for a month or even longer.
Ascetics
Nitria greeted one with its harsh climate. During the day, the air was scorching, and at night the temperature dropped sharply. There was little water, sandstorms made travel difficult, and the remoteness from populated areas required endurance. At the same time, the desert landscape impressed the onlooker with its unique beauty: the vast sky, the clear dry air, the gentle outlines of the sand dunes, and the rare green oases created a sense of silence—which was what the monks came here for.
Nitrian Desert
One day, Abba Pambo and the brethren were walking through the land of Egypt. Seeing the laypeople sitting along the way, he said to them: “Stand up and greet the monks so that you may receive blessing; for they are in constant conversation with God, and their lips are holy.”
It was said of Abba Pambo, Abba Bessarion, Abba Isaiah, and Abba Paisius that they were very strong. One day, they were talking with Abba Afra, and the presbyter of Mount Nitria asked them how should the brethren live their lives. The elders replied: in great asceticism and by keeping their conscience clear before their neighbor.
Saint Athanasius the Great asked Abba Pambo to come from the desert to Alexandria. Upon arriving in the city, the abba saw an actress from the theater there and began to weep. Those who were with him asked him why he was weeping. The elder replied: “two things sadden me: the first is that I see a lost soul, and the second is that my own ungrateful soul does not have the same zeal to please God and has not been adorned with the virtues and deeds that are pleasing to God and His Angels.”
Abba Pimen said that Abba Anthony said about Abba Pambo: “By fearing God, he made it so that the Holy Spirit dwelt in him.”
Non acquisition, obedience, mercy
Pambo was distinguished by a rare combination of silence, diligence, and strict asceticism. He earned his living through his own labor, avoided excesses, and sought inner concentration, like other monks. He went to the desert not to escape the world, but to free himself from everything that distracts a person from spiritual life and requires constant internal decisions.
It was said of Abba Pambo that he was so unattached to material wealth that he had nothing except his clothes. Before his repose, he wove a basket, and when he had finished it, he said to his disciple: “Take this basket as a memento, for I have nothing else to leave you.” And with these words, he gave his soul to the Lord. The blessed Melania took this basket and kept it until her death.
Melania recounted: “After my arrival from Rome in Alexandria, I asked the presbyter Abba Isidore to take me to the desert to see Abba Pambo. When we arrived, I gave him a silver box with three hundred coins as a gift, pleading with him to accept my offering. Abba didn’t even look at the box; he just kept sitting and weaving a basket, not even raising his eyes to look at me, and only said in a low voice: ‘May God bless you for your deed and may He grant you a reward in Heaven.’ And then he said: ‘Put the box by the window.’
“Then he called his steward, Theodore, and said to him: ‘This woman brought this to serve God. Take it, go and distribute it to the elders of Kellia and Livia, to the brethren living in the rocks and on the islands, for these monasteries are poorer than the others, and to the silent ones who are in need.’
“I expected him to praise me for such a generous act of charity, but he only said: ‘I don’t need to know how much you gave in charity, but the One to whom you gave knows without counting both the amount of money and the disposition with which the charity was given, and He will reward you with eternal blessings.’”
Once, four brothers, dressed in leather, came to the great Pambo from the Skete, and each of them told him about the virtues of the others: one fasted a great deal; another was unattached to worldly goods; the third had great love; and about the fourth, they said that he had already been in obedience to his elder for twenty two years. Abba Pambo replied to them: “I tell you that the virtue of the last one is higher than all the others, for each of you clings to your own will, acquiring this or that virtue, while he does the will of another, having cut off his own will.” Such people are like confessors if they remain obedient to the very end.
Abba Theodore of Ferme asked Abba Pambo: “Give me some guidance!” With great reluctance, he replied: “Theodore! Go and be merciful to everyone, for mercy has boldness before God.”
How the demons made the elder laugh
For the hermits, silence was the battlefield of continuous spiritual warfare. In solitude, the usual worldly concerns disappeared, and a person was left face to face with his own passions and with temptations from the evil one and the demons. Therefore, the desert was not a refuge from the struggle, but a place of its highest intensity. Victory was achieved through prayer, humility, and constant vigilance over one’s thoughts and feelings. Here, amidst the heat, the stones, and the silence, was born experience that was to have a profound influence on the development of Christian monasticism.
They said of Abba Pambo that there was never a smile on his face. One day, the demons, wanting to make him laugh, tied a feather to a tree and carried it, making noise and shouting: “Come on! Come on! Pull! Pull!” Seeing them, Abba Pambo laughed. The demons began to swirl around and shout: “Eh! Eh! Pambo laughed!” Abba said in response: “I did not laugh, but I ridiculed your helplessness—that so many of you are carried off by a single feather.”
A brother asked Abba Pambo: Why do the demons hinder me from doing good to my neighbor? The elder replied: Do not say that, for in this way you are calling God a liar; but rather say: “I do not want to do good deeds.” For, even before that, God said: Behold, I give unto you power to tread on serpents and scorpions, and over all the power of the enemy (Luke 10:19).
They spoke of Abba Pambo: just as Moses received the image of the glory of Adam when his face was glorified (conf. Ex. 34:29), so Abba Pambo’s face shone like lightning, and he was like a king sitting on his throne.
Exodus and fear of judgment
It was said of Abba Pambo that as he was approaching death, at the age of seventy, at the very hour of his passing, he said to the holy men standing around him, “Since the time when, having come to this desert, I built myself a cell and settled in it, I do not remember ever eating any bread other than that acquired by my own hands, and I have never repented of the words I have ever spoken, even up to this very hour. And now I am departing to God as if I had never yet begun to serve Him.”
The brethren said: “Father, are you not sure that your labor and your deeds are from God?” He replied: “Until now, as far as I could, I have forced myself to keep the commandments, but how can I know what will happen to me when I meet the Lord? There is one judgment from God, and another from man. It is in His power to show mercy. If He shows me mercy, He will bestow upon me the blessing of His love. But if He wishes to hold me accountable, I will not be able to stand before Him without sin.”
We can be mistaken in both directions. We can be mistaken in thinking that we will be saved, and we can also be mistaken in thinking that God will condemn us. Some of us become discouraged because we haven’t acquired virtue, because we haven’t overcome our passions. But if you work hard, try, make an effort, fall, get up again, strive to win, to do what is right, hope in God’s mercy—God knows our strength. The effort comes from us, the result from Him. One person said: “A fall becomes a problem if you don’t try to get back up.”
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Although the paterika mostly describe monks who lived in the desert, they contain the quintessence of Christianity and serve as spiritual guidelines for any person. They are easy to read, because the holy fathers were simple people. They contain only what the Lord calls us to in the Gospel, and nothing more. People went into the deserts for no other reason than to live out the Gospel as best they could. Abba Pambo reminds us that discipline, restraint, and the ability to keep one’s tongue and maintain inner silence are always needed, especially in an era of constant informational noise.
Abba Pambo said: “If you have a pure heart, you can be saved.”
He also said: “If you have holy love, you can be saved.”
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The text contains fragments of Paterika:
1. Four Egyptian Hermits (based on the Coptic fragments of the “Lives of the Fathers”, Translated from French by V.A. Fadeev; Introduction and commentary by Schearchim. Gabriel (Bunge); commentary by Hieromonk Adalbert (Vogüé) (Moscow: Sretensky Monastery Publishing House, 2018) [Russian].
2. The Great Patericon. Based on the manuscript of the monastery of the venerable Savva the Sanctified, translated from Greek by St. Theophan the Recluse (Moscow: Pravilo Very, 2017) [Russian].
3. Spiritual Meadow. The Work of the Blessed John Moschus. Memorable Tales about the Asceticism of the Saints and Blessed Fathers (Moscow: Pravilo Very) [Russian].
4. The Palestinian Patericon. Manuscripts of the Monastery of Saint Sabbas the Sanctified, translated from Greek by St. Theophan the Recluse (Moscow: Pravilo Very, 2009) [Russian].
