THE FAHERS OF THE DESERT

PAUL OF THEBES

(died circa345 AD)

" And he was in the desert, and he was with beasts, and the angels ministered to him."—Sr. MARK I. 13.

As John the Baptist, "the voice of one crying in the wilderness", became a herald of the Gospel, confirming his preaching of penance by his penitential life in a garment of hair, with locusts for his food—representing the transition from the kingdom of penance to the kingdom of God, treading and pointing out the purgative way which leads to the unitive way; so the silent anchorites became public heralds of Christianity, and announced after their fashion the marvels worked by Divine love.

Because they possess the love of God, their life is unspeakably happy in spite of its deep seriousness; truly philanthropic in spite of its supreme contempt of the world; influential in the widest circles in spite of its strict retirement; giving indirectly a higher aim to earthly affairs in spite of its complete withdrawal from them; for the heathen gazed with esteem upon these apparitions, the Christians emulated them with veneration, and the whole world had an example before its eyes of the heights to which man can attain when he is not encumbered and chained down by self-love, avarice, and self-will. Like a beautiful rainbow, which seems a bridge between heaven and earth, so were these peaceful lives raised above the discordant and troubled lives of their time. And the more the spirit of the world strove to become the lawgiver and ruler of that age, so much the more did these solitaries cause the chanting of psalms to rise and the spiritual powers to shine forth, which are above all time.

Their patriarch is Paul. When the great bishop St. Cyprian at Carthage, and the holy Archdeacon St. Lawrence at Rome, suffered martyrdom, in the middle of the third century, there lived in Upper Egypt, near Thebes, a young man of the name of Paul.

He had received from his parents, who were dead, a good education and considerable property; he understood the Greek language, was well versed in other knowledge, and was, moreover, of a gentle disposition and pure heart, and above all filled with the love of God and with attachment to the Christian faith. The persecution violently raged in Egypt as elsewhere, and tortures were employed that were exquisite and wearying, but not mortal.

Mistrustful of his human infirmity, the youth withdrew from the dangerous proximity of the great city, where bad examples were rife, and from the house of his married sister with whom he lived, to a small farm which he possessed close to the boundary between the habitable land and the desert. His sister had the misfortune to be married to a pagan husband, and this man resolved to denounce his brother-in-law to the Roman governor, impelled either by hatred to Christianity, or by the covetous desire of his possessions, or by the delusion of thinking he thereby fulfilled a duty towards the authorities. In vain the unhappy wife endeavoured to dissuade him with prayers and tears; he was inflexible in his resolution. But her sisterly love enabled her to give her brother a secret warning of the impending danger, and he speedily fled from his farm into the desert which stretches away to the Red Sea, vast and wide, and intersected by masses of stone and rocky heights. There he was safe, and he determined to make a virtue of necessity, and to await the end of the persecution in some cavern in the hills.

Whilst he was searching for one with pure water in its vicinity, he got farther and farther into the desert, for pure water is somewhat rare in those parts. There are, indeed, small lakes here and there, but their waters are so brackish that they excite thirst rather than allay it, and are, moreover, injurious to health. Paul was not deterred by the futility of his search, but patiently prosecuted it, accepting with resignation the many privations it involved.

He came at last to a face of rock with a large cavern at its foot. He entered it, and remarked that the back of the cavern was closed by a great stone. With great exertion he rolled away this stone which lay before an opening through which he passed, and found himself in a tolerably spacious, open place, surrounded by rocks, in the centre of which grew a splendid palm tree, whose branches formed a shady roof. Close by, there bubbled up a spring of water, as clean as crystal, which, however, flowed only a few paces before it was sucked up by the sand.

In the hollows of the rocks which surrounded the place, Paul found an anvil, a hammer, graving tools, and other similar utensils. Ancient writers assert that it had been a workshop of coiners of false money in the days of Queen Cleopatra, and deserted some centuries before. The retired and peaceful spot exceedingly pleased this lover of holy solitude. It seemed to him as though God had prepared it for him, and guided him thither. All was collected there which was necessary for human life; clear water, fresh air, a protecting roof for shelter, the pleasant fruit of the date-palm for food, and its leaves for clothing. What more could one in love with holy poverty require? Paul was twenty-three years of age when he took possession of the little oasis.

The storm of persecution subsided when the Emperor Valerian was taken prisoner by the Persians. Everywhere fugitives came back to their homes and families, but Paul returned no more.

Long years of unbroken repose passed away, Christianity grew powerful in the Roman empire, and penetrated into the very palace of the emperors, but Paul returned no more.

Then the persecution of Diocletian burst forth like a devastating fire, and swept away another generation. Paul was like one dead, and his remembrance was blotted out from amongst mankind. The friends of his youth and his relatives were dead, and the new race knew him not. A new world was formed, Christianity conquered and became dominant, and the whole heathen world fell in ruins; but Paul, unmoved by the overthrow and resurrection of altars, by the ebb and flow of human races, by the wars or peace of kingdoms, by the triumph or the sufferings of the Church militant lived on under his palmtree as if he belonged already to the Church triumphant; lived ninety years without seeing a single human face or hearing the human voice. But in compensation he saw other visions, and other conversation refreshed his soul; the contemplation of the perfections of God, and intimate intercourse with Him. In proportion as he released himself from temporal things he approached nearer to eternal things, and they so fully satisfied his aspirations, and took such complete possession of the highest powers of his being, that he felt no wants; he wanted nothing, and desired nothing; he lived hidden with Christ in God. What can be wanting to him for whom God is sufficient?

Man is endowed by nature and grace with extraordinary activity; his corporal and spiritual passions are constantly excited. His body must be supported by food and sleep, and if it is indulged it desires to be cherished, it requires enjoyments and comforts, and the more its desires are satisfied the more they increase. The passions of the soul, also, are violently excited by intercourse with others: love and hatred, hope and fear, joy and sorrow, wishes, endeavours, cares, expectations, and disappointments, career wildly through the human heart like the waves of the sea, rising, falling, and rising again, and filling it with a burning desire for some good, the acquisition of which is to bring rest; and as soon as it is attained, fresh restlessness begins. The higher capabilities of the soul, the thirst for knowledge and science, the strong desire for eternal things, cause violent efforts and mental struggles; and man would be utterly perplexed and distracted were he to attempt to satisfy all these wants, and to attend equally to those of the body, the heart, and the mind. He often, therefore, surrenders the attempt, and neglects the higher part of his nature to devote himself to the lower. But no sooner does the body cease to be subject to the soul than man falls straightway into dissipation, for he pursues fleeting earthly atoms, in the place of eternal unity, his true goal.

Paul acted not thus. He reduced his wants to their narrowest limits, being content to neglect all inferior things, and he allowed his body so little that it lost by degrees the power of taking more. The smallest quantity of food and drink, a few dates, and a little water, sufficed him. The roughest clothing, made of palm leaves plaited together, tormented unto death the sensitiveness of his flesh. He defended himself against sleep, in which men pass nearly a third of their lives in unconsciousness, as against a tyrant; and since he was determined not to be drawn away from the loving and admiring contemplation of the everlasting Good, his body was forced to content itself with the least possible measure of sleep.

Thus did he put to death the inferior or sensual nature, as he had learned from Christ in the desert.

But this is not enough to procure for the soul the full liberty of the life of grace; the intellectual nature which stands midway betwixt the two, in connexion with both, and which draws nourishment from both, must also be overcome, in order to put an end to all the influence which the inferior part exercises over it, by which its best and noblest powers are enfeebled and degraded into passions.

The purgative way requires also the asceticism of the heart. All those attachments, affections, and interests, all that need of sympathy, interchange of thought, and excitement, are indeed permitted, but they easily turn the soul from God to men, and through men to the world and its snares. Their nature must be changed, their earthly tendency broken off. The current of feeling must not flow solely round father and mother, round wife and child or friend; but the love of God is to become so powerful that from it, as from the deep source of many streams, there shall spring the love of creatures without preferences and without exceptions.

If we are commanded to show more love by word or deed for one than for another, the fulfilment of that command is a duty, and then it is the duty, which is chiefly loved, and not the creature. Where the emotions of natural affection and friendship may coincide with the love of God, they are to be closely watched and rigidly separated, in order that the heart may learn to be raised up by the grace of God, and to love nothing but God and all things in Him.

Christ loved His most Holy Mother, His Apostles, His enemies, His murderers; poor sinners as well as saints. So Paul loved mankind; he embraced them in God. There was room for all in his heart, because his inferior part had been put to death, and because he hated overcome both his sensual and spiritual nature, and casting off the bonds of avarice and self-love, "the lust of the eyes and the lust of the flesh," had crucified the old man. The redeemed man had begun his new life. And yet he might at any time have made shipwreck on the rock of self-will, "the pride of life," if his will, which from childhood upwards had been so pure, had not still further purified itself by self-government in obedience to God.

If the hope of working miracles, and thereby shining before men, or the wish to delight in his own excellence and eminence; if, in short, heathen pride had driven him to such self-control, the mirror of his will would not now reflect the amiable and omnipotent will of God, but it would shadow forth the image of the ancient serpent which had led him to this point. But his will was where his love was, with God. He cared not to look into the future to know what was concealed, nor to command the beasts of the wilderness. He wove his garment of palm leaves with the same equanimity as if his life of penance had not invested him with the wonder-working powers of the Redeemer. Sanctifying grace was so strong within him that he never even remarked the immense and persevering sacrifice of the natural man which he practised. A mighty and vivifying power dwells in suffering out of love, for it has its origin and participates in the Divine sufferings, and Christ wrote this new law with His Blood. It was marvelously exemplified in Paul. As he had subdued his sensual nature, he abrogated the laws of nature round about him in the power of his union with God.

But the remembrance of this holy old man was not to disappear out of the recollection of men. He was a hundred and thirteen years old; his end was approaching, and he knew it and rejoiced.

About the same time, Antony, another celebrated solitary, had a temptation to pride; it seemed to him that he was the most perfect anchorite in the whole desert. His soul had been ever since his youth the scene of spiritual combats, of struggles between the heavenly hosts and the demons of darkness. If the latter urged him violently to evil, the former gave him counsel and help to withstand.

He was now ninety years old, but his strife was not yet over; the demon of pride sought to poison his soul. Then he had a vision in sleep which revealed to him that a patriarch of solitaries lived in the depths of the desert, who was much more perfect than himself, and that he was to go in search of him.

Antony arose and set forth to go wherever it should please God to lead him. In the desert where he lived there is neither road nor path, for the track of the caravans does not pass through it, and as far as the eye can reach, nothing is to be seen save blocks of stone emerging out of the sand, and in the sand the footprints of wild beasts. As Antony continued his pilgrimage, infernal delusions rose up before him, and monsters obstructed his path. Accustomed as he had long been to this warfare, he marked his forehead with the sign of the holy cross, and passed on.

The monsters disappeared, but the first day had come to an end, and Antony knew not whether he was in the right road or not. The second day passed in like manner in the silence of the scorching desert. The fear of succumbing was far from Antony's thoughts, for his mortified body was accustomed to every kind of privation. But his fear was great lest he should be found unworthy to see that holy solitary, after whose exalted model his heart was inwardly longing. Therefore he watched the whole of the second night in earnest prayer, and as the third day broke, he perceived at last a living creature; a thirsty she-wolf came running from afar and disappeared panting and gasping in a cavern in the hills. After a short time she reappeared and ran away.

Therefore Antony concluded that there must be a water-spring in the cavern, and he followed the track of the wolf. But the cave was empty. When his eyes had become accustomed to the darkness of the place he perceived at the farthest end a small crevice through which the light of day was shining, and he drew near to it. But Paul heard footsteps approaching, and instead of opening the door of his territory he closed it more securely with a large stone, in order to try the patience and the humility of the new­comer. Then Antony prostrated himself on the floor of the cave before the closed door, and begged for admittance.

"Thou knowest," said he, "who I am, and wherefore I come. I am not worthy to see thy face; but it is my fixed determination not to leave this spot until this happiness is granted to me. Thou dost admit wild beasts, dost receive them with friendship, and give them to drink; wilt thou repulse men?"

Thus the holy old man of ninety prayed and entreated from daybreak till the sun stood high in the heavens. Then Paul at last opened the door, and smilingly said: "Do people ask for favours with threats? Thou sayest that thou wilt die here, and dost thou wonder that thou art not admitted?"

And the holy old men greeted one another by name, embracing each other like affectionate brothers, and giving each other the kiss of peace; and they sang together psalms of praise to God. Then they both sat down upon a stone, and Paul said to his guest: "Antony, thou seest now before thee the man whom thou hast sought out with so great trouble, and who will shortly be dust and ashes. Was this old worn body and this white hair really worth thy efforts?" But Antony knew what a treasure of holiness was concealed in that infirm body, and rejoiced to have found him out.

Mattia Preti (Italian, 1613–1699) St. Paul the Hermit

Then Paul began to ask how the human race was at present constituted—who governed the nations—if there were still any idolaters—if people continued to build new houses in the old cities. And as they thus conversed of things both serious and cheerful a raven came flying to Paul's feet and gently deposited a loaf of bread. "How good God is!" exclaimed the holy old man. "For sixty years a raven has daily brought me half a loaf. Now that thou art here, my brother Antony, behold Christ has doubled the provision for His two soldiers." And they thanked God with joyful piety, and sat down under the palmtree by the little stream.

But it was honourable to break bread, because Christ had done so at the Last Supper, therefore a reverential strife arose between the old men: Paul wished to give the honour to the guest, and Antony to the aged patriarch. And their desire to eat was so slight that evening drew near before they had agreed to break the loaf between them, each one holding it at the same time, and keeping the piece which should remain in his hand. Then they bent over the spring and drank a little water, and immediately betook themselves to prayer, in which they spent the whole night.

The next morning Paul said: "My brother Antony, I have known for long that thou wert living in the desert, and God had promised me that I should see thee before I died. Now the hour of my deliverance is at hand, and He has sent thee to me that thou mayest cover my body with earth. See how good He is."

But Antony entreated the holy old man with many tears: "Remain a little longer upon the earth, or take me away with thee."

"Thou must not seek what is agreeable to thee," replied Paul. "It would indeed be a happy thing for thee, and I could desire it for thee, to be already allowed to follow the Divine Lamb; but thy life and thy example are still necessary to the brethren, therefore wait patiently. But thou shalt bury me like a dutiful son, and I beg of thee, if thou art not afraid of the labour, to fetch the cloak which the Bishop Athanasius gave to thee, and clothe me in it for my burial."

The holy old man was perfectly indifferent as to whether he should be laid in the earth with or without a covering, but he wished to spare Antony the sorrow of seeing him die, and perhaps also to testify that he had persevered, living and dying, in unity of faith with Athanasius, who was at that time persecuted by the Arians.

Antony was amazed to find that Paul knew of Athanasius and the cloak; and revering in him the all-penetrating eye of God, he kissed his hands silently and tearfully, and betook himself homewards in order to fulfil the last wish of the holy old man. Antony was himself of a great age, and nearly worn out by fasting and watching, but he hastened with youthful vigour, and without allowing himself any rest, to his mountain of Colzim on the Red Sea. Two of his disciples who had long lived with him, and whose delight it was to render him little services of love, came joyfully to meet him, and exclaimed, "0 father, where hast thou been all these days?"

Instead of answering, Antony smote his breast, and said, "0 miserable sinner that I am, how falsely do I bear the name of anchorite! It belongs not to me. I know it now, for I have found Elias in the desert, and John in the wilderness; I have seen Paul in paradise." Then he hastened into his cell and brought out his cloak. The disciples sought to question him more closely, but Antony said: "There is a time to speak and a time to be silent."

St Paul and St Anthony by Matthias Grinewald

And thereupon he returned as expeditiously as he had come, in the hope of finding the holy old man still living. But he had a vision the next morning which showed him that Paul must have left this earth, for he saw the heavens open, and hosts of angels receive his glorified soul. Then Antony fell upon his face, strewed dust upon his head, and exclaimed: "0 Paul, wherefore dost thou depart without taking leave of me? I had never bidden thee farewell! Ah how late have I found thee, and how soon do I lose thee!"

Antony performed the remainder of his journey rather flying than walking, and when at last he reached the cave he had the joyful delusion of thinking that Paul still lived, for under the palmtree, and in the spot where he was wont to pray, the holy old man was kneeling. But he was dead, and Antony perceived it when he knelt down beside him and could hear no sound of breathing. Even in death the holy patriarch expressed the chief thought of his life, "Let us adore the Lord to whom all live."

With tearful eyes and tender reverence, Antony enveloped the corpse in the cloak, whilst he recited the psalms and spiritual hymns which were in use at Christian burials. But he was grieved not to find anywhere a spade or other instrument which to dig a grave. He reflected whether it might perhaps be the will of God that he should pass the remainder of his life in this cavern, or whether he should return to his monastery to fetch the necessary tools.

But two lions put an end to his doubts. They came bounding towards him out of the depths of the desert with flowing manes. For a moment Antony was frightened; but he immediately lifted up his heart to God, and calmly awaited them. They did not take any notice of him at all, but sprang towards the corpse, bent down at its feet, wagged their tails, and growled gently. They then began to scrape up the sand with their claws, and to make a long and deep hole. Antony was pleased with the wise animals, which were such accomplished grave-diggers, and which had probably, like the she-wolf, often allayed their thirst at Paul's little stream. The grave was soon ready; and the lions then approached Antony with reverential gestures, bent down their heads to his feet, moved their ears, licked his hands, and behaved like two little dogs caressing their master, and seeking for some acknowledgment from him. He understood that they wished him to bless them, and he broke out into songs of praise, because even the irrational animals acknowledge the omnipotence of God. "My Lord and God," he exclaimed, "without whose will a leaf cannot fall from the tree nor a sparrow from the roof, give to these beasts what thou knowest and wilt."

Then he motioned to them with his hand to go away; and when the lions had obeyed, he devoutly took the corpse of the holy Paul in his arms, laid it in the grave, and covered it over with earth. Antony took for his own the solitary legacy of the great anchorite, the fearful penitential garment, which Paul himself had made and always wore, a web of palm-leaves, which are generally used only for baskets and mats. Antony returned with this treasure to his cloister, and related the whole occurrence to his disciples. On the great feasts of the year, Easter and Pentecost, he himself put on this garment of one who had so perfectly practised Christ-like poverty. St Jerome, who describes this life, concludes thus:—"I beg of thee, 0 my reader, to remember the poor sinner Jerome, who, if God were to give him the choice, would prefer to clothe himself in the mantle of the holy Paul with his merits, rather than in the purple of kings with lands and vassals." As mysticism is the reflection of the Gospel in the lives of the saints, how wonderfully mystical this life must have been, between whose innocent beginning and peaceful end lie ninety years, to be described simply by these words, "And he was in the desert, and he was with beasts, and the angels ministered to him."

 

Sts Paul the Hermit and Anthony Abbot- Diego Rodriguez de Silva y VELAZQUEZ c. 1642.