I found a respectable looking woman wandering about in the desert and I asked her what she was doing in that place. ‘Don’t ask me,’ she said. ‘I am a most unfortunate woman. Don’t ask why – but if you want a servant take me wherever you like. I am unlucky enough to have a husband who because of his debts has been repeatedly hung up and beaten and punished by all sorts of tortures. He has been shut up in prison and is not let out except to be tortured again. We have three sons who have also been seized because of this debt. Since they started looking to punish me in my misery I have fled from place to place. I have no food, I am totally distressed, I have been wandering about without detection in this place for three days now without anything to eat.’ Upon hearing this I took pity on her and led her to my cave, where I refreshed her spirits which were almost spent through hunger, and I gave her three hundred solidi, for the sake of which she and her husband and her three sons had become liable not only to slavery but to physical punishment. She went back to the city and freed them all with the money I had given her.”
Then father Paphnutius said: “I have done nothing like that. I have been sent to you because the name of Paphnutius was fairly well known among monks. I am fairly well versed in being able to lead my life under monastic discipline. And it was for this reason that God revealed to me that you are just as worthy in the sight of God as I am. So, brother, don’t neglect your soul, for you must see that you have a high place in God’s eyes.” And at once he put down the flute which he was holding and followed him to the desert. He turned his musical art into a spiritual harmony of heart and mind and for three whole years gave himself over to [a regime of] strict abstinence exercising himself day and night in prayers and psalms. Still pursuing his heavenly journey with all the power of his soul, he gave up his spirit at last into the choirs of the holy angels.
