Venerable Paul of Thebes

Life

Paul was born of wealthy parents in Lower Thebaid (Thebes) of Egypt in the time of Emperor Decius. Paul inherited all his parents' estate together with his one sister. But his brother-in-law, an idolater, desired to seize Paul's portion of the estate as well, and threatened Paul that he would denounce him to the court as a Christian if he did not yield his estate to him. On the one hand this misery, and on the other the heroic examples of the self-sacrifice of Christian martyrs, which Paul saw with his own eyes, moved him, so that he gave his portion of the estate to his sister as well, and he as a pauper withdrew into the desert, where he practiced asceticism until his death. To what spiritual height this giant monk attained, no one less than Saint Anthony the Great testified, who once visited Paul and saw how wild beasts and the birds of heaven served him. Returning from that visit, Anthony said to his monks: "Woe is me, my children, a sinful and false monk, that I am a monk only in name. I have seen Elijah, I have seen John in the desert, and truly I have seen Paul—in Paradise!" Saint Paul lived one hundred thirteen years and peacefully reposed in the Lord in the year 342.

From the Hymn of Praise

John was a young lad,A young lad and wealthy,But nothing deceived him—Neither youth nor gold.