Pachomius the Great

In his own words on Isaiah

• Isaiah 9:10

  Whoever offers God his choicest goods is likened to Abel's works, while the one who brings cheap things is likened to the works of Cain or to the one who laughed at his father and went to tell his two brothers, or again to the one who decided to build a tower in the plain of Shinar, forgetting the one who had piloted him on the boat and had saved him from the water of the flood and blessed his fathers. Now he said, fleeing, "Come, let us dress stones and cut sycamores and cedars, and let us build a tower for ourselves."

  LETTER 3:10

• Isaiah 10:15

  Let us consider therefore those to whom God has granted power, to see if we may deserve to serve them and to cling to their doctrine, putting aside all pride and resisting with great courage the sin, which fearlessly operates in bodies; for death has been swallowed up by victory. On the other hand, how weak we are in this age, knowing that the church is to stand and to be led toward what is good.… You know that the ax does not boast without the man who uses it to cut … but we must fight to be able to have peace with those who keep the commandments of God.

  LETTER 4:4

• Isaiah 28:7

  In fact, our fathers passed their lives in hunger, thirst and great mortification, by which they acquired purity. Above all they fled the wine habit, which is full of every evil. Troubles, tumults and disorders are caused in our members through the abuse of wine; this is a passion full of sin, it is sterility and the withering of fruit. For sensuality in unquenchable thirst stupefies the understanding, makes conscience overbold and snaps the rein on the tongue. Total joy is when we do not grieve the Holy Spirit, or become deranged by sensuality. As it is said, "The priest and the prophet were deranged by wine." … Therefore, all who have prepared to become disciples of Jesus should abstain from wine and drunkenness.

  INSTRUCTIONS 45

• Isaiah 33:18

  And if you want all these thoughts to diminish in you and not to have power over you, then recite in your heart without ceasing every fruit that is written in the Scriptures, having in yourself the resolution to walk in them, as it is written in Isaiah, "Your heart shall meditate on the fear"of the Lord, and all these things shall cease from you, little by little.

  LIFE OF PACHOMIUS (SAHIDIC) 4

• Isaiah 43:2

  Become guileless, and be like the guileless sheep whose wool is sheared off without their saying a word. Do not go from one place to another saying, "I will find God here or there." God has said, I fill the earth, "I fill the heavens," and again, "If you cross the water, I am with you."

  INSTRUCTIONS 1:25