Paphnutius Kephalas

Saint Paphnutius Kephalas lived at the turn of the third and fourth centuries and was a contemporary of Saint Anthony the Great, who held him in high esteem. He is not known to Greek and Latin hagiography, but he is mentioned in the Alexandrian and Ethiopian synaxaria and in a few Slavic menologia.

Paphnutius spent eighty years in the desert wearing a single garment. He had great wisdom and the gift of teaching; he never judged sinners but spoke with discernment, for the benefit of his listeners. He taught that everything that happens to us is either God's will or God's permission: deeds done to His glory are by His will, while troubles are permitted for our correction and repentance, especially when we make too much of ourselves and do not see God as the cause of our good deeds. He also said that no one can fall without God's permission and until the guardian angel has left him, and he urged his disciples to prefer sorrow to rest and humility to glory, and to love giving more than taking.

Once some monks came to Saint Anthony with a complaint against a brother whom they held to have fallen into fornication, while the brother denied it. Paphnutius, present at the conversation, told a parable: he had seen a man stuck in the mud to his knees on a riverbank, and those who came to pull him out sank in mud up to their necks themselves. Hearing it, Anthony said that Paphnutius was a true ascetic who knew how to heal and save souls. The monks who had complained asked forgiveness of the wronged brother.

His memory is kept on 10 March (a movable date), in the new style; in the Alexandrian tradition it falls on 9 or 10 March. He is not included in the present calendar of the Russian Orthodox Church.